A Bit Lost: the making of…

Before I had my idea for my little lost owl story I had actually wanted to do a different story about birds in a forest. The birds in the first story come down from their tree top roosts to the bottom of the forest and meet all the other animals of the forest along the way. They pass all the forest animals who want to eat them and eventually manage to find food near the forest floor. The last spread would then be a panoramic of them back perched at the top of the trees at the end of the day overlooking all of the life of the whole forest. I had the idea because I wanted to introduce all the animals and have the interactions of the forest in a sort of Arne Naess story of deep ecology and interconnectedness.

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This image was the trigger for the story. It’s a screen print I did for the fair trade company People tree. I really liked the image because I had the idea of hiding figures in the complex background (see the little cat in the bottom right)

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An early prototype of the pop-up for People Tree. You can see it animated here. They should be available to buy soon from people tree’s site actually.

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I liked the silhouetted running shapes of the birds. They eventually evolved into the running owl and squirrel in the finished book.

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The birds here hide from a tiger (also a snake and an elephant)

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The birds in their perch for the final image. They look across at the whole forest and see the web of all the animals that we met in the story.

In the end I sort of had to scrap the idea, I didnt like the way the birds interacted with the other animals of the forest. They were not engaging with them as such and it left a sort of lonely tone to the story. I may try it again another time but for this book I decided I wanted to do something that was more engaging and somehow a little like pantomime. Without engaging with little funny questions and cause and effect (Uh oh! is he going to fall off?/ Uh oh! Is it Mummy? etc) a very young audience tends to lose interest quickly.

The breakthrough came when I made the bird fall from his nest. That way he was lost and had to engage with the other animals in a way that wasnt about avoiding being eaten. In order to give the bird a range of expressions, forward facing eyes is much better graphically so I chose an owl instead of a bird. Also owlets apparently have a habit of falling out of their nests. I had imagined somehow that owl babies were cute until i actually looked them up on the internet

In the end my story turned out very different. Although the story had changed, there were a few things that I kept the same. The main thing was for the story to be able to be read without words so that children can understand everything just by looking at it. I also wanted there to be other visual interests in the book that children can find themselves. In the first story there were glimpses of the berries that the birds were looking for all along throughout the story, and in the final lost owl story it is the mum looking for her child.

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The first images of the new owl story

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Although I changed the story, you can see the patterns on the owls were similar to the original birds and I was using all the same colours.

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some character sketches

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i got some character ideas from handicrafts i bought in Mexico (this one was made by Tejiendo Arcoiris in San Cristobal)

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…more bold graphic toys for inspiration…

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a noggin…

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and a bit of henri rousseau.

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I had the idea of doing a leporello (non-accordian) fold-out so that you can follow the path that owl takes as he falls. I ended up dropping this idea too. But there is still a half page where little owl drops on the opening spread.

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Eventually I lost most of the pink colour from the owls too. By now it has now become almost unrecognisable from the original story

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some more colour tests…

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i started going a bit mad with all the trees….

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one thing i like about these is the only white on the page is the white of the eyes of the characters. It focuses attention on them in what would otherwise be a very busy image.

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I did the typeface for the book with help from the brilliant typographer Andreas Pohancenik

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a test for the endpapers

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i quite like squirrel playing peek a boo in this early version of the cover.

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I did half of the book in Korea …it was published first by the AMAZING Borim Press. Check out the post I did about them here. Their set-up is very interesting.

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…and the other half in Mexico ..so i could concentrate fully on it. I had to stop working on other jobs so i was running out of money by now!

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i had some reference images spread out on the hotel floor and was worried the were going to get tidied up.

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the final spread of the owl falling

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in the finished pages you can see the mother hidden in the top left as her child is running around looking for her. the silhouettes of the running animals were inspired by the earlier work with the running birds.

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The panoramic final scene is also based on the imagery from the earlier story

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The final cover as it is now in English

If you want to see more you can see the first few pages of the book HERE

Little Owl Lost / A Bit Lost reviews

I have been getting some great reviews for Little Owl Lost and i thought i would try to put them all in one place


Goodreads
review here   

USA
Carthage Centre of Children’s literature  John Warren Stewig, Director
“In our world, understatement is becoming a lost art, and elegance a disappearing quality.This book has both” “Exemplary design qualities”
TimeOut NYC ‘Picture book Pick’
swiss-miss.com design blog
36pages.com Craig Frazer’s picture-book blog “has nearly every redeemable quality of an exemplary book”
Book-by-its-cover picture book blog
FastCompany feature
brainpickings.com ‘the best childrens books 2010’
PRI Public Radio ‘Recommendations for Childrens Books’ < listen to the radio programme

IRELAND
Irish Times
Great Reads for the under 10s “a stunning literary and visual achievement”
Sunday Business Post
“this stunning book from rising Irish star Chris Haughton is one of the top picks of the year”
Today with Pat Kenny
radio show < listen to the radio programme
Kim Harte picture book blog
Hughes and Hughes staff picks
 

UK
The Telegraph Books of the year 2010
The Guardian Reading with kids
Preston illustration blog
Katriona Chapmans blog
Daddy be good blog

AUSTRALIA
Readings bookshopBest Kids’ Books 2010′ full article here
Timelessbooks.com
book blog
Nest studio
blog

FRANCE
TOURNER1 review in french english translation

SPAIN
Club Kirico blog
Pizca de papel blog

NORWAY
Bokmerker
blog

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Borim Press: Making a picture book in Korea

My first picture book A Bit Lost was actually first published in Korean. I had met the excellent Borim Press at the Bologna Book Fair in 2007 and was blown away by their catalogue. I went over to visit them and ended up illustrating and making most of the book with them from Korea. Their set up is amazing so i thought i should post a bit about it.

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The Borim Press office is in Paju Book City (above) which is a new development by the Korean government. Printing was actually invented in Korea more than two hundred years before Gutenberg ‘invented’ it and Korea has a long and proud history of printing and literacy. In order to promote and modernise the industry and put Korea on the worldwide publishing map they subsidised the setting up of Paju Book City. It was set up as a super high tech printing facility right next to all the top Korean Publishing houses. It is a very modern sustainable development built as a satellite town 30 mins from Seoul. It also has high tech looking wind generators (which never seem to be working? hmm…)
You can read more about it here. South Korea spends more of its GDP on education than almost any other country so the shiny educational buildings are a more common sight there than in Europe or the west.

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The Borim office. The spaceship looking part is a children’s theatre. Inside their publishing house is a children’s theatre, a childrens picture book gallery (with waist high pictures) and a little childrens bookshop (with knee high tables). You can see better pics from their site. I was very honoured to be Borim’s first non-Korean author.

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The lobby/reception. The ‘wavin’ looking pipes on the right i had originally thought were some weird Korean office communication device….but i was told it was a sculpture. You can still talk into them though if you want.

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The childrens theatre. I saw a nursery rhyme gig one afternoon (in Korean) for an audience of 150 expecting mothers. It wasnt really my thing so I had to sneak out the back.

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The next door office. All the big publishing offices in Seoul moved out to here to use the shared printing presses/conference hall/facilities etc.

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The high tech printing facility next door.

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This is where my book was printed!

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Having a meal with the Borim team. Jinsuk (my Art Director) Sangon (Production Manger who i lived with for a month!) myself and Ines Yoo (my Editor and the person who first introduced me to Borim in Bologna)

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Jinsuk my art director in the best jumper I’ve ever seen… Happy Pig!!! YAY!!!!

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The CEO of Borim Mr Kwon and his wife outside their beautiful home. They have a traditional stone ondol system in their newly built home which was also built by a mixture of traditional Korean and modern sustainable methods. They are a really interesting couple, Mrs Kwon is a traditional Korean musician (drummer)

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I managed to stay for week with Mr Kwon and his family. In Korea everyone sleeps directly on the floor (the underfloor heating is pretty nice in winter and makes it hard to get out of bed…) The book is taking three times as long as i thought it would. Thats probably why im not smiling in the picture. Oh dear. I blamed it on the ondol. Check out the Kimchi pots outside the window. He collects them, there were a LOT of them.

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Finally finished after 10 and a half months! Woo hoo!
Myself, Mr Park, Borim’s editor in chief and Sang Me who did all the translation.

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감사합니다 to everyone at Borim!!!!

If you are interested in seeing more of Borim Press and their outstanding books and illustrations take a look at their site. Its in Korean so its kind of hard to navigate but you could requst a PDF catalogue by email.

A Bit Lost: first book reviews in English

This is the first review of A Bit Lost in English.
Its from The Bookseller. Very exciting to see a review in English, I still havent seen an actual copy of the book yet myself as Im still in India! ‘A Bit Lost’ should be out properly in September.

The Bookseller- 18 June 2010 -Booksellers Choice
Chris Haughton’s delightful picture book ‘A Bit Lost’ has a simlistic charm and natual voice which will be enjoyed by the youngest children. The traditional separation tale of a lost child finds wrong mummy- then eventually right mummy is lifted by unusual colours and quirky, humorous illustrations. The last page is a joy.

Publishers weekly- July 2010
By sticking to simple shapes and a bold palette, Haughton has created a debut that reads like a tattered old favorite. A single half-page shows Little Owl dozing off in his nest, then–once it’s turned–bouncing softly to the forest floor. The animals who find Little Owl are flat, stylized creatures in jewel colors, but their eyes convey a wealth of feeling. Squirrel peers at Little Owl, his paws clasped in concern, his neck stretched out quizzically. “My mommy is VERY BIG,” says Little Owl. “Yes! Yes! I know! I know!” says Squirrel. “Follow me…. Here she is. Here’s your mommy.” Squirrel points to an enormous teal bear, staring befuddled at readers. A few more cases of mistaken identity ensue before locating Little Owl’s mother (careful readers will have noticed her seeking out her progeny). With instinctive skill, Haughton uses spreads of the forest to establish atmosphere and set up jokes, then delivers punch lines with spot illustrations that zero in on the animals’ dopey but lovable expressions. A promising first outing. Ages 2–up.

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I also got a nice post from the very nice handdrawnpixels.com 

A Bit Lost is available in UK/IRE     >>> here
LIttle Owl Lost in the USA               >>> here
Ihan Hukassa in Finland (Suomi)    >>> here

 

Interview with Kim Harte 2010

How did the idea for A Bit Lost come about?

I had done an image of some birds in a forest that i really liked and wanted to develop. The birds were quite richly patterned and the forest was a complex web of undergrowth with little elements hidden in it. I really wanted to do a simple story for them that could feature the forest and all its hidden elements and simply introduce us to the animals of the forest, i loved books that are richly illustrated as a child that have hidden elements in them that you can find later.

Originally i had the idea of them coming down from their perches and traveling through the forest hunting for berries, cleverly dodging the other animals. The story was simple and repetitive but In the end it left a kind of sad and lonely tone to the book. The forest seemed like a very inhospitable place. I wanted a way of somehow introducing the other animals in the book that didn’t involve the birds running away from them. Eventually I had the idea that the bird could fall from his nest and then being lost he has a reason for approaching and interacting with the other animals.
i actually wrote a little bit about the process here

 

What illustrative processes did you use in making the book?
 
I start out with a quite quick pencil drawing, i scan that into the computer and colour it in and do other little tweaks and details from there. Its usually a quick sketch because often if its too detailed or elaborate it loses its energy and character.
 
 
What made you decide to make a children’s picture book?
 
I have always wanted to do picture books. I am a huge fan of picture books myself and I like the idea of doing something fun for children that can start them out with an interest in reading and books. Its a very nice area for an illustrator to work in.
Before I made my book I had been illustrating for various different projects from advertising and design to magazines but I had always wanted to produce something that was my own work from the initial idea to the finished result.

 

How did you go about getting published?
 
I wanted to have the story and look of the book quite finished before i contacted the publisher, that way I could do it mostly myself and do it as close as possible to the way I had planned. Some of my friends in London are Illustrators for childrens books but they are often strongly art directed and pushed into doing something that accommodates the author and the publishers vision for the book which they found frustrating. I had a fair idea of what i wanted to do, but the only problem was I could never get around to actually sitting down and doing it as i had no deadline for myself. Years went by, and in the end I decided to book a ticket to the Bologna Childrens book fair as it would give me a deadline to work towards. I managed to get the bones of the story together along with a few images i was happy with. At the fair i saw hundreds of publishing companies but really there were about 30 that i thought would be interested in my book and style of imagery. In the end it was a Korean publisher, Borim Press who agreed to publish it. They do some very interesting books and have a really creative approach so i was very lucky to get published by them.

 

You can read more about them here

 

What are your favourite picture books?
 
I really love Beatrice Alemagna’s work. Un Lion a Paris perhaps is my favourite. It is about a lion that takes the train to Paris, she wanders around the city and falls in love with Paris and finds here home as a famous Lion statue in the heart of the city.
Also Tara Publishing in India do some great unique (even screen printed!) books. Catch that crocodile is perhaps one of my favourites of theirs
Cho Sunk Yung is a huge inspiration for me also. His books are quite different in tone than my own. His Underground Garden is about a man who plants a garden in the middle of a dark city and it bursts through the walls and takes on a life of its own. There is a beautiful poetry in his writing and there is always a metaphor and meaning behind the stories.
Shinto Cho is great for funny very young books I think they really appeal to children. Leo Lionni and Bruno Munari are great for their simplicity and clever graphic ideas. Tove Jansson has great characters.
 
 
You are artistically involved in a variety of projects. Can you tell us about some of those?
 
I mainly started out with advertising and magazine work, but there has been lots of very random projects. I have done commercial animations, I did murals in Tokyo and London and elsewhere.
I am very proud of the work i do for the fair trade company People Tree. They work with 80 producer groups in 15 different developing countries. They produce ranges of clothing and gifts with womens shelters and disabled groups and I have been helping out with the designs of some of those products. I have done bags / t-shirts / stationery sets and repeated patterns for clothing and dresses for them. The profits all go to building schools and training their workers. They do really fantastic work
 
 
What are you working on at the minute? Might there be another picture book anytime soon?
 
I have actually spent the last 8 months in India and Nepal developing some new fair trade products and designs
One of the ideas im most excited about is making rugs from digital designs. They are an amazing group and support a school and orphanage
Also we have developed a little toy for the A Bit Lost book.
You can see it here
I have just finished the packaging design for ‘Coco Camino’ fair trade chocolate in Canada.
I have done a large 10m mural for the Gibson Hotel beside the Point in Dublin which went up last week
Also Im doing a new book about a bad dog (Oh No! GEORGE!) which will published by Walker Books and will be out in 2012.
 
 
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Interview with Fast Company: Jenara Nerenberg August 2010

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fast company

Are books and toys the future of fair trade?
 
I dont know if its the future of fair trade but it makes a nice gift!  Every part of the little owl made from scratch from raw cotton, it is hand-spun, dyed, woven and sewn all by the women from a womens shelter. It is helping to provide the income to support 90 new women per year and their children, as well as supporting their literacy training and educating their children. Mahaguthi, the fair trade company that makes the toys was actually set up with a donation from Gandhi eighty years ago and has a really fascinating history. One of the things i love about the toys is that each owl is slightly different and each one has a different (worried!) expression on its face which just isn’t possible with industrial manufacture. Its just a more meaningful gift as it benefits people who need a hand and has this nice story behind it.
 
 
How did you get involved with PeopleTree?
 
I was friends with a designer who was designing the clothes for People Tree around seven years ago. She had told me about the way the company was set up and I wanted to get involved. Initially I volunteered some designs to produce a line of children’s clothing, i designed some little animal prints for cute little t-shirts and bibs and they sold really well so i was asked to do more. Then we did some adult tees and stationery. In the end I have done a whole range of things for them and i sort of ended up branding the company by default.
 
 
So tell me, why has the bulk of your work been carried out in Asia? 
 
My illustration work is quite popular in Japan and Korea and I seem to get a lot of commissions from there. People Tree was actually started in Japan, and also my picture book was first published in Korean when it was picked up at a book fair. Also this year i have spent 8 months developing products in India and Nepal. I’m not sure why I have been so centred around Asia. Maybe it’s just co-incidence or maybe because of the lovely food.
 
 
What role do young designers like yourself play in changing social norms in the design field at large? 
 
I think that design will have to pay more attention to things other than surface or aesthetic appeal. As I see it, design right now (especially graphic design) is more part of the problem than the solution. I had become very disillusioned in design because i had been working in a very superficial way. I think many designers feel this and there is a growing movement of designers who are thinking more seriously about design, but not nearly enough is happening right now. I think the most effective thing to do as a designer is to try to create or instigate projects from the very start. Otherwise graphic artists and designers tend to get hired right at the end of a (usually!) ill-conceived project and our work is just simply tacked on to ‘make it look nice’.
 
 
What’s next for you?
 
I have developed some products working with four different fair trade groups in Nepal and I hope to find distribution now in London. The one im most excited about is producing rugs with KTS, an adults technical school that supports an orphanage. I realised we can create rugs from digital images where each pixel corresponds to a carpet knot. They produce the most amazing hand knotted rugs from tibetan wool. We have produced some test rugs and I hope to have an exhibition in London soon and perhaps also sell the designs from my website.
I also have two more childrens books in the pipeline. One is about a bad dog!
 
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By |2020-05-13T12:50:06+00:00February 11th, 2009|Tags: , , , |0 Comments

Interview with Bas Maliepaard Dec 2011

Someone told me Dick Bruna was an inspiration to you. why do you like his work? What did you learn from his work?
 
Yes, i went to visit his show at ‘the museum of childhood’ here in london a few years ago
i love all his work, his earlier graphic work for book covers as well as Miffy. Its very very graphic and deceptively simple. There was a story in the London exhibition about how he came up with the idea for his first book, it mentioned that he was 28 on a rainy beach holiday. I was actually 28 at the time so it resonated with me somehow, I had been promising myself for a number of years that i should do a picture book and it reminded me that i should try and give it a go. In fact it took me nearly another year to come up with the idea!

 

Are there other artists who are a source of inspiration? Leo Lionni? Eric Carle?
 
Yes i especially love Leo Lionni, every time i try to make something simple i try to look to his work.. he has so much character from so little, it makes it magical. I really like the russian animator Yuri Norstein for his simple characters too. I like lots of contemporary artists too, olivier tallec, kitty crowther, marc boutavant as well as animators (i worked in animation for a while)
 
 
What does it feels like that A BIT LOST is ‘Picture Book of the Year’ in the Netherlands?
 
im very excited, i have a dutch friend prina who studied with me in university in dublin and she is always sending me updates and pictures of mama kwijt in shop windows. she is a designer herself in holland.
http://www.prina.nl/  I love the animation that was made and all the exciting that have been done around this award. Another irish designer friend lives in amsterdam and is also keeping me up to date with sightings and events! Im particularly proud that it is doing so well there as im a big fan of dutch graphic design and the standard of design over there is so high.

 

Do you make your illustrations on the computer?
 
i always draw everything first in pencil but the majority of the work happens on the computer. the computer is a very powerful tool because of the flexibility it allows. Things can be changed endlessly so sometimes its hard to know when to stop.

 

What was the most surprising/satisfying reader’s reaction on A BIT LOST?
 
One mother wrote to me to say her baby’s first words were ‘Uh-oh!’ im not entirely sure if she was joking or not!  Another mother said that when her daughter sees the book she always says ‘uh-oh’, for her first birthday she baked her an owl shaped cake and she knew it was a success because when her daughter saw it she said ‘uh-oh’!
i got some lovely letters from kids too
Many parents have told me that their son or daughter has spotted the mummy owl hidden in the background before they did.
 
 
What do you think about the fact that your book got a slightly different title in Dutch? ‘Mama kwijt’ is short for ‘I lost my mommy’.
 
Its hard for me to comment as i dont speak dutch, i think editors do need to make decisions about what will work best in their language. I was perhaps a little dissapointed that the quote was not used in the Dutch version though. In the original versions i have a little epigraph by Robinson Crusoe on the title page which says: ‘Thus we never see the true State of our Condition, till it is illustrated to us by its Contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it’ (in summary: you dont know what you’ve got, until it’s gone) Although it really only speaks to the adult reader i quite like that its there. I quite like the contrast between the 17th century classic and a funny little book about a lost owl. I have a similar quote by a stoic philosopher for my next book Oh No George! (stoute hond) which is about a dog trying to be good. 
 
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