Something exciting this way comes!

I’ve been head down of late, drawing furiously in order to get ahead of myself on all my various projects. As I mentioned a few weeks ago I’m planning on launching a Kickstarter for a new book called THE LITTLE SHOP OF MAGIC, and in order to do that I need to give myself as much time to finesse the pitch as I can.

I love trying new things – which I’m sure is not a form of procrastination, I promise! – especially when they’re all in the name of my stories. This time it’s trying out Procreate Dreams so I can animate a little hand-drawn trailer for the book to go with the Kickstarter appeal. It’s pretty clear it’s not as simple an app as Procreate, and it’s way more fiddly, but then it is for animating so it’s always going to be more complicated than just simply making a drawing. Any way, the results of of my efforts are here to see! I hope you like it. (It may be a little dark and need brightening up, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated before I finalise the video for the Kickstarter pitch!)

So that’s been a lot of fun, and now I obviously want to animate everything.

Another thing that’s been filling my time is working out how to illustrate one of my books solely using the iPad and Procreate. Utilising the software to make digital roughs of my illustrations is so much more gratifying than my old method of printing things out, drawing on them, scanning them in and tidying them up. It’s definitely the future for me, as it’s simplified and speeded up everything.

Trying to draw like me digitally is something I’ve always struggled with, but I really think I’m getting there. I don’t think I’m losing anything in the process, just gaining. Happily, it’s still scruffy and silly, how could it be anything else?

Spot the difference! Digital or traditional paper and pencil?

On top of this, I’ve been trying to redraw all my old characters, just to see if I can spot the difference. It’s great fun, and here is a scribble of one of my favourite characters making pizza. It turns out Madame Le Pig is a master at spinning dough!

What sort of toppings might Madame Le Pig add?

And so, hopefully it won’t be too long before the next post. So much to talk about, so little time!