Creative Review

Creative Review posted a lovely introduction to Flying Eye Books, the new NoBrow Children's book imprint - including a bunch of pictures from "Welcome To Your Awesome Robot".
Go have a look!

By the way, if you do buy the book (and it can be ordered from bookshops now, or even directly from Flying Eye) and make an Awesome Robot, please send me pictures, it will make me extremely happy and also we'll stick them on the Awesome Robot Tumblr (coming soon)!

Melbourne

I'm in Melbourne. It's summer.
At night, the trees are full of fruit bats, at dawn the Lorikeets take over.

Awesome Little Robots

Here's a tiny video clip from the workshop we had to launch "Welcome To Your Awesome Robot" at the Imagine Festival.

Twenty robots were made within an hour, and these two led the celebratory robot parade.
I take no credit whatsoever, all I did was give the families a load of materials and say MAKE ROBOTS NOW! I figured they'd know what to do. Which was correct.

The plaque on the side of the left one says "STAND BACK THIS IS A DANCING ROBOT" and the other one I think might have a plaque on the back that says "INTERPLANETARY EXPLORATION VEHICLE". Both plaques from the book.

My favourite moment is not on this video: at some point these two robots suddenly turned to one another and bumped together with their arms flailing out the sides in a very small robot battle. Or maybe a hug. The amazing thing was that because of the shape of their heads and bodies they interlocked exactly.

GET YOUR AWESOME ROBOT NOW

IT'S OUT!

GO BUY THIS BOOK AND MAKE AN AWESOME ROBOT TODAY!

WELCOME TO YOUR AWESOME ROBOT

published by Flying Eye Books.

Robot not included. SO WHAT? MAKE ONE!

Roughs are Rough.

Here's something I'm taking along to Uni today to show to my picture-book producing students: a dummy for "A Place to Call Home". I want them to see what I mean about not being fussy when planning a book, and being ready to change stuff around brutally.

This one went from confusing map to less confusing polyptic.

"WHAM" indeed.
I was so glad when Alexis worked out how to play that scene. - We couldn't look at that finished page without laughing in any of the meetings.

Note the assorted working titles. Alexis just kept adding them.

Stressful

I'm furnishing another room inside my latest book full of cats. They have A LOT of furniture this time, and I keep having to invent ways to make it.

I figured it would be OK for once to collage in some copyright-free files, checked the copyright, double checked... yep, they were all free to be used commercially, and altered... but only with attribution. NO!! And I'd already worked in a bunch. That's what I get for taking shortcuts...

I grabbed the spare IKEA shelf that's been in the corridor for weeks, waiting to be chucked out, slapped it into the scanner and replaced all the copyrighted wood with that.

I think I deserve a snack now.

And then I need to digitally fake some printed cardboard to turn into boxes for the cats' box room, because the shops only had boring boxes today. ART IS DIFFICULT.

NEW BOOK LAUNCHING THIS MONTH - and a workshop!

A NEW BOOK! YES! IT'S COMING!
Look at this beauty! I am very proud of it indeed. It's a comic, it's a craft book, it's the manual you've always wanted - the one that helps you to upgrade that big old cardboard box no-one appreciates you running around in. And once you've upgraded it, EVERYONE WILL SEE HOW AWESOME IT IS. Yes, it's a Robot Manual.

It's published by the wonderful, brand-new children's book imprint of Nobrow, FLYING EYE BOOKS.

And here's the most exciting part: we are launching it with a workshop on South Bank. If you are in London on the 16th of february and want to build a robot with your family, book your space here.
It will be awesome.