My focus is on children's books and for my final project I did a book about a little
bird called Bradley who's glow in the dark.
My name's Lorna Scobie, I do Illustration and Animation at Kingston University.
I came up with the idea on a holiday to Bruges when I was just talking to my dad about story
ideas.
(Little girl: At the edge of a city in the...
) All the way through the book the other birds
in the tree don't discover who's there and then there's a darker threat that emerges
and the child can take an active role in discovering the bird on each page because he's actually
glow in the dark for real.
So you can put the book under the covers and then see that he is glow in the dark.
It was always going to be set in a tree because I really liked the image of the tree.
I was interested in the idea of exclusion and children like not being involved in other
children's games and that's why I wanted to have a single bird down at the bottom.
(Lorna: Can you find him?
Yeah!
That's him!
But the other birds can't see him.)
I really like the idea of children being involved within the story.
So it was really important to me that it wasn't just a passive experience of reading the book.
I wanted them to pick it up, to turn the pages themselves and actually actively look for
Bradley on each page because he's quite hard to find.
Interactivity is something that I'm really interested in so I've also developed this
book to be an App as well for the iPad, which won the Macmillan Digital Prize 2012 this
year.
The Macmillan Prize is a really big award; it's what everyone who does children's books,
kind of wants to achieve I think at student level.
I chose to screen print purely because of the technicality of it, because I wanted to
add the birds with mono print on top, screen printing meant that I could mass-produce the
images, so I could make lots of mistakes before I got to the final image.
I knew I wanted to do a children's book.
And then I also went into schools and spoke to children, looked at the different ages
as well.
Animals were something that kept cropping up; that kids like reading books about animals.
(little girl: Until the end of the light...
Little boy: There he is.
Lorna: Where is he in this picture?
Little boy: There!
) The older children kind of understood that
he was different and that's why the other birds weren't talking to him and that was
really interesting, just seeing the jump in the understanding between a five year old
and a seven year old.
The response was really good from children, they really liked the fact it was glow in
the dark and they were all coming up to the front and looking with their hands, looking
at little Bradley.
This was the first one I've tried to rhyme as well and that was a challenge but I think
it's worked out ok.
I think Kingston's really made me focus on what I want to do because when I came here
I had no idea.
I knew I was interested in drawing and maybe animation but then throughout the three years
I just carried on being encouraged to focus in certain areas and that's when I discovered
digital children's books and this whole new area of publishing.
We get a lot of tutor time and I think that's really benefitted the whole three years, just
the fact that I know I can talk to my tutors about any problems I've got.
All our tutors work in the industry, so you feel like all the information you're getting
is current.
Also I think the tutors have really helped by setting up Industry talks, so we've had
visits to studios and visits to Publishers.
For me, the biggest support and help has come from the print rooms, there's really good
print facilities here and the technicians know everything about print.
And so you can just go up there and really kind of experiment.
I chose Kingston because I came here on an Open Day and I saw how much tutor time there
was and saw that there were big studios and for me it was only ever going to be Kingston,
I didn't apply anywhere else, I only wanted to come here, which is good because I got
on.
And then Illustration advice: don't try and be like anyone else, just concentrate on having
really good ideas, really good concepts and then the illustration I think will come out
of that.
I think my next step is to head to all the Publishers, show them my book, show them the
way I work.
I'm taking my portfolio around studios at the moment, which is good, getting the feedback,
seeing the areas that I can work on, and just building connections I think, keeping in touch
with everyone.
I want to see Bradley in the shop soon, yeah!