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.

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)

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.

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

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

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.

The first images of the new owl story

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.

some character sketches

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

...more bold graphic toys for inspiration...

a noggin...

and a bit of henri rousseau.

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.

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

some more colour tests...

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

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.

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

a test for the endpapers

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

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.

...and the other half in Mexico ..so i could concentrate fully on it for a few months without interuption.

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

the final spread of the owl falling

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.

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

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

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I'm doing a talk as part of the excellent Mountains to Sea literary festival.  Myself, Deirdre McDermott (my lovely art director) and Kevin Waldron are going to chat about making picture books and show how we create a book and that sort of thing. Have a look at Kevin's work here, its amazing. The whole festival looks amazing there are no fewer than 4 Booker prize winners doing talks at it, well worth popping down to.

The day the wild things took over county hall
12.30 - 5.30pm SUNDAY 12th SEPT County Hall Dún Laoghaire (we are on at 3pm)
The whole day is free and theres lots of great illustrators and authors showing their work. Niamh Sharkey and PJ Lynch are also doing workshops
FREE ENTRY!

Also theres a Lunch on the day before in the Yacht Club ...INCLUDING DON CONROY!!!!
Childrens Author Lunch
12.00 - 3.30pm SATURDAY 11th SEPT, DL YACHT CLUB
€15-20 admission

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I have been getting some great reviews for Little Owl Lost, the US version of A Bit Lost!

It got Picture Book Pick from TimeOut NYC, and I also did an interview with FastCompany here. The owl fair trade toys that i mention will be sold from here very soon...

Also there is a really great review by John Warren Stewig, the director of the Carthage Centre of Children's literature over here.

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You can order it in the countries/languages below

Here are the first few pages...

                   

Click here to download:

a-bit-lost-is-out-tuFmgHlFfGJlBCluvqAz.zip (404 KB)

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The high tech printing facility next door.

This is where my book was printed!

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)

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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Some people have mailed me to ask how I got in contact with the Fair Trade groups etc so i thought I should explain it a bit here.

There is two main certification marks that govern fair trade. The first is the FLO mark on the left above, it oversees commodities such as coffee/tea/fruit and is the most widely recognised. The second is the WFTO mark which oversees the more complex fair trade manufacturing certification. Clothing/stationery/handicrafts any manufactured goods etc all come under this mark so it is the place to go for designers looking to create and manufacture designs and products.

I always wonder why it is the Fair Trade raw commodity mark is so widely recognised but the Fair Trade manufacturing mark isn't as well known. Mainly perhaps because the Fair Trade raw commodity mark products can sell themselves without much help from design (coffee, tea etc need nothing more than a packet) but fair trade manufactured products aren't as easy because they heavily rely on design. There are great companies such as People Tree that are doing their bit to show that its possible to do great designs in fair trade, but in general I think its clear that there still isn't enough great design. Why isn't it everywhere?  More than 50% of coffee sold in the UK is fair trade and still rapidly growing but in clothing it is less than one percent. If there were more it would be a huge force in poverty reduction and the main thing I see holding it back is design.

Having worked myself in advertising and commercial design for a long time I had become very disillusioned in the world and business of design, and I am very grateful to the people I have met in Fair Trade who have reminded me again what good design can be. There are some amazing traditional crafts and hand made objects that just cannot be produced industrially that lend themselves if designed nicely to really beautiful high-end design products. Textile designers in particular would be blown away. Not only that but I have met some pretty amazing and inspiring people. It has been a great opportunity for me to take some time to do something a bit different that is generated by myself rather than commissioned and it has led my design work into lots of new and unexpected directions.

For anyone who is thinking about getting involved they can go straight to the WFTO website here and contact producer groups all over the world by region/country or by product type. Literally anything you can think of (that can be non-industrially manufactured) can be made somewhere by some co-operative. You can also join them on facebook here 

If you have any other questions please leave a comment below.

 

bag prints...

and some soft toys.

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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.

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

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I 'm not entirely sure what it says. Really lovely pictures though. Thanks!!!!
The original post is here and another one here

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Some of the women employed at Mahaguthi are deaf or disabled. This is the sign you do when you take Monday off.....'Im outta here. Peace'

 

 

a few images from the classroom

this guy is having a really bad banana. not nice.

All the Ullu's! The Hindi word for 'owl' is 'ullu' which is also the word you use if you want to call someone stupid. Owls are thought of as stupid in India and Nepal, the opposite to how they are seen in the west. My owl is definitely a Nepali 'ullu' rather than a western owl. Actually I have become known as ullu-man in the Mahaguthi office (!).Thanks very much to Sumitra, Anita, Chandigarh and Uttara (also to Ono and Sunil who arent here)

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From their profits they also fund a school of 260...

...and an orphanage of 19 children

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