• Wally appeared in the UK in 1989. He soon travelled to the USA and changed his name to Waldo. As he became more popular he acquired new names in new countries and his looks began to change.

    Children love to look for hidden things and get a buzz when they find them. 

    Waldo marches across full page spreads that are filled with tiny people doing the most amazing things. Your job is to find him! Not easy. Wadell  gave Wally a red striped t-shirt, which sets him apart from all the other characters, but you will often find people and objects with red stripes to confuse you – and there are just so many other people on each page – up to 500! – for Wally to just disappear amongst them.

    But the thing that made Waldo or Wally a superstar was the fact that he is an instantly recognisable character.

    Over the years, with all that walking, Wally/Waldo has lost a bit of weight. As the franchise has grown, his design has been refined into a simple image that can be recreated anywhere and be instantly recognised. Basically, he never changes so there is no doubt who it is in the picture.

    Get Where’s Wally? From Amazon UK

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    Where’s Wally is owned by the Entertainments Right Group. Images are used under fair use rules for purposes of educating the next generation of illustrators.

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  • I talk to ravens. There, I admit it. We have ravens in the forest up the road where we frequently walk. When I hear them I call back to them.

    Often they come to investigate me. Over the years I’ve come to believe that they know it’s me and recognise me.

    My studio is under their flightpath from the Forest across to Wales. They call out as they pass by. I’m so attuned to their calls. (Ravens have a large vocabulary of sounds, unlike the other corvids.)

    I leap out of the studio and call back to them. Sometimes they circle round to fly over me but the more exciting response is their aerobatics.

    Sometimes, often in bright, sunny weather, they will swoop and dive and, best of all, do victory rolls, completely spinning round in the air. This is so obviously done for fun and amusement. It lifts my heart when they do it. I know, in that moment, that we are communicating just for the hell of it!

    Here’s an old video of walking in the Forest and talking to ravens.

  • A kid’s book? Really? It can’t be that hard, can it?

    Well, not if you are an AI scammer who just wants to make a video about how easy it is to make a kid’s book.

    And it is easy, if you just want to see your name on a book to add to your bucket list ot boost your ego.

    But making a book for children that they might want to read and find interesting or exciting is quite a different thing. 

    And illustrating a book does not mean just sticking the same bit of clip art on every page or asking midjourney to conjure up weird images of six fingered people. (Oh there’s an idea for a book!)

    And actually selling a book! Well that really is a quite different thing. Most self- published books sell fewer than 10 copies!

    Oh and then there are all the mental barriers we set up for ourselves…