what I would end up doing.
How did Max and Mei
come about?
Martha (Keswick), pictured
right, who wrote the books,
based the stories on her
son and his friend. We
had a mutual friend who
introduced us and because
she wanted to present
the idea to publishers,
she asked me to come
up with some sketches of
what the characters could
look like. She showed it to
publishers, who liked the
concept and the drawings.
They asked me to develop
the characters and a few
changes were made, like the
fact that Mei was originally
Eurasion and then became
Chinese. The drawings
developed slightly, and then it built
from there.
The characters of the Chinese
zodiac are a central feature of the
stories. Luckily, I knew about the
Chinese horoscope characters
anyway, as I grew up in Hong Kong,
but as soon as it had been decided
that the animals would link the first
box set series together, I learned
about them all in much more detail,
to help with the design work. This
year is the year of the monkey – the
smart, quick-witted, frank, optimistic,
ambitious and adventurous sign.
Why do you think these books are
popular?
It is definitely important for children
of this generation to learn Chinese.
If you live here in Hong Kong, it is
obviously really useful. But I live in
the States now and lots of my friends’
kids are learning Mandarin. If you
want to get into business it will be
really useful. Parents can read these
books with their kids and pick up
a little bit of the language too. The
CD is really cool. I gave the set to
some friends’ kids in England and
they were picking it up from the CD
– it’s easy to copy the sounds before
knowing any pinyin or knowing how
to pronounce it.
Who inspires you?
It’s always inspirational to see what
everyone else is doing – I am totally
obsessed with Instagram at the
moment. You follow all these crazy
people and it’s nice to see their
process. You get involved in your own
process; I know how I do things, but
it’s still interesting to see what works
and what doesn’t for others.
I like to follow lots of illustrators
and publishers to see which books
are coming out. There’s a New York
illustrator called Julia Rothman; I
really like her work. She does lots of
sketches. I follow quite a lot of shops
because I have done a lot of work
for retail. My window displays have
recently gone up in Kapok here in
Hong Kong for the winter season. It’s
nice to follow those kind of shops, so
you can keep up with the trends and
see what’s coming in and going out.
What’s on the horizon?
I really enjoyed doing
the Max and Mei with
dinosaur story that was
the follow-on after the
horoscope books. They
go to the zoo, they find a
dinosaur and are really
excited and everyone tells
them it’s not a dinosaur –
I would love to do some
more of those.
I am doing some work
with some other children’s
books, but they are at
proposal stage.
Any tips for arty kids?
I would recommend
drawing a lot – all the
time. I really notice that if
I haven’t drawn for a week
I really miss it and notice
how it affects my skill. Just
draw as much as possible – I can’t say
it enough. Keep a sketch book, rather
than drawing on scraps of paper like
you do in school. Keep a book just for
drawing, then you have it all together
and you can see how your work is
developing.
If you are thinking of going to
art school, you have to build up
a portfolio of different kinds of
drawings, paintings and things to
show. But that is totally the way to
go. It’s very difficult to get into an art
career without having some kind of
education in it, and art school is great
fun! So I recommend it – especially
the foundation course. You do a
foundation course in the UK where
you get to try everything – fashion,
pottery, all kinds of skills, and then
you decide which university you want
to go to depending on what you want
to focus on. In America, you pick a
school you want to go to and then you
will develop what you are going to
specialize in as you go along, so it’s a
little bit different. I recommend that
younger kids try everything – and just
keep drawing!
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