Making It with Animals
Amphibimals was another facet of the Amphibian theme I chose to explore. In contrast to the Amphibian Portraits I wanted to develop a lighter, funnier and child friendly version of the animals.
The concept was to complete an alphabet of animals to support a child’s literacy and encourage a curiosity of the animal kingdom. However, I found that when reading with my daughter, she was more inclined to ‘play’ at being the animals or wanted to play with them. It fuelled the idea to make the characters interactive and I struck on the notion of a split page book. Inspired by Burt Kitchen’s beautifully illustrated Animal Alphabets and Nick Sharratt’s Buzz, Buzz, Bumble Jelly, I produced my own version of an amphibious animal alphabet – an Amphabet!
The simplicity of the images allowed me to explore different visual variations of their appearance and I was able to produce a number of variants that would suit different purposes from bath sponges to wrapping paper.
However, I’m really interested in an app to accompany the product. It would be free with the purchase of the book and the images could be swiped around on a touchscreen to mix up the animals. Additional ‘packs’ could be bought to add to the mix, or again would be free when other books were bought. The animal creations could be shared on social media and links would be provided to give real information about the actual animals.
After re-visiting the project to get it on the website, I’m keen to produce some new characters and throw them into the amphibian mix. I just think it would be quite entertaining to add some farmyard animals, birds and dinosaur characters to the mix and match.
Any publishers reading? and interested? I think this project has legs! (Lots of them!)
