A couple of weeks ago we had the second studio visit from one of our backers, Stuart, himself a toymaker. Stuart helped us remake one of the landscapes for the book, and also build the props for the last page of the book: a 3D coconut cityscape. But as we were discussing the best way to go about this Stuart suggested a more interesting way of building and lighting the city. So we, er, well we left him to it.

This is been the best part of making the book: as well as the increased amount of ideas we have had from collaborating together, many of the ideas have been prompted through conversations with other members of the studio and our studio visitors. It’s made us realise how much easier it is to generate ideas when you have people from whom you can immediately get a reaction, and to know almost immediately whether ideas are going to work or not.

And it makes the whole idea of sitting down and writing on your own seem a bit boring now…

Many thanks to Stuart for his help and ideas – you can see some of his own toys and artwork here.

[stage book is at now: all the blank pages are now illustrated… now time for tweaking.]