FrankIe and FINN

WRITTEN BY KLAY AND MARK LAMPRELL AND PUBLISHED BY LOTHIAN BOOKS 2015

This was my FIRST EVER PICTURE BOOK CONTRACT. Woop woop!

There are two concurrent stories - one of which takes place underwater - Finn’s and his family’s story - and one that takes place on land - Frankie and his family’s storyline.

Initially, I went in a few wrong directions: developing some rather stiff-looking characters and a possibly-inspired, but rather precipitous, colour script.

Skilled editor Suzanne O’Sullivan, whom I'm still grateful to for my first chance at a book, gave me a little more time, and I was able to submit these layouts:

After this, the ball started rolling and I put my first storyboard together, which was accepted with a few minor alterations.

Now for the roughs. I was checking illustrator blogs online, desperately trying to work out how much detail was expected in a set of rough drawings. Should they be colour? Should all the characters be fully realised? I would now (with three other books completed and a year of hindsight) advise this: roughs are and should be gruelling work; put in as much detail as you will possibly can at the time as this will make final art a comparative breeze, and should help ensure everyone has the same vision for the book.

The roughs were accepted, after a few alterations, but the characters - particularly those of the children - really weren’t fully developed. If they had been, I would have saved myself hours and hours of to-and-fro. I was also still working in my advertising job 3 days a week, and starting to go slightly screwy!

Here are some examples of roughs to final artwork:

There were times where I struggled to keep the lively line of the early drawings, and preferred the storyboard versions to my roughs:

But we got there in the end! I still love these end-papers:

Covers were tricky, especially as the name of the book changed, at the eleventh hour, from ‘The Round Red Rock and the Five-Headed Monster” to “Frankie and Finn”. Here are some cover designs: those pitched by me (thought to be too scary) and the super-professional early and final designs by the talented Ingrid Kwong.