Monty’s Island Series

written by emily rodda and published by Allen and Unwin 2020-2021

In 2019, Allen and Unwin got in touch with an offer to illustrate ‘Monty’s Island’ – a series by beloved author Emily Rodda.

Monty’s Island is aimed at children aged six-to-eight and follows a boy who lives on an island in a magical sea. There are quirky characters, monsters, an appealing setting and dastardly villains. Obviously I said yes!

Book one: Scary Mary and the Stripe Spell

Once I’d accepted the offer to illustrate Emily Rodda’s book, I received the text for the first story - along with some drawings and description from the author (see image below).

As well as the island itself, the island cafe features prominently in the beginning of the first book in the series and also in the third book. It was important to get it right. Emily Rodda is very good at creating an intact and consistent world for her stories, and she’d really thought it through. Not all authors think this way, which is fine, but given my background in architecture … I enjoy knowing that the ‘world’ actually fits together properly. After reading through Emily’s text, I started to sketch the characters. Here are some of my early concepts below:

Here is my plan for the café. This is the final version, as it had to be revised a few times. The author pointed out that the beach shouldn’t be visible from the café (a major plot point) and that the entry should be from behind.

Here is the cafe from the outside. I’ve revised it to look more rounded and child-friendly, and made sure that foliage obscured the windows.

Clink the parrot is one of my favourite characters. He’s actually quite a nasty piece of work, but has some recognisable child-like qualities. He’s very enjoyable to draw.

Scary Mary - initial design. It was decided the dreadlocks looked too odd.

Early designs for Monty's Island. The rocks at the top looked cool - but aren't in the stories.

Initial design for owl character 'Silent Sir Wise' - the team through he was looking too 'cute'

Silent Sir Wise looking more appropriately stately and wise.

Early designs for Monty's 'pick-up sled'

Initial design for Tawny - Monty's best friend. In the end, we went for a more realistic looking lion (though still cuddly).

So, after we were happy with all the character designs, two months had passed and it was time to start illustration.

There is a LOT to think about: how many illustrations, what scenes to illustrate, final style and how to get the images to work with the text. Allen and Unwin left lots up to me… and I felt that these books should feature lots of illustration, at least one illustration per spread, and that the illustrations should be integrated with the text. Not to the extent of a graphic novel, but close to the level of the Tashi books, for example.

Allen and Unwin sent me a run-out. This gives the illustrator an idea of pace, style and layout. In the past, the illustrator might print this out, get out the scissors and start cutting up text and placing it into a layout. In the past, deadlines were longer.

Luckily, I had technology. I copied the style of the text, popped it into my own draft layout (using InDesign) and started making spaces for illustrations. After I’d got a rough idea of what I wanted to illustrate, I started doing some roughs – using a digital pen on my tablet. Then I plonked the roughs into my layout.

Using layout software gives me loads of flexibility and literally saves hours. You can above how I was working with the text. The illustration is still quite traditional in style, but I was trying to draw the reader INTO the book, rather than to seperate the images from the text.

Another thing I had was a fairly long timeline. Sometimes deadlines are very tight, but I had three months to do this, which gave time for ideas to percolate a little.

After the roughs were approved, I sent my individual rough illustrations (as digital files) to Allen and Unwin. Their talented designer then placed my files into her layout and started to design up the text. Here, below, is an example of a spread in ‘first pages’ - the first layup of the book.

Scary Mary is still rough in this one, but you can see that the fonts are final.

And below is a sample from ‘second pages’, with my final illustration in place

We then did a few rounds of changes and tweaks and soon the internal pages were ready to go to print.

For the cover, I provided the character illustrations, the background map and a few little decorative illustrations, and the designer came up with the overall concept, the type and some very cute little palm trees.