2015 Picture Book Challenge! : Whatever Happened to my Sister?

I've set myself the challenge of reading as many of this year's new picture books as I can get hold of (through the public library), with the aim of having a list of recommendations by the end. This seemed less ambitious in July, but here I go... I think I'll post updates featuring a book that really impressed me and run down the other titles I have read. To start, the impressive:

Whatever Happened to my Sister? by Simona Ciraolo

The No-Update Update

I do still exist.

Hello.

I regret to admit I've made very little to share with you since my last update. There have been distractions. However, when not frittering the time away, I have been rewriting some manuscripts... I still have plans for the following, in order of preference:

Women of Power
Totopolis
Talmac the Syberbarian

They all want to be comics. I'll try to get them further along.

Also, thanks to reading Maurice Sendak's insightful collection of reviews and essays, Caldecott & Co., I have a new appreciation of the picture book. I've been reading quite a few (I like to stretch myself), so I might blog about what I encounter in place of progress on my own projects for the time being.

Thanks for checking in, I have missed you...

New Cartoon Tumblr

I've just created a new tumblr for my cartoons, as and when I create them:

lukescoffield.tumblr.com

I hope to update it once a week, so keep checking back for more!

2nd Postcard from Totopolis

Hello!

This is a typical downtown street scene. You have to be wary of the foot traffic.

Luke X

Postcard from Totopolis

I've just time to send this postcard from the fascinating all-encompassing city of Totopolis, created and administered by the Convention whereby all worlds were intergrated into one. I think you can see bailiffs Sherbet Gaol and Russ Wall in a zipper on their way to their next job. The breadth and diversity of Totopolis is so great I won't have trouble finding something interesting to send you from around the next corner.

Luke x

Female Superheroes

I've never been a great fan of superheroes (they didn't hold any particular appeal for me in my childhood for example), but I like the potential in the idea of them to tell big stories with big ideas.

A few years ago I idly thought it would be great to write a story where the world is full of superheroes, but they're all women. What changes would that bring about? I like working on female characters and to my mind it would be a chance to redress the extreme fetishisation of female superheroes in comics to this day with grounded, fleshed-out (and fleshed-in) characters.

Aliens and Fairies

Hi,

A quick update to share some sketchbook pages with you, featuring an alien and spacecraft and fairy characters.

The alien communicates with his own kind by producing and smelling various odours, so in order to express himself to us he needs an electronic face/voice device. The Fairy Queen makes her last stand against something rather nasty.

The fairies have been driven from their own world and into ours; without magic they are fragile and have to fashion protective clothing out of whatever comes to hand.