About the Books
When my nephew was 4, I helped homeschool him. Because we are so close, I wasn't able to just supervise his online classes. No, no, I had to participate. If he did a project then I did a project. One week, we were given this assignment where you had to create a character, cut from paper, and glue it on a background we had painted. I was 40-years-old and my immediate thought was,
“Holy crap Batman, this is fun”.
When he was asleep, I would doodle little characters for him to find when he woke up. These characters then became the subjects of my stories. And the stories themselves came from crap my nephew did that annoyed me. He keeps misplacing my sharpies? Boom, Prickles loses a balloon. He has no patience? What’s up, Roboraffe Ronnie! He’s scared of monsters because we sit around talking about the zombie apocalypse at far too young an age? Meet Sir Froggerton Pinks. He won’t listen when I tell him to stop doing dangerous shit even though it’s super fun for him? Here comes Booma Rang.
The craziest thing about this endeavour is that I had no idea I could do it. I woke up one day, after 40 years of not being able to draw, and discovered paper cutting art. All those years of film school and reading comics came out in the most unexpected way. In the words of my sister, “WHO ARE YOU? WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?”
Honestly, I don’t know, but I love it. It’s weirdly therapeutic and I get to be a kid, playing with colours and shapes and stationary.
But the best part, the absolute best part, of the books is creating something for my nephew to read. Something that came from US and our hilarious, loving, infuriating, and crazy fun relationship.
ABOUT the PROCESS
Each book is 8 pages (including the cover). Each page is A3 sized, 220gsm paper and all the art is cut out of a mix of paper between 120 gsm and 220gsm. I spend a lot of time in stationary stores but tend to stick to matte colours with no patterns.
I started just free cutting with scissors. Later I discovered hole punches for the more repetitive work and even started using those pen knives I’m irrationally afraid of. I got really tired of cutting out circles free-hand so the circle punches played a big part. For things like leaves and feathers, I used flower punchers that I cut apart to create petals. Any time I find different hole punch shapes, I get them and usually repurpose the shapes.
I use stick glue because I don’t have to worry about liquid glue running. My hands get crazy messy though so I have a bowl of water and towel I use after everything I glue. After scanning or photographing the pages, the only post work is basically removing any errant glue marks.
I don’t have templates for characters or objects because I don’t want the artwork to be identical or pristine - for me, there needs to be a more natural feel to it. This again is shown in the script. I handwrite and freehand cut all the dialogue and narration.
I roughly sketch out story boards (badly) and then build each character, each background, each panel, each page. Every new page, I look at my plan and make changes. These stories progress during the creation process.
I research. A lot. I don’t really have one of those brains that can conjure up a perfect or accurate image of something. I’d make a terrible witness to crime. “What did the robber look like?” - “I don’t know. He had like a face with all the usual face parts…” If I want to make a tree, I look at pictures of A LOT of trees. Then I sketch it out. Then I cut it out. Then I add stuff to it. I don’t even glue anything until the last possible second. Sure, I’ll make a mini character, but then I’ll constantly change the layout and try different ways to overlap each element of a panel.
One of the most satisfying aspects of this is how it starts as nothing. People don’t understand what an image is until all the layers and details finally come together.