Where Do My Ideas Come From?

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Here you can see my very first ideas for a story starring the character Silly Cat from the book Whose Hat is That?
The ideas are roughly laid out in double-page spreads, to match a printed picturebook. This helps me to think clearly about the way the text might work alongside the final pictures.

I've labelled my sketches to show what's important. For example, I've identified the kinds of hats the creatures might wear: hippos have lovely knobbly-shaped heads, and I wanted the hippo character in my book to have a hat that stretched round its head to show off its unique shape. A rubber swimming hat seemed like the perfect answer. One of my friends suggested putting the snake character in a gangster-style hat. I liked that idea, and asked for permission to use it. Check out the offbeat illustrations of Simon Woolford in the final book.

Take a look at the final book here.