Anthropomorphism

Mike Brownlow

Anthropomorphism. 

That’s a big word isn’t it, children? And difficult to spell, as I’ve just found out. 

Are you sitting comfortably? Once upon a time...

John Shelley, Bridget Strevens-Marzo and myself were given the task of drawing pictures for a story written by Annie Neild. In front of real, living, breathing people, and with no time to think because none of us had heard the story before that moment. 

It was a cruel and unusual punishment...

An illustrators’ shoot-out then; no holds barred, no prisoners taken, giving the audience a chance to watch three grown illustrators sweat with panic.

Me, John, Annie and Bridget, anthropomorphizing like mad things.

It was a cruel and unusual punishment to finish the day with. Along with Paeony Lewis, Benjamin Scott and several others, we’d all taken part in the SCBWI Authors’ and Illustrators’ Day at Norwich’s Millennium Library, which John had organized back in July. 

Most of us picture book people will have been there, drawn that and got the Peppa Pig t-shirt.

Annie had written a fun story about a small panda, with an attentive mum and various animal friends. He went to school, and juggled and did silly things. So… not the usual lying-around-in-the-wild-chewing-bamboo-shoots behaviour that real pandas tend to go in for. This was a story about animals as substitute humans, attributing human characteristics to animals, showing them doing things they’d never normally do. Anthropomorphism.

Most of us picture book people will have been there, drawn that and got the Peppa Pig t-shirt. Anthropomorphism is a staple of our trade.

Cover for Highlights High Five Magazine: Mike Brownlow

At one point, Mummy panda had to help little boy panda get ready for school. Right… put yourselves in our shoes. You have three seconds to think how to make a visual distinction between the two anthropomorphized pandas. Obviously size will be one way. But what next? How do you show that the big panda is female, and a mother who cooks breakfast and dresses her son for school? 

It’s not easy, is it? We had no time to come up with any kind of sophisticated graphic solution. My mind went blank and I resorted to the old Disney trick of putting a big bow on top of her head, and giving her a small dress and pinny. And so did Bridget. And so did John.

I adopted my politically correct, concerned face and muttered some fluff about visual shorthand.

After we’d drawn classrooms full of animals, pandas doing juggling tricks, and pandas hula-hooping, we breathed a big sigh of relief, and started to pack up. It had been a funny, lively session, and well received. Then a serious looking young mother approached me and asked “Why do you all do that? Dressing animals up like this?”

She glared accusingly at the bow on the panda’s head and the skirts.  At first I thought she was trying to make a point about sexism or something similar, so I adopted my politically correct, concerned face and muttered some fluff about visual shorthand.
My answer didn’t impress.
    
    “No!” she went on, “I mean making animals act like humans. Why do you all do it? It’s everywhere!”
I pointed out that using animals as substitutes for humans has been going on since at least the time of Aesop.
    
    “Yes and I hate it! It’s lazy thinking. There’s no need!”

    “But…” I spluttered, “… it makes stories universal because… um…  there are no race issues to worry about.”

No. Still not good enough because, you see, she wasn’t making a point about sexism or race. It was an environmental point. She complained that there are currently so many species of animal being made extinct, and at such an alarming rate, that we writers and illustrators should be concentrating our story-telling talents on showing how real animals live their lives in the real world. Then we’d not only be helping children to learn to read, but we’d be educating them about the natural world as well.

And do you know what? I think she had a point. 

Would picture books taking a more naturalistic approach to their subject matter be a healthier way to educate and entertain our youngsters?

   
    “I can’t think of a single picture book that depicts animals as proper creatures and not as pretend humans,” she said. 

I could. I’d recently been to the SCBWI Picture Book Retreat at Holland House near Copethorne, and had the pleasure of watching author and illustrator Gerry Turley show us his extraordinary sketchbooks, full of drawings taken from life, many of them executed in the wild. Gerry’s work showed real animals in real environments, and it was stunning stuff.

An image from ‘Woo’ by Gerry Turley

So why don’t more of us do the same thing? After all, there’s plenty of drama and loads of conflict in nature. 

Sadly, there are probably far, far more panda cuddly toys in existence than there are real pandas. Ditto elephants, rhinos, apes… it’s a depressingly long list. Would picture books taking a more naturalistic approach to their subject matter be a healthier way to educate and entertain our youngsters? 

I would hate it if there were no more Rupert the Bears, Mrs Tiggywinkles, Danger Mouses, Wibbly Pigs, Maisies, and all the other magical animal/human hybrids that have captivated generations of children. But let’s face it, they’re not the ones in danger of extinction. Pandas – real ones – they’re a different proposition. 

I think there’s a gaping gap in the market here, and my ever-so-slightly-angry inquisitor is onto a terrific idea. As Peppa Pig might say, ‘Oink-tastic!’

‘Bears and wolves in snow’: Gerry Turley

Gerry Turley’s work can be seen at http://www.gerryturley.com

His picture book Woo is due to be published in 2014 by David Fickling Books. Watch out for it. It’s brilliant. Conciliatory.

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Mike Brownlow is both an illustrator and author of many books for children, including CBBC's Little Robots. His new book Ten Little Pirates  was illustrated by Simon Rickerty. Mike's clients include Orchard, Bloomsbury, OUP, Harper Collins, Pan Macmillan, pearson, Lego....
Recently Mike was Words & Pictures' featured illustrator. He is an active member of SCBWI and lives in Somerset.

SCBWI Member Juried Exhibition

It's exhibition time! As the call goes out for entries to this year's selection, Anne-Marie Perks, Illustration Coordinator for the SCBWI British Isles Chapter, presents a short history of our print showcase exhibition.



Here we are again, the time of year where we’ve sent out a call for entries for our 2013 SCBWI Juried Members Showcase Exhibition. Three years on, the exhibition is growing to include more tour venues every year. 2013 venues were: Foyles Bookstore Cafe in London, Southampton Library and Norwich Millennium Library. The following article is a brief look into this growing exhibitions history.

Too Small for my Big Bed, Illustration by Layn Marlow

One of the things I really wanted to do not long after accepting the role of Regional Illustrator Coordinator in 2001 for SCBWI BI, was to organise a juried member exhibition. At the time, there were no other regions that had organised one. Though as you may have guessed by now - if you’ve been an illustrator member any length of time at all - we always look for opportunities to get our work seen. I wasn’t coming at this with no experience at all having worked on organising and hanging solo and group exhibitions in a museum in California for three years before moving to the UK. What held me back was thinking too big to just get us off the ground. Never mind that there were plenty of things to get going for illustrators in SCBWI BI to start with. This is where John Shelley stepped in. As ARA in Japan, John had helped set up exhibitions in Tokyo and had collaborated with one in France with Bridget Strevens-Marzo, International Illustrator Coordinator at the time. John had just moved back to the UK and was ready to help.

Our first juried member exhibition at the 2010 two day conference, John Shelley, far right.

By 2010, other regions had successfully organised juried member exhibitions, showing both fine art prints and original work. John suggested doing something we could handle to get us going; an A4 print juried show that will be highlighted at our annual conference for writers and illustrators. So, our first call for entries went out. The following images are a few of the twenty successful prints that made it into our first exhibition hung in the same room as the Open Portfolio Display at the conference.

From left to right, illustrations by Julia Woolf and Layn Marlow.

From left to right, illustrations by Mike Brownlow and Trish Phillips.

Though we had great plans that this exhibition would tour, it didn’t happen then. It would be our juried exhibition in 2011 that would find it’s first tour venue at Southampton Library thanks to Jan Carr. At this point, our prints were still being hung in inexpensive clip frames. This kept the exhibition easy to deliver, fitting into two shopping bags!

2012, 2013 brought more exhibition venue opportunities. We had already expanded our acceptance number to 21 prints in 2011. The juried exhibition was still being shown in the inexpensive clip frames, but that all changed with our acceptance to show at the Foyles Cafe last February. A grant from Stephen Mooser, president of SCBWI, allowed us to buy frames and the hanging materials required to show in the cafe.
 

Illustrators upon acceptance into the show submit one high quality print of their work. Brand new frames and mats bring the quality look of the show to a high standard, deserving of the great member illustrations exhibited.

This photo gives you an idea of how the work was hung in the popular Foyles Cafe. A lot of work went into hanging; thank you Bridget Strevens-Marzo, Heather Kilgour, Amber Hsu and Shana Nieberg-Sushitzky! Oh, and Bridget’s daughter too!

A small group of us showed up to celebrate the exhibition with coffee at Foyles and later with dinner. Clockwise, Bridget Strevens-Marzo, an interested visitor, Sally Kindberg and her daughter, and Mike Brownlow. (There were more of us there, sadly the lighting was not conducive to much picture taking.)

In June 2013, the exhibit showed for three weeks at Southampton Library, thanks again to Jan Carr. Then in August, exhibited at the Norwich Millennium Library, highlighted with a day of festivities with local authors and illustrators as well as any exhibited illustrators able to travel to the venue. John Shelley organised a great day of sketch-offs, reading books and sharing work from the illustrators, mini workshops, a bookselling counter and, well, fun! The exhibit hung for three weeks there before coming back to me in London.

John Shelley and Mike Brownlow in a sketch off. Don’t know what one is? As a story is being read, illustrators sketch whatever imagery comes to them around the story.

The show displayed in Norwich. Two display cases were provided by the library, enabling us to show books and other material from contributors as well as the prints.

So, here we are in 2013 and another call for entries has gone out. In the past, the showcase has been juried by professional illustrators, Anne-Marie Perks, Bridget Strevens-Marzo and John Shelley. This year, award winning author illustrator Gillian McClure has joined the panel. We are planning another exciting year touring in London and around the UK, working on a new exciting venues to add to our growing list. We are hoping to expand to 25 accepted entries. Our remit is to show the very best of SCBWI member illustrator work, and to tour this fabulous work to as many venues as feasible.

One thing you may not be aware of is how much of making the members showcase exhibition happen is down to the hard work of SCBWI volunteers, and not all are illustrators. This includes hanging and taking down the exhibitions and moving this growing showcase traveling by car, van, train, bus and taxi.

If you haven’t thought about sending in your submission, why not? You do not have to be published to enter, nor does your work have to have been published. You can submit self-promotion pieces, many illustrators do. The criteria is that the work must be targeted to children’s publishing in any genre or age range. This includes older fiction, book cover and black and white work. Go here for submission guidelines, or see last years accepted winners and read the guidelines here. I hope to see you in the exhibit for 2013 and 2014!
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Anne-Marie Perks is the Illustrator Coordinator for SCBWI British Isles. www.annemarieperks.com