Sometimes, a project starts as delightfully simply as this: 'I want to draw dragons, i'll write a story to allow me to do that!'
And then, fate smiles upon you and it gets published and thus your little dragony dream comes true!
In all honesty, it was a tiny bit more involved than that. I did want to draw dragons - but I also wanted to write a silly, simple black comedy for younger readers - and so, This Hungry Dragon came into being!
As you can see here in the character design sketches, it was initially titled 'One Hungry Dragon', but it was rightly pointed out that this might imply that it's a counting book - which it isn't - so a compromise was made.
From there it was a very happy process bringing this book to great, big, greedy life - with only one casualty which I'm delighted to share with you now!
In the original drafts, among the junk found already eaten in the Dragon's stomach was this rock dude guy! Purely because I thought it would be funny to find someone else already in there and generally confused.
However, after some discussion it was decided his sudden, random appearance might be a little too sudden and random...and thus confusing! Sure, we attempted to give him context as can be seen with him first appearing in the partially munched house - but no, ultimately it was decided it would be best to replace him with the cat you see in the finished book.
So here he is displaying his full dramatic range - finally able to be shared with the world!
Enjoy - and rock on.
