'What Does Santa Do When It's Not Christmas?' - well, much like it's companion piece 'Werewolves...', you'll have to read it to find out!
But for now, I can share with you some illuminating behind the scenes details!
The aim with this book was to create the Christmassiest Christmas book POSSIBLE! As well as a veritable gift that keeps on giving.
(SCROLL DOWN for the Spotters Guide!)
First off - sure, I live in Australia and not once have my Christmases been white with snow - yet all the same, the Christmas I was raised on was completely buried in snow and silver bells and roasting chestnuts and full English roast dinners and of course, North Pole born and bred Santa Clauses, elves and reindeer! So when allowed the opportunity to play in this world - I ran slightly amok celebrating it all!
To begin with, I needed a Santa Claus! A daunting task when I sat down and realised this was my chance to create my vision of the epic legend...not to sound too over the top...but it was an intimidating prospect!
It took a few trials but I found something I was quite pleased with! A good old European, snowy, snowy Father Christmas!
Fortunately, the trails and errors proved useful, for I wanted to maintain an air of mystery regarding Santa throughout - so no two potential Mr. Claus' look quite the same!
Hence, the trial and error Santas were a good start at designing VERY SIMILAR but DEFINITELY different bearded faces!
Other characters appeared quite fully formed in the character design phase...sometimes with a little inspiration from famous faces.
When it comes to Christmas characters, reindeer have always been my favourite - so a fair bit of mucking about took place before I had something I was happy with!
And then of course - the elves!
Which leads neatly into the 'gift that keeps on giving' aspect of this book!
You see, I wanted to create something that encouraged repeat viewings, rather than something that people might flip through carelessly and then move on from. I wanted to pack it, overstuff it even, with nostalgia and Christmassy things I love...and then more on top of that! This somewhat inadvertently began with the designing of the elves.
In the end, entirely through my own fault, there ended up being 218 unique elves in this book - that's therefore, 218 unique little elfy faces to think up. I sometimes struggle to design 5 new faces for a book - so I opted to borrow, caricature, pay homage to numerous celebrities and common folk...as elves! A sample of which appears here!
But WHAT ELSE is hidden within the pages (and everywhere else too)?!
Well, click on the Spotters Guide and
download the PDF to get spotting
the many, many festive (and some completely non-festive) treats hidden on every page!