Alex Milway - Official Website

Children's author, illustrator, screenwriter

Blog

Big Ears’ house has a few design flaws

by

My daughter was given a few Noddy board books recently. They taste nice, apparently, but they do also have pretty pictures. While looking at these, it becomes apparent that many of the Toyland buildings are impractical. I’m not usually one with much of an architectural opinion, but I feel compelled to comment.

First up is Noddy’s house, which is built solely with toy building blocks, and lacking any form of mortar. Anyone with any experience of toy building blocks will know they spend most of their time toppling to the ground – a strong wind and Noddy’s house would fall apart.

But second, and much worse than that is Big Ears’ house, built inside a very chunky mushroom. It looks like a nice place to live, but building a home in a mushroom would have one serious consequence: it would be a very short-term let. You’d have a few days, at best, before your roof curled up and shrivelled away. And seriously, why fill the mushroom stem with a staircase? I mean, you could have had an external spiral staircase, and used the stem as a downstairs loo with a cupboard for storage space.

Those Toyland designers need to watch Grand Designs.

Drawing the yetis: from rough to smooth

by

I’m deep into the artwork for the third yeti book – the Magma Conspiracy. It’s shaping up to be the most exciting of the books, and the art is both challenging me to the extreme, and enormous fun to draw.

I always think it’s nice to see the roughs of artwork, to notice how things change, and get smarter as they’re worked up, and here’s one from the middle of the book (click it for a bigger version). As you can see, the yetis don’t look too much like yetis, and there’s a reason for that. Obviously, to explain would be to give away the plot, so for the time being you’ll have to settle for knowing that at some point the yetis wear big hippo outfits…

Yeti roughs and Astroboy

by

I’ve recently come to the end of roughing out all the comic sections of the third yeti book, The Magma Conspiracy. It’s simply amazing how much effort is required to make a comic, and that’s before you’ve even started on the artwork.

To inspire me – and teach me in the art of comics – I’m currently reading Astroboy. I’ve been a huge admirer of Tezuka for a few years now, ever since I listened to Helen McCarthy discuss his work at Streatham Library. The world of Astroboy is bonkers, to say the least, but the artwork is so clean and assured, not to mention incredibly powerful. Explosions explode, speed effects really do convey speed, and composition is nigh on perfect. I think he really does draw the best robots out there.

And so, back to work. Yetis can’t draw themselves, sadly.

Christmas in a castle, New Year on my sofa

by

So I was lucky enough to spend Christmas in a wonderful castle. Never before have I seen such a tall Christmas tree, and never before have I sung Wichita Lineman around a piano at midnight. There’s a first for everything.

The excitement of an amazing christmas was tempered somewhat by spending new year on my sofa with a takeaway curry. However, I must admit to finding this one of the most preferable ways of spending new year. And if you ever hear someone discussing what wine you should drink when eating Indian food, bubbles works a treat.

And so it’s 2011, I’m deep into editing my third yeti book, and I really should be back at it. So three cheers for the new year and snotty noses.

The end of a busy year

by

2010 has been a huge year for me. It’ll take a while to fully comprehend what’s happened, but to summarise – and blow my own trumpet a little – here are a few of the highlights:

1) I now have a baby. She’s cute, she shouts at me, but I think she likes me.
2) In January, the final part of the Mousehunter trilogy, Mousebeard’s Revenge, hit the shops. I was really excited to see it through to the end. I always hoped to write a trilogy of books, and I have, so there. I still can’t quite believe I finished it.
3) In June, the first yeti book, Operation Robot Storm was published. The Mythical 9th Division were set free into the world!
4) In October, the second Crystal Palace Children’s Book Festival took place. We visited local schools, saw well over 500 children, and even made our very own Monster Book. It was a real success.
5) At the start of this month the second yeti book was released into the wild. Terror of the Deep is my favourite book to date, featuring all manner of sea creatures, and a yeti wrestling a sea monster on the cover.
6) And best of all I’ve made some new, really brilliant friends, and many of them have seen terrific success in the past few months.

These are exciting times and I’m thoroughly worn out. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so tired. But to celebrate the snowy weather and the end of the year, here’s a pink penguin.



Books that children really like: Into the Wild by Lerryn Korda

by

So many christmas top tens of children’s books rely on the views of us adults, and I always think it’s a shame that we don’t know more of the titles that children themselves pick out or like. These could be an old book found in a library, a tatty picture book from a charity shop, or something weird and wonderful that jumped off the back shelves of a children’s bookshop.

My daughter’s just turned into a one-year-old, but she’s already loving holding books and flicking through the pages. We’ve her given books from the age of zero, and one that really gets her attention is Into the Wild by Lerryn Korda. Cecily is a tricky one to film, being as, if not more, interested in the technology of the camera than whatever it is she’s currently doing, but I think on this bit of film we navigated the perils of tiny fingers clawing at the lens quite well.

She really does love kissing Little Nye. And what a beautiful book it is too.

Are there any books that children you know really like?

The yeti mouse at Beckenham Library

by

I’ve done a couple of events at local libraries of late. We still don’t know how they’ll be affected by budget cuts, but both Penge and Beckenham library were so welcoming, and clearly playing a great role in the local community. The children were really kind to me, and some had even read the Mousehunter! Who’d have thought?

Any way, If you live near me and aren’t members at Upper Norwood, Penge or Beckenham libraries, please go join and support them – they’ve got great teams of staff and deserve all the help they can get.

And this here picture is of a Yeti Mouse. I’ve never seen one of this rare species before, but last Friday, in the middle of the library, I was asked to draw one. This was how I pictured it…

The Terror of the Deep surfaces

by

I’ll be celebrating on 6 December as my fifth book will have been published. Five books seems like an extraordinary number to me. I’m no Barbara Cartland, knocking out ten books a year (or whatever), but it does mean that I’ve dealt with all the issues and complications that arise from making one book, five times over, since 2007. That’s a point worth celebrating right there!

The Terror of the Deep, the second of the Mythical 9th Division series is probably my favourite of all of the five, simply because it’s the one where the art is really starting to work with the text as I’d always hoped it would. Everything takes time to evolve and grow up, and I’m finally feeling more confident about my illustration. I’ll never be Tenniel, but I may just one day be Alex Milway.

And so enough about that.

This blog is now live, and the one where I’ll be posting from now on. It’ll take a while to look right, and I’ll twiddle a few setting till I’m happy, but I might even try to compete with Sarah McIntyre for frequency (NAH! Who am I trying to kid!?). And while I’m there I should say that her marvellous Morris The Mankiest Monster deserves to win every award going, not just the Sheffield Children’s Book Award that it won yesterday. Fabulous news!

And so, as a parting gift, here’s a hamster carrying a lunchbox.