Storytime: Nobody Owns The Moon

I'm totally going on a blogging binge. I just changed my header lately as every time I click preview and see that old header of mine I cringe... as I feel its irrelevant and ugly. Besides "design + illustration" is probably outdated as I hardly post only those things. As you can see it's now a moon. So how is that anymore relevant? Probably not but the moon is a beautiful creature and it gives off a nice frequency attuned to my blog.

Actually, for this post I wanted to tell you about a picture book "Nobody Owns The Moons" by Tohby Riddle. I discovered it on one casual sitting at Kinokuniya randomly selecting books spines which tickled at my curiosity.

Apart from the mixed media cut-paper-collage which drew me into the book in the first place I was absolutely captivated by the narrative voice. There was something really powerful about the narrator's establishment of setting and characterisation. He really brought me (personally) into retro New York City life, all in the company of - in my imagination - Pop Jazz. The voice of the narrator has a matter-of-factly documentary tone (Somewhat like Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing). I suppose you can say Riddle does a similar thing with Shaun Tan in that he creates visual surprises. The opening sounds like something coming from a documentary on animals living in the city yet here you have a fox fully integrated with city civilisation. You don't often hear stories about foxes thriving in the city.

I absolutely love first opening pages, especially the "able to eat a variety of foods" part, where you have Clive (the protagonist fox) dining in a Japanese/Oriental restaurant - visual cues set up by the oriental bowls, soy sauce and bamboo.

It's quite interesting because the idea for the picture book actually came up for Riddle from reading a fact about foxes. I think Riddle does a wonderful job at creating the textures of the cityscape environment in terms of his writing and art.

This page of the picture book also made an impression on me. The writing captures the nature of factory really well.

I must say this book would've been amazing to study for HSC belonging as it looks into the themes of friendship, difference, and sense of place in a really engaging way. So if you happen to be in year 12 and studying 'Belonging' I would highly recommend this book!

In terms of the art Riddle uses a combination of mix media and collage techniques. Here's his process from his website:

And if you're wondering why Tohby Riddle or his art looks and sounds somewhat familiar then it might be because he is the author of The Great Escape From City Zoo

Also, I recently made a new tumblr all things related to the moon as I've been encountering many moon inspirations. Some of which include: Jonathan's Barnbrooks design of BOS17 (it was only a small feature of the design but I loved it anyway), a Korean movie 'Castaway on the moon' and my friend's absolutely epic find of a moon badge (which she recently gave to me! Thank you Bambi). And of course there was that wonderful Perigee super-moon event which completely blew my mind; it may just be a rock in space but there will always be something charismatic about the moon. I also noticed that I've had 3 design projects where I've featured the Moon. I didn't realise it before but I think the moon holds a special place in my heart.