Shoo Rayner

1 Shoo, you're one of a select band of children's author/illustrators actively maintaining and regularly updating your own website (www.shoo-rayner.co.uk). What do you see as its primary purpose--promotion, entertainment, information?

When I started, my reasoning was that here was a way that I could advertise my wares. I could see possibilities of selling my books online, although this proved too much hassle. Anyone who is buying on-line wants to pay by credit card. You have to do a lot of business to cover the set up charges for that. I've still not sold anything over the net.

Now I see it's role as entertainment. I hope that it will pay for itself by people buying the books having been entertained by the website...naivebut the thought keeps me going.

Now that I've discovered shockwave, and am getting better at it, I now see the site as an idiosyncratic relief from, if not a direct competitor to dysney.com.

2 Which design tools do you use on your website?

I started with the copy of Adobe Pagemill that came with my computer. It's a bit idiosyncratic. You cannot do anything with Java, it rewrites it into gibberish. I was going to upgrade it, I gather the latest version is much better, but I discovered Flash first.

Once I twigged that you can not only build a complete website in Flash but can easily convert it into a stand-alone player for Mac and Windows, I knew this was the product for me. The most important thing about Flash is the streaming. When I'm on the net, I hate waiting for useless roll-over buttons to show up on a page. With careful planning, Flash can appear to be seamless on the net. I'm working on about the fourth major re-build of my site at the moment. I'm half way though and have learned so much that I'm planning the next re- build at the same time! The most important thing I've learned is to build the site in little blocks that can be upgraded or added to independently, without messing up the whole site. A lot of planning therefore needs to be put into the navigation of the site.

I do all my graphics in Photoshop. It's simply the best, you don't need anything else. Flash is brilliant at sorting out Bitmaps for optimum streaming. I could do with a good sound package. Anybody got a freebee for the Mac?

3 Do you also use the computer for book illustrations, or are these done by hand?

I've tried drawing directly into the computer. I have a Drawing slate but it's not the same as paper, there's no life in it. It's just "an input device". My latest series, The Rex Files, has been planned from the start to be computer enhanced. I draw and paint the illustrations on paper, then scan them into Photoshop. Here I can add effects. It is a sort of spooky series so I can get away with it. I've found that less is more. It's so easy to go whacking page-curls and ripples and bumps on the illustration, but it removes it so much from the original. Just a little bit of tweaking can lift a drawing and really add something to it. I'm going to have a Virtual exhibition explaining all this on my site and a real exhibition travelling the country from February, starting in Hereford.

I wrote the series directly into Adobe PageMaker. This allowed me to place the text and speech bubbles, with the correct fonts, as I was writing it. I delivered the books to Hodder on disk. There were a couple of things missing but It was easy to email those to the printer. I was terrified that the whole thing would not work. I was elated when the first printed copies arrived. It worked really well. I've learned lots of technical things that I hope will the next project even better.

4 You say in the Authorfile that you didn't really discover children's books until you went to art college. Does this mean you weren't a reader as a child?

Not really. I'm still a very slow reader. I choose books with great care. I take so long reading them, that I can't afford to waste time on anything duff. I don't mind chucking a book midway through the first chapter. I'm going to read Captain Carelli's Mandolin next, to see what all the fuss is about. I gather it has a 50 page barrier. I want to know where the editor was?!

When I read, the words often jump around the page. My handwriting is so appalling that I can't even read it. I suspect that I'm dyslexic, but I've never been tested. (Anyone want to study my poor disorganised brain?) I didn't begin to get the stuff in my head organised until I got my first word -processing computer. I could actually read back what I had written! I think the problem is that my ideas come to quickly for my handwriting to cope.

5 Your booklist shows that you are immensely busy, and presumably working on several projects at once. Can you give us some idea of how the process of being commissioned to do work, and then delivering it, operates, and how you organise your day-to-day time?

I'm usually actively working on about 10 projects with another 10-20 boiling away somewhere. The boilers take about two years to heat up. There will be a day whesomething falls into place and I get out a sheet of paper and put down whaI can in an mind map. This is the most exciting and creative part. Iprobably lasts about half an hour.

If I'm still excited the next day, then I know it's got potential. I'll then work it up into a synopis or make a dummy, which I will then send to the publishers. If they don't like it, I put it in the bottom drawer. Often the ideas are a little ahead of their time and I don't have the time to evangelise them. I have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. It used to be frustrating, but I'm used to it now.

If the publishers like it, then I'll work on it with the editor and the designer until we are all happy.

I do push myself. I like to be at work by 9 and usually don't finish until 6 or 7 at night. When I start illustrating a book I try to get a good run at it. Take a week off half way through, and you get a book of two halves.

6 When you were young you wanted to be a pop star. Was this the inspiration for your Jets title, Boys Are US?

Shucks! Am I so transparent?

7 How was your best-known character, The Ginger Ninja, born?

I got the name from Woman's Hour on Radio 4. That's why the first book is dedicated to them. They did a slot about red hair and a small boy said that they called him the Ginger Ninja. I knew at that moment it was a great title for a book.

Some time later, I had a very bad case of tonsilitis. In the middle of the fever something happened inside my brain that let me gain access to long-forgotten childhood memories. In my fever, I relived lots of wonderful situations, and one or two awful ones. I had bright red hair, and a temper, as a boy and was periodically bated by my "friends". I remembered what it was like to be taunted by a group of boys that had turned into a pack. I rembered what it was like to lose control and enter the frightening, semi-conscious state that I came to call the Black Rage. (Since, I've heard it called the Red Mist and the The Black Dog.)

As I recuperated, I thought long and hard about my revelations. I was only goaded because I had red hair, and folk-lore says that red hair goes with a bad temper. I realised that it was bound to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell a child that they have a bad temper, they will have one. If you let them get away with tempers, you are rewarding the behaviour! Any way,I'd found the theme for the Ginger Ninja.

I had a long discussion with my Editor (Fiona Kenshole...more of her later). I felt I'd done too many cat stories and was trying to make it a real child story. Fiona really understood what I was trying to say, but convinced me that it would be too distressing to write and read as a child's story. We went for a walk and met a Ginger cat. We took it as a sign!

As I wrote the books, I got a lot out of my system. I guess some would say it was some kind of therapy. I hated Tiddles. He was everyone who had ever been unkind to me. As I worked on the artwork for the first book, I dug deep into the dark parts of my psyche and other memories emerged. When I got older, it bacame my turn to bully younger, weaker children. This was the harder memory to accept. When children ask me if I prefer Ginger or Tiddles, I tell them I like both. They are two halves of the same charachter. Together they add up to me as a child and, from talking to children, they add up to many children who read the books. I actually have more regard for Tiddles; he has a much longer and harder journey to travel.

8 What's the process of writing the Ninja books. Do the illustrations or the text come first, or do you compose both together?

They are one and the same thing. I think I compose pages first. I work out exactly what is going to happen on each page. This gets the pacing right. Then I write each page. As I know in my head what the pictures will look like, I can then write to fill the spaces inbetween.

9 What importance do you give to the use of speech bubbles?

I was one of the first batch of Jets Illustrators. Fiona Kenshole, the editor, had it all worked out in her head. Shirley Hughes had done a lot of the groundwork, but Fiona pulled all the strands together and forced out of us what has become known as integrated text. She deserves credit for creating a major revolution in children's books. Up until then, most illustrators squeezed their work into the spaces that were left behind by the text. Usually putting a nice black border around it.

I cried with frustration on that first Jet (Mossop's Last Chance written by Michael Morpurgo), I even offered to return the advance. The key was to think cinematically. Once Fiona got that through to me, there was no stopping.

Looking back, this was the time that multi-media TV was coming in, particularly in children's programmes. On the screen would be music, moving text, a presenter talking, an animation going on in one corner, a clock in another corner, and all this while children were doing their home work. Children were ready for more that just pretty pictures.

Those children have grown up and are now the readers of Viz, GQ , FHM, Cosmo etc. which are integrated text for (semi-)grown-ups. I think humans have evolved new ways to recieve information in the last ten to twenty years. They say a picture tells a thousand words?... well my illustrations say paragraphs worth of text in just a look to camera...so, why write it?

They may feel like short books, but in terms of bits of information received by the brain, they're 30,000 word stories, they're just easier to digest. As a slow reader myself I don't want to impose miles of flowery text on other slow readers. The world is moving at such a pace we don't have time to read like they did in Dickens' day.

10 Aside from your admiration of Maurice Sendak, which contemporary illustrators do you admire, and why?

I miss seeing new Janet Ahlberg work. I had to ditch so many ideas beacause she'd got there first.
Oh to be able to draw as freely as Quentin Blake appears to do.
Oh to use colour like Jane Ray.
Oh to be as decorative as Ian Beck.
Oh to be as outrageous as Babbette Cole!

11 Publishers seem to be giving ever greater prominence on their lists to short illustrated titles. Do you ever have to turn down work?

As we all become more visually educated I'm sure the graphic novel will become an adult format.

No I don't have to turn down work as I'm never offered any! Publishers treat me as an author now, so I don't get sent texts to illustrate. In fact, with educational publishers I have to tender to illustrate my own stories. I've not lost....yet!

12 You're the first ACHUKA Guest of 1999. What are your own New Resolutions, and what developments do you hope to see in the world of children's books?

My own New year's Resolution is get on and write the new pages that will upgrade my book, The little Book of New Year's Resolutions, to The little Book of Millenium Resolutions.

I'd love to see a British Publisher use modern technology to cut printing costs and say to hell with America! Can we have some real British picture books and not EuroAmJap pap please? Perhaps this is the future for the internet, delivering interesting, idiosyncratic illustrated stories.

What advice would you give to illustrators who are keen to begin using computers, but are not sure what processor power to go for or what software to use?

Get as much power and Ram as you can afford. Don't muck about with mickey-mouse software. Use Macromedia or Adobe they make the proper grown-up software . Quark is far too expensive....wait for the next Pagemaker, it's supposed to be a Quark killer. Quark will either go out of business or drop their price to a quarter.

14 The Internet has finally become a new mass medium. Returning to our opening question for a moment, but broadening it beyond your own website, what do you see as the potential developments for home and school use with regard to children's books.

Video Conferencing would be great. I like the idea of Virtual school visit without all the travelling. We need to get to the stage where you're not worrying about the phone call, then the web will really explode. In the States they get free Local calls so you can listen to radio New Zealand all day if you want.

I get frustrated by those who say children shouldn't have calculators. Has Mankind really spent millions of dollars and man hours perfecting this tool so that we don't allow children to use it? Did anyone question the upgrade from slate to biro? Why spend time learning to do something that a machine can do? The day that there aren't any calculators left is the day therearen't any humans left.

On the web, schools have instant access to every centre of excellence in any field you can imagine. How can a school ignore that? So what if children are clipping and pasting their essays together off the web? That's the evoutionary state of the society we live in.

What children need to be taught is discernment and verification skills, that's what literacy is really about. Literacy has always been about power. Literacy has always been about gaining information and knowledge from the retrieval systems of the day. If you ignore the web, don't be surprised if you get left way, way behind.

The thing I worry about is Digital TV. It has a phone link at the back and will soon become the portal through which most people will access the internet. If we allow it, this is how big business will gain control of and tame the internet. Deep down I hope that the internet is so established as an entity in it's own right that it won't allow itself to be brought under control.

It won't replace books until a soft, comforting, handy, "sexy", display sytem is invented. It will be. In the meantime you can always go to a library.