How Salty (our Picture Book mascot) became a 2-book deal

This week we're pulling up a chair at Helen's kitchen table to finally spill the beans on Salty. Salty Dog and Pals is the book that started as The Picture Book Course branding and somehow ended up as a 2-book deal with Walker Books.

The big question: How do you write a zillion short stories with your pal in 10 sessions flat?

We chat about the origins of Salty (and which printmaker Bernard the duck is named after), the brilliant questions from the editors at Walker Books, why Kitty is basically Tania 😆, and the Nissen Hut story that didn't make it into the final draft no matter how hard we trieeed!

p.s. Salty Dog & Pals (Helen & Katie's new picture book) is now available to pre-order and will be in shops from May. To say thank you, all pre-orders get access to a picture book MASTERCLASS. 

You can sign up for your free picture book masterclass here: 

https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/salty-dog-and-pals-the-storm-other-stories

It's instant access, so no need to wait.

(And if you've already pre-ordered, thank you!)

Rough timestamps for our timestamp-fans:

00:00 – Where did Salty Dog come from? 

01:00 – From course mascot to Walker Books character 

03:00 – Bernard the duck, and colour palette chat 

05:00 – The thumbnail template that started it all 

07:00 – The Jarvis format: not a picture book, not a chapter book 

09:00 – Writing at the kitchen table: how it worked 

11:00 – The Walker Books character questionnaire (we read it out) 

13:00 – Who is Bernard, really? (William Hanson + Cameron) 

15:00 – Kitty is Tania (reckless, chaotic, beloved) 

17:00 – Lindisfarne, upturned boats + Helen's grandparents' Nissan Hut 

20:00 – The story that was too violent to make it in 

22:00 – Titles first, stories second 

24:00 – What the editors actually did (magic, basically) 

26:00 – Procreate vs paper + the cover saga 

28:00 – Pre-order Salty Dog and Pals + free masterclass! (You can sign up for your free picture book masterclass here.)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Transcript

March - 3
===

​[00:00:00] 

Katie: we talk about Salty Dog and Pals?

Helen: Woohoo. Let's do it.

Katie: Yeah.

Tania: wanna know how you two wrote Salty Dog together. 'cause you're making great claims of writing it in 10 minutes flat, which I know is a big salty exaggeration.

Katie: you that?

Helen: 10 stories in 10 minutes. How to, go on. Tell them Katie,

Katie: step one. Don't

Helen: about it. We didn't.

Tania: Where did Salty Dog come from though? First of all,

Helen: So when we were doing the picture book course, I can't really remember how we came up with the idea. Even if it was [00:01:00] me, but we, I don't think it was, but I think we decided it. Oh, we just needed some branding for the picture book course. 'cause you'd done all the branding for Freak Flag.

We're about to do the picture book course and we needed it to

Tania: It was your course. Yeah. It needed to be from your hand,

Helen: Yeah. So wanted it to have the same feel And color palette is good shape, but have my drawing in it. 'cause I was picture book person,

Tania: And you love a dog, don't you? You love

Helen: He love dogs. I can't really remember how I first drew Salty.

I have forgotten. Anyway, he just appeared didn't he?

Tania: He's so sweet. He's got a little red patch on his eye.

Helen: He got a little red patch on his eye. He looks a little bit like Soie actually from Soie and Sweep, which I didn't think about at the time. I didn't think about it until I'd drawn him a few times.

And then I remember showing Alice our good ship lifeguard, she said, oh, he reminds me of Soie. And he does actually, he's a bit like Soie. He has a little band of friends on [00:02:00] the Good Ship version of Salty. He has three or four ducks follow him around, and he's friends with a couple of cats. So yeah, I drew him on Procreate because all of this would be digital material.

It would all be on screen. So I drew it all on procreate and he's really useful in the course, isn't he? He guides everybody through it. I was

Katie: I was gonna say he was, he is a really handy mascot. 'cause it makes it much easier to boss people around and be like, so it's not us Salty says,

Helen: Yeah. There was a time where people, when we first launched, where people were sharing aspects of the course online on Instagram, basically giving the course away.

And so we made a little image of Salty with a big book of instructions, giving out instructions about not sharing the briefs and stuff like that.

Tania: But he's really good because he creates the vibe of Picture Book World just is rather than okay, I'm a serious adult and I'm gonna talk to you about creating a magical children's world. Salty's already there. So you've got the full immersion of like from the get go. We are in pretend magical [00:03:00] world a little toy dog.

Helen: So

Tania: the mindset is not that dual mindset of being rational, but creative and playful and childlike.

Childlike from the get go.

Helen: I remember at one point showing you the drawings, Tanya, and you came back and loved all the characters, but you said, let's mess about with a color palette.

Look at this gorgeous print by Bernard Cheese. Or you sent maybe three or four gorgeous prints that had an amazing color palette and would link really nicely with the color palette that you'd already designed for Freak flag. Do you remember this?

Tania: I do remember the Bernard Cheese print.

Helen: Yeah. And I really loved that and ran with that.

Just use the eyedropper tool in procreate and just stole that palette. But then that meant that Salty's little friend, the first duck was Bernard. I thought we've got to name that Duck Bernard. Now after Bernard Cheese,

Tania: Oh,

Katie: That's why he's called Bernard.

Helen: called Bernard. He's called Bernard after Bernard Cheese. Yeah.

Tania: And that's Chloe cheese's dad.

Helen: cheese's [00:04:00] dad. I actually told Chloe Cheese, but she never replied. Yeah. Oh, by the way, I've got this little character called Bernard, and it's because I really love your dad's color. Palettes

Tania: prints are so beautiful. Oh, I

Helen: Oh God. They go, all our, Alice owns one of those, one of the beautiful ones looking from above onto a, the little harbor.

Looks like Holy Island, looking from above onto some little red boats.

Tania: I've got a few of those on Pinterest. I'd love to buy

Helen: Oh, me too.

Tania: anyway, back to Salty. So he was

Helen: oh, one time we printed out, I made like a little thumbnail print out to go in the picture book course.

Katie: a freebie you can get, actually if you go on the

Helen: the website,

Katie: a picture book template for laying out your story. But yeah, Helen was filling it in and you just, did you

Helen: I said, I think Katie said, oh, we could do with a little film of you using the thumbnail template. For the website, so everybody knows what you can use it for. So I set the camera up above pressed record, sat [00:05:00] down and thought, oh, all right. What am I gonna draw? Oh, I know, I'll just draw salty.

And so I made instantly there and then a little story of salty and thought, Ooh, this could be a book idea actually. And sent it immediately there and then to Walker saying, oh look, salty might be a character. And they sent smiley emojis. They didn't send me a contract.

Katie: It's the next

Helen: They were just like, yeah, could be.

Yeah, well done, Helen Pat on the

Katie: Pat.

Tania: Pat

Helen: And months went by, didn't really think about it again.

And then I thought it would be really good fun writing with Katie. 'cause we all write together on the good ship quite a lot. And we write. All sorts of emails and bits and bobs together and when we're writing course content, it's just so much easier with friends.

We just have such a nice time doing it.

Katie: And that's how we work in the good ship. We're all in one Google Doc, like sometimes all, sometimes four of us even.

And we're all tippy [00:06:00] tapping, adding bits

Tania: such a good system. It's so basic, isn't it? So low tech, like most of our good chip chat is WhatsApp. We do lots of big things via WhatsApp and then when we have to really work the course out, it's just sitting on a Google Doc together. Go pretending there's a ghost in there.

Yeah. Who's writing

Helen: can see everybody else type in their sentences while you're typing your own thing.

Tania: Did you use this system then

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. So you, we decided we'd have a go at writing some stories together. Oh, I know what happened first, Walker sent me some stories by somebody else and they said, we're gonna publish these in the same format as Bearen Bird by Jarvis.

And I already had some of the Bearen Bird books and really loved them and thought, oh, that's interesting. They want to do more in that area of that format. And I read the stories and I did like the stories, but I also, I just prefer things to come out my own head. And so I thought, okay, they're interested in that area.

I love Barren Bird. I think I could do [00:07:00] something like that, but it'd be way more fun if I asked Katie to do it with me. So I said to Walker, I'm not gonna do these. But how about. Katie and I do something with Salty and I thought they might be worried about using Salty 'cause he's already on our website, but they weren't bothered about that at all.

Tania: What's going back to the Jarvis book? What is that format called? 'cause it's not like your normal picture book. Is it

Katie: It's a bit older, isn't it?

Helen: a bit older than a picture book, but it's younger than a chapter book. It's like in between. It's a new format.

Tania: So it's not a chapter book?

Helen: It has four separate stories in it, but a chapter book would be a smaller scale, usually in black and white.

This is full color and it's slightly smaller than a picture book, but bigger than a chapter book.

Katie: yeah. It's like a skinny, tall, yeah. Full color thing. Yeah.

Tania: It's the perfect, so the illustrations are scattered throughout the text, but they're not big full page bleeds.

Helen: again, there's a double page spread. There's probably. [00:08:00] Eight in the whole book, double page spreads.

But the rest of vignettes and half pages,

Tania: It feels like quite an old fashioned format, doesn't it? Do you think it was like, it's been popular before, but discarded and now resurrected?

Helen: that's exactly it. I think I've got lots of vintage books in that format from the sixties and seventies, but they've not been done for a long time.

Tania: Nice because it goes back to drawing again, doesn't it?

Rather than full color images. That format of PitchBook with vignettes brings back, maybe spot color with a little bit of drawing rather than big full painted, whether they're digitally or analog painted double page spreads. It's a different way of working. Sorry, I brought your train of thought there.

Helen: Yeah, we got together, we, I said to Walker, do you like the sound of that? And they said yes. So we started writing, didn't we

Katie: Yeah. I got together at your kitchen table and just wrote stories, really collect things during the week and be like, watch this.

It's funny. Have you seen this person? Look at this. Oh my god, this [00:09:00] is a story. Yeah. But

Helen: I, this is an embarrassing fact, but ever since lockdown, I've done the jaw week workout every morning, which was for kids in lockdown.

Tania: Are you still doing it?

Helen: Yeah. Yeah.

Katie: Six years on.

Tania: I thought it was flimsier bread.

Helen: And there was I was watching that and I, and then I listen to the same ones a lot because I do it really regularly and he doesn't record new ones a lot.

And lots of them were done for kids. And he says things like okay, we'll have six Spider-Man Ns.

Katie: just

Helen: Do it at your own pace. Keep up.

Katie: faster.

Helen: There's mixed messages all the time of do it at your own pace. Go faster. And I got really obsessed with this. And I think the first story we wrote was about that. Was salty running an exercise class wasn't, it

Katie: That was a brilliant one. That one must be in book two. 'cause this first book

Helen: it's in the pile that we didn't use in the first book.

I think we will use it though. It was one of my favorites. [00:10:00] I think. We'll come back to

Katie: it. It's gotta be in there.

Helen: Yeah. And then you'd remember things that your little girl had said during the week and

Katie: Yeah. 'cause she would've been two when we were first writing. She's nearly four now. That's how long it all takes.

Helen: So it start it, we just mushed up memories, things our kids said, things we saw online, smooshed it all together. If it made us laugh, it was in.

Tania: But did you already know where Salty lived and his world and his friends? Did you have that all set and then impose the stories and the funnies into that? Or did you

Helen: No,

Katie: no, that's a good point because we had all the stories mashed together.

We wrote as many as we could, I think like 10 or 12 or

And then went to London to meet the Walker Books people and they had such good feedback. And that was basically it. Can you flesh out the characters and make sure, there's

Helen: they sent us a fantastic list of questions, really good list of questions on the train.

And we sat [00:11:00] on the train brainstorming, all of that. And those questions were so useful. And there were things like. Have they always lived together? Because in the end, it's Bernard, a duck salty dog and their friend kitty, based on Tanya. We'll come back to that.

Katie: She's a cat

Helen: And who's a cat? And they ask questions like, have they always lived together?

Where do they live? Have they always lived there?

Tania: Is it the getting to know your character?

Katie: the one. Yeah. Shall

Tania: I read it

Helen: to read the list out? Yeah,

Tania: it's really good. Where does your character live? Who lives with them? Who lives nearby? Who visits have they ever been in trouble, and how would they react? Where do they visit regularly?

The park, the beach, grandma's pottery class, the cafe, the theater, the city. Do they have a hobby? How do they speak? Who do they remind you of? Is there a celebrity character or a celebrity or a character in a novel that reminds you of your character? What are they scared of? How do they relax? What do they like or not like to eat?

When you know your character, your story writes yourself. Exactly.

Katie: And that's exactly true. [00:12:00] Yeah. What's, we really nailed all those things down. All we did was plunk the characters in different scenarios and we're like, oh obviously.

Kitty would stick her head out the window and be like, woo, it's raining. And then,

Helen: And Bernard would be like, oh, it's really gonna get shut the window.

Katie: window.

Helen: 'cause Bernard is a very nervy character. Like he's a doc, he's highly strong. He's NA bit nervy and has very particular interests. Like he absolutely loves his book about France, doesn't he?

Katie: And everything has to be done correctly. Yeah.

Tania: he likes, doesn't he like cashmere as well?

Helen: He has a cashmere blanket and a teddy bear, and he loves his knickknacks.

He's always sorting out his various knickknacks. And

Katie: Quite sensitive as well.

Helen: He's very sensitive. He could think, he gets overwhelmed very easily. And, he's also very polite and likes things done a certain way. So in my head, when I first started drawing him, I was thinking of William Hanson, the etiquette coach on Instagram.[00:13:00] 

And he has all sorts of etiquette lessons. If you want to pick a bag up off the floor, you must bend at Do you bend with your knees or you or your hips? I've forgotten your knees. I think you keep your arm and your body dead straight. You bend your knees until your hand touches

Tania: top

Katie: of the,

Helen: of the back

Katie: and

Helen: lift it up.

Katie: I always think about him when I eat peas 'cause he is you stab a few peas and eat it with your fork the right way around. You don't shovel the peas in. You're

Helen: allowed to shuffle them. You're not allowed to turn your fork the other way up and use it like a spoon. I know

Katie: pea shoveling days are over.

Helen: He has very particular way of eating a banana, but I've forgotten that now.

Tania: But 

Helen: he's really camp and he's so funny.

Tania: So

Helen: was one influence on Bernard. What was the other one?

Katie: The other one. I know Cameron will never listen to this. I'm safe but my husband is also a heavy influence on Bernard 'cause.

Yeah, Cameron likes things done correctly and he is very set in his ways. Traditional.

Helen: You sent us a, the group chat, a fantastic [00:14:00] picture of Edith with a massive photography book on her knee.

Katie: Yeah.

Tania: Yeah.

Helen: And Cameron this, I think this is where the book about France started because Cameron has a really good book collection, doesn't he? And he is very particular and he likes photography. And I can't really remember where the book about France started, but I feel like that came from Cameron or your little girl as well.

Katie: Yeah. And I had a, when I was packing for Bologna, maybe it was two years ago when we all went last time, 'cause we were all there two years ago, and a book about France, like a translation book, phrases Yeah.

For the Juma suitcase. So that was something in the back of my mind, like that book is funny. Old eighties translation book.

Helen: And then. For Kitty, we knew that Kitty because she's the female character.

We really didn't want her to be like the mom of the book. It'd be too easy and too boring if she was the one, I don't know, made their picnic, put a plaster on their knee if something happened. We really were resistant for [00:15:00] her being that character.

Katie: It also didn't want her to be like a little girl oh, I'm just a girl. Yeah, that rubbish.

Helen: Yeah. So we decided that Kitty would be Tanya,

Tania: because

Helen: Tanya tells us so many stories about her

Tania: Reckless.

Helen: Reckless, oh, how to put it Just like a reckless love for life that got her into all sorts of scrapes.

Tania: feel so honored.

There's a famous punk called Reckless Eric. I used to, I think Ian Jury and a rough trade records or something, so I can be reckless Tanya,

Helen: Yeah. And Tanya has her your punk days as well. And the time. No, I'm not gonna say it. I'm not sure if we're allowed to on a podcast.

Katie: I think I don't. Yeah.

Tania: it in the next salty book,

Katie: Yeah,

Tania: inappropriate behavior.

Helen: So yeah, kitty's based on Tanya and. Oh yes. So then we realized we'd really pa 'cause we felt like we knew salty [00:16:00] inside out. We'd worked out consciously who Kitty and Bernard were. But we hadn't gone back to Salty and had another look and really looked to make sure we knew who he was.

So then he read us quite dry in a bit. Characterless didn't he? Then

Katie: he there? Yeah. He faded into the background because in our minds were just like always levelheaded and he keeps everybody straight.

But that's all we thought.

Helen: And Walker gave us a little prod and said, what are his hobbies? What's his personality? And that was easy 'cause we knew them, but we just hadn't spoken about it.

We're like he's an artist, he's a chef. He's an all around creative. He's a sculpture. He makes music. He likes hoisting the flag. He's Johnny Hannah.

Katie: Yeah. And he's like the voice of reason, but not in a bossy, annoying way. If things are going wrong, he'll be like, ah, we'll just sort this out. Come on.

Helen: He's calm.

And. Nothing ruffles his feathers much, but

Tania: But he, they all live in this like multiple occupancy house, which is actually an upside down boat in Lindas Vann.

How did that come [00:17:00] about?

Helen: that's 'cause Lindas farm is near us, isn't it? And as a good ship, we'd been there, we had a photo session there. It's just part of our, it's just near where we live and stays out, isn't it?

Stays out. Yeah. When my mom and dad visit, we always go there. We look at the upturned boats,

Katie: It's tidal, so you can only get on and off the island when the tide is right. So like the sea covers the causeway, which is really cool.

Helen: I would love to live there.

Tania: Oh

Helen: I would love to

Tania: you haven't managed to get in one of those upturn boats.

Helen: it's still my ambition. They have these upturn boats where they've chopped a boat in half across the.

Cro, I don't know any boat terms,

Katie: Sadie whi sidey

Tania: sideways. That's it.

Katie: and

Helen: And put a door on the end, turned it upside down and they used them as sheds and they've got loads of fishing tackle outside. They are so inviting and they remind me of my grandma and granddad.

After the war, they had nowhere to live. And they squatted in a Nissan Hut. And a Nissan Hut is [00:18:00] very similar but much bigger. It's a corrugated iron tube basically that the army used to make barracks for the army. I'm wording this incredibly badly, but after the war when the, when people had nowhere to live, when all the soldiers came home and there was a lack of housing they put in the uk they put up loads of prefab buildings and people squatted wherever they could.

My grandma and granddad heard that on a local airfield. That day people were taking all their stuff, grabbing a Nissan Hut and squatting in them. So they got all their stuff together and walked out the sort of six miles out of Darlington, found a Nissan Hut and lived in it for a few years. They had some children in there.

Tania: Tell 'em what the Nissan Hut is like. 'cause it's a bit like the boat, isn't it? It's a cross section semicircle.

Helen: Yeah,

Tania: Because they've just bend over a corrugated iron. Yeah. To make a kind of arc shape

Katie: must've been a freezing,

Tania: front.

Helen: Must have been freezing. But I know that my granddad put [00:19:00] a stove in it, and I know that 'cause one of the family tales is that when my grandma's mum came to visit, he didn't like her.

So he climbed up on the roof of the Nissan Hook with a brick that he wrapped in, so a cardigan or something, and dropped it down into the stove. And the so went everywhere and covered her in Sutton. She was really angry.

Katie: It's

Tania: a long-winded way to get rid of someone, isn't it? But he must, he's really committed

Helen: not a man who expressed himself with words ever.

Tania: Sabo sabotage was the way he was

Helen: silently angry.

Katie: Yeah.

Helen: We tried to get that in the, one of the stories, but we just couldn't,

Katie: Yeah. That

Helen: couldn't get it to work,

Katie: Yeah. We tried so hard. That was one where we kept coming back to it every week and we were like maybe change this bit and it'll be like, it just, it was a bit

Helen: It was strangely violent.

Katie: Yeah.

Helen: think like that story is always told in my family, like this really funny thing that happened.

But when you think about it,

Katie: not very nice. It's not

Helen: very nice. It's not very nice, is it? I reckon that's why we couldn't get to work because what if was the fire [00:20:00] lit and did like

Katie: there was food

Helen: ash come out? And so I reckon I'd not really thought about it until recently,

Tania: So you'd got,

Helen: that was quite a violent action and that's why we couldn't get it to work in the story.

Tania: It's 'cause family is chuckle about really violent things and to normalize it, don't they? So he's nevermind. That's just one of our ancestor histories.

Helen: He was such a repressed and angry man that he couldn't say to her that he needed her to go home. So he did this terrible thing and we'll all just laugh about

Katie: Yeah. Always grand. Yeah.

Helen: We

Katie: Yeah. 'cause we were trying to imagine Bernard polishing the silver and stuff afterwards, but it all just felt a bit sad

Helen: it just felt a bit sad.

It just wouldn't work, would it?

Tania: Bernard would be like, that is so screwed up. Yeah. No, you wouldn't speak like that would it?

So you got the house and the

Helen: place. And

Tania: and the flatmates and 

Helen: we knew that they were gonna have flags just because when I was making sketches I just kept drawing flags all the time. Going back to my love of making flags. I think it's

Katie: flag

Helen: Yeah.

Katie: as well.

Tania: It's always windy on Linda's farm, isn't it?

Helen: always windy and

Tania: flags and [00:21:00] kites.

Helen: When you're down there you can hear all the rigging in the boats like rattling and making nice noise and I felt like flags would have that nice noise of ropes and stuff.

Tania: Was it easier to write them because you'd got all this kind of visceral stuff. Visceral memories of noises like that?

Yeah. And the feelings of the place and the windiness. Yeah. Then that fed the stories because they would always impact on, 'cause there's a good story about flying a kite, isn't there? I love that story.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. We would say we, we wrote a couple of stories and then tried to think of titles and we thought of a title for one of them, which was something like. It was a windy day on the island, and once we had that title, we then said maybe every should start story should start with it was a day on the island. So then we brainstormed what day is it? It was a windy day, A foggy day, a bathtime day, a tidying up type day. Let's get fit kind of [00:22:00] day.

Can't remember. Let soup day.

Katie: Yeah. But it was good to have that like structure around it because it's we know that is how the story starts.

I think

Helen: one in the archive we haven't used yet about porridge, and it was a porridge day on the island or something.

Tania: It's so homely. It feels really homely when you read through them.

Helen: So the titles helped us, didn't they? Yeah. We'd think of a good title and then try and work backwards.

Tania: Did you ever start with the pictures? Because I'm looking at the sketchbook. Yeah. Here, there's so many lovely pictures of them in the boat at night being all cozy and in the bunk beds. And did your visuals come

Helen: they did sometimes, didn't they?

Katie: Yeah. You would sometimes have a pale of sketches that you'd done

Helen: during the week. I would then start drawing again, and then Katie would come back and we'd look at the drawings and they'd trigger new ideas. So it was like back and forth.

Tania: Yeah.

Helen: But also I was ready to just dismiss any drawing at a whim because I didn't, so many didn't matter if it became a story or not.

Do you know what I mean? I [00:23:00] didn't wanna say, I drew this, Katie you

Tania: right around it.

Helen: do this.

Katie: I feel like it was the same about the stories that even though we'd made up the stories, none of them were like essential.

No. So if a story wasn't quite working, like the city chimney one, which is okay, leave it in the pile. Move on. We've got 12 more.

It's a good approach.

Tania: But you wrote it quite quickly, didn't you? How long do you think it took from,

Katie: 10

Helen: we met up about 10 times. Yeah. 10 minutes for a minute. No, I think we got together at my table maybe 10 times for a couple of hours and came out with 10 stories.

Katie: Yeah.

Tania: That's amazing. 10 stories. So one procession, you had a suc high success rate.

Helen: I'm not saying they were all brilliant. Were they

Katie: They were perfect.

Tania: were perfect. And what did the editors think? Was the editing process really important?

Katie: was amazing. 'cause we got the stories to a point where we're like, yeah they're cool like, but they're still making us laugh and they're still making us feel nice feelings. We'll send it off. And then when [00:24:00] Walker sent them back after editing, it was just like, I don't even know what they did.

It just made it shiny. And zing

Helen: sprinkle magic on it, don't they?

Tania: Yeah.

Katie: I was like, oh, it's really funny now.

Helen: Yeah. They were just. Every now and again say, can you just exaggerate this bit?

Katie: Yeah. They're like, tighten bits up and exaggerate bits and just, yeah,

Tania: yeah.

Helen: They didn't do a lot. I really like that phrase that my other editor, Alison Green from Scholastic, she uses the phrase about me, I'm the butter, and she's patting me into shape. And that's exactly what Walker did, isn't it?

Katie: It's a bit like

Helen: gently pat.

Katie: Yeah. You know when you take a photo and you edit it and you just change the contrast a bit and up the, you just make it,

Tania: oh,

Katie: felt a bit like that made the white proper white collar. And then, yeah,

Tania: I remember when you bought it back and you laid it all on the kitchen table and did the run through. I was just roaring with laughter. It was so funny.

Helen: I love it when Katie reads them out.

It's so good. Katie's voice, reading them out is just so delightful

Tania: [00:25:00] because Katie seems actually surprised at what's about to happen. Like she didn't know any of it.

Helen: forgotten what

Katie: I probably have, yeah, the joys of no memory.

Tania: So it, and it's going to belong. It's ready now, isn't it? It is booked. Is it? It's a book.

Helen: It's ready. They come out in May.

Katie: Yeah, I think it's the 7th of May. Let me see. But if you do a pre-order, you get a free picture book work masterclass. Makes it more exciting.

Tania: I'm looking at the masterclass now. Master

Helen: Masterclass. Masterclass. Masterclass. Here we go.

So

Tania: It. So brilliant. There's so many amazing pictures and I shouldn't say this 'cause you'd think I'm bigging you up, but I just love all the sketchbook initial drawings and the first pictures of Salty when he was a mere brand within good ship.

And then he bust outta the course to become a fully fledged dog of,

Helen: felt like

Tania: with his own

Helen: be on paper.

So all of the stuff I did for good shape was digital, but because you've got a light behind that, it works really well. But [00:26:00] I did another book using procreate. I did a book using procreate and when I saw the procreate drawings on paper, they didn't give me the same gorgeous feeling 'cause you don't have the light behind it.

I know loads of people do amazing books on procreate, but for me, I didn't feel like it zinged enough. So for the book, I decided to go back to paper. So he does look a bit different, doesn't he?

Tania: he? There's something really sweetly old fashioned about the traditional analog illustrations and the format that it's in.

There's a kind of nostalgia to it isn't there? But with lots of the humor in it is just brilliant. The characters are so lovely. But I love the masterclass of all the different pages and process that the book went through.

Katie: You see the cover? How many

Helen: Oh, the

Tania: Cover's a big deal,

Helen: we did so many versions.

It's really weird. Sometimes in picture books, I'll draw a, I'll have an idea for a book and draw the cover first, a sketch of the cover and then go, get the [00:27:00] contract, do the book, everything. And then we get, I finished all of the insides and we'll say, what will the cover be like? And I'll say, do you remember the first drawing I ever did?

And they say, that's it. Do that. That happens a lot. But with Salty it was a struggle. I don't really know why.

Katie: It took

Helen: a lot. I feel like when started off with something very simple, went right round the houses, getting very complicated, really complicated. Then realizing it was too complicated. And going back to the beginning, I'm so happy with it now.

It's brilliant. It was a long journey to get there.

Katie: there. Yeah. I remember at Bologna last year you were trying to hide the temporary cover from anyone.

Helen: Yeah. They take a little oh, sorry, my beep is going off. 'cause of my car park. I'll have to go and move the car. But yeah, at Bologna they make a little rough version of your book to sell co auditions with and just build up some excitement.

We hadn't got there with a cover yet, and every time they were picking up to show somebody, I was quietly like, oh, dying inside. No, [00:28:00] it's not ready. But yeah, it's brilliant now. I love it. Love

Tania: So you can pre-order

Katie: the book, can't you?

Tania: the book, can't

Helen: you can pre-order it. Pre-order it now. And that does us a huge favor, doesn't it?

'cause gives books, sellers that confidence to order a pile of them rather than one spy out on a shelf where it just disappears.

Katie: Yeah. And if you've already pre-ordered it, thank you very much. And you, but yeah, the, so the masterclass thing, , I'll put the link in the show notes, but basically you just go on there once you've pre-ordered, put your details in and then you get the video masterclass immediately.

Tania: It's really nice as well. You'll be writing your own book by the end of that.

Katie: Yeah,

Helen: we mind, do you mind that we put you in it, Tanya?

Tania: No, I love being in it. I didn't have to do any work. I just appeared in it. No, I love being part of it.

Helen: Oh, brilliant.

Katie: Oh, see it Bologna if you're there. Yeah.

Helen: Yeah,

Katie: in the

Helen: good.

Tania: So I see you next week.

Katie: Bye.

Tania: Bye.

[00:29:00]