Rob Ryan

The Invisible Kingdom: Part 2 in progress

Since the beginning of this year Rob has been working hard on the second book (title to be confirmed!) in his trilogy following The Invisible Kingdom.

Rob draws the pictures page by page; at the moment he is working on a spread a day which is a lot of drawing! He is approaching this book slightly differently by using the visual story to then write the words around unlike the Invisible Kingdom where Rob worked on both the writing and drawing side by side.  

Once Rob has finished drawing each page it is scanned by Libby, Rob’s design assistant, she works on the page by filling Rob’s lines to make them into silhouettes. At this stage the page is either left black and white or some initial colour is added before it is pinned up on Rob’s wall. It is great to watch it come together and see the story develop in front of our eyes! Once all sixty pages have been drawn Rob and Libby will work into the pictures by colouring further.

Rob will be spending most of May writing, he needs a quiet place where he can concentrate fully so he plans to write quite a bit from home. Once the first draft is written Rob will work on it with his Editor Jocasta, after several drafts and once Rob is happy with the story it will be handed over to our Publishing Designer Rich, who will design the look of the text and fit it to the pages – this is when it starts to look like a actual book!

This book is due to be published in October and we’ll keep you updated with the final stages!

Louise Renforth
Studio Assistant