Jonny
Duddle

New covers

Jonny Duddle is best known for his award-winning picture books, including The Pirate Cruncher and The Pirates Next Door (winner of the Waterstones Children’s Prize and shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize). He has a background in the computer games industry and is highly skilled at character development. His work has appeared in Aardman films and Terry Pratchett novels.

Bloomsbury, Rowling’s publisher, and its design director Val Brathwaite, had decided it was time to give the series a makeover, hoping new artwork would make the books appeal to children who had never read them before. They approached Duddle because Rowling had seen a character he had created for a Pirates of the Caribbean game a decade earlier. He was one of four illustrators approached to do a test cover. “Initially I was reluctant to do it,” he says, “because I knew how busy I was going to be.”

But Bloomsbury picked Duddle’s cover – an inky, mysterious scene in which Harry, Ron and Hermione are shown the way across Hogwarts’ lake by Hagrid – because he was the only illustrator of the four they tried out to have Harry, bright-eyed and androgynous, face the reader.

Back in the autumn of 2013, I was asked by Bloomsbury to create a test cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. A handful of artists were briefed to illustrate the moment when Harry, Ron and Hermione first see Hogwarts across the lake.

It was a bit of a shock. I painted the first cover as a ‘test’ piece last year, but was concerned that I couldn’t give it the time I would’ve liked due to other commitments. So when I heard that J.K. Rowling and the team at Bloomsbury wanted me to paint the rest of the series, I was gobsmacked. And then I worried that I just wasn’t qualified for the job, having only read the first book years ago. I felt like an impostor, amongst millions of Harry Potter fans. A proper Muggle. But then I realised that this gives me a fresh perspective, and I’m hugely excited to work my way through the wonderful books, reading each one as I produce artwork brimming with fantastic creatures and unforgettable characters.

I was gobsmacked. And then I worried that I just wasn’t qualified for the job, having only read the first book years ago. I felt like an impostor, amongst millions of Harry Potter fans. Then I realised that this gives me a fresh perspective.

I’m hugely excited to work my way through the wonderful books. I couldn’t have asked for more enjoyable subject matter.

It’s exciting, daunting and I feel the weight of responsibility, and I’m just hoping that my illustrations faithfully reflect the characters and world created by JK Rowling.

When I was offered the job, I was thrilled and terrified in equal measure. It was an incredibly exciting opportunity, tempered just a little by the fact that I’d never read a Harry Potter book, and had only seen the first film on its original cinematic release.

I realised that I had an awful lot of reading to do. More than a million words, in fact. Another worry was that the artwork I’d been producing for several years was very stylised and aimed at a much younger age group.

Bloomsbury wanted the new covers to attract a new generation of children, and the brief called for bright colours, action and an array of creatures, and would be more realistic than I’d been on any work for a long time.

My aim was to produce a set of covers that worked well together, with contrasting colours, compositions and themes, with just a little stylisation.

I’ve been briefed on all of the jackets, and in most cases I’ve been given a couple of options. I haven’t actually read all of the books, so I can only be excited by what I’ve read, or the brief for each cover. I’m working on the cover for The Prisoner of Azkaban at the moment, and I’m having a lot of fun drawing a key element of that book. I love drawing characters, creatures and animals, so every cover gives me scope for something new and exciting.

Duddle only sketches with coloured pencils on paper when he’s on the go – he first drew Hagrid on a train. He mostly works digitally, painting with a stylus on a screen into Photoshop and Corel Painter and developing layers within the image that subtly change the finished result. It’s a process he finds far more flexible than the ink and watercolour he used to work with.

Duddle enlisted the help of his neighbors’ son, a real Potter addict, and took it “one book at a time,” he says. 

I make numerous sketches of the main elements of the cover and then cobble them all together digitally, until I have a cover rough I feel happy to send to Bloomsbury and J.K. Rowling. I hear back very quickly with comments on my rough, which I then tweak or redraw until everyone’s happy for me to progress. Then I ‘paint’ each cover digitally.

I’m taking one book at a time. I read the cover brief, and then I read the story, making notes and occasional sketches. I collect references, from my library of non-fiction books, search online and take my own photographs. I’ve recruited my neighbours’ son, who is suitably Potter-esque, although he annoyingly had his slightly wild hair cut for the new school term. I make numerous sketches of the main elements of the cover and then cobble them all together digitally, until I have a cover rough I feel happy to send to Bloomsbury and J.K. Rowling. I hear back very quickly with comments on my rough, which I then tweak or redraw until everyone’s happy for me to progress. Then I ‘paint’ each cover digitally.

Before now I had  only read the first one – working  as a freelancer I have been so  busy and it usually involves lots  of late nights

I do read a lot with my daughters but they tend to be children’s  books, although my  eight-year-old is now getting old  enough to start reading Harry  Potter.

I may wait until September  when mine are out so she can read the ones with my cover!

I have watched two  of the films but I am trying not to  watch any more as I don’t want  them to influence my designs.

It is a really exciting project for me – books don’t come much  bigger than Harry Potter but it is  also quite daunting.

I have to get it right as there  are so many fans and each of  them have their own ideas of  what the characters and  creatures look like.

I am now very much a Harry Potter fan. I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone a few years ago, and I bought a boxed set with the intention of reading all of the books. But I’ve had a very busy few years with my career as an illustrator and writer and, along with a young family and late nights in my studio, I just don’t read as much as I would like, and nowhere near as much as I used to. And as a country bumpkin with no cinemas nearby, I’d never seen the Harry Potter films. I saw the first one at the cinema, after I read the book, but that’s it. In some ways that probably makes me unusual, and I think it’s a good place from which to approach the world of Hogwarts and Harry Potter, without any preconceptions. I’m reading each book in turn and immediately developing the cover, taking the images that are conjured up in my head by J.K. Rowling’s magical words.

I love Hagrid. I like his bumbling, well-meaning nature and how things often go wrong because of something he’s said or done or his general clumsiness, in spite of his best intentions. In that way he reminds me of myself. When I was briefed on the first cover, he was the first character I tried to draw. I also like Arthur Weasley because he likes tinkering with old cars (like my dad used to), and I like his approach to his job at the Ministry, as a slightly naughty and mild-mannered rebel. 

As a very young child it was Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Then I was obsessed with Roald Dahl, and I’m still in love with his books, having just finished reading all of them with my eight-year-old daughter. As I got older I became a bit of a fantasy nut. I started high school in 1981, and was a huge fan of the new ‘fighting fantasy’ series, beginning with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I remember mapping out the book on a long roll of printer paper my dad brought home from work, and painstakingly copying each illustration from the book on to the map in the appropriate location. I read The Hobbit in my last year at primary school, which is still one of my favourite books, and then The Lord of the Rings in my first year (or two?) at secondary school. I felt a connection with J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, because the environments of Middle Earth seemed to echo the environments in which I grew up and explored on my bike, amongst the hills that form the border between England and Wales, with the rolling valleys beneath and the dark, foreboding peaks of Snowdonia visible in the distance.

I’m an avid collector of books, and now have hundreds weighing down the sagging floorboards of my studio. Going back to my favourite book when I was little, I’m still inspired by the late Maurice Sendak, and was blown away by the documentary Tell Them Anything You Want, in which he talked about his life and inspirations. The first illustrator I remember being directly inspired by was Brian Froud, after watching a piece on television whilst on holiday in the Lake District when I was ten years old, about his development process on The Dark Crystal. As a student I obsessed over the Golden Age illustrators, in particular Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and W. Heath Robinson. I also enjoy independent comics and I loved Jamie Hewlett’s work on Tank Girl, and everything he’s done with Gorillaz in recent years. Modern favourites are diverse, from children’s book illustrators like Shaun Tan and Chris Riddell, lowbrow painter Glenn Barr and a host of movie concept artists (and illustrators) such as Peter De Seve, Nico Marlet and Carter Goodrich.

And so Duddle’s studio began to accommodate Stephen Fry-narrated audiobooks, a Slytherin cloak (“it’s cheaper than any of the others”) and a chocolate frog box among the pirate drawings and animation books that weigh down the “wobbliest, creakiest floor in the house”.

I think I have a number of ‘styles’. The illustrations I’m creating for Harry Potter are very different to the artwork in my picture books, which are probably what I’m best known for. Before becoming an illustrator, I worked for eight years as a concept artist in computer games, and I recently spent almost four years working with Aardman, as one of the character designers on their stop-motion movie The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! As a concept artist you have to be thick-skinned, as drawings are tossed aside with barely a glance from your art director and open-minded with style and subject matter. I worked on games that were cartoony, realistic and sometimes almost abstract, producing thousands of drawings in pencil and on computer whilst developing a digital toolset that’s been carried over into my illustration work. On computer I work in a very similar way to my techniques with real paint, progressing from a sketch to a finished drawing, laying an under-painting and then working on a final layer of colour. I love the flexibility that digital artwork gives me to change the direction of a painting and move elements around at any stage.

The common threads, however stylised or realistic, are probably my desire to emphasise character, drop in some vivid colours and a tendency to cram as much as I can into an illustration. These work well in my picture books, but often have to be tempered a little with book jackets, particularly for older readers. 

Creating an illustration for a book cover is very different. It involves reading some else’s story and trying to understand their vision, so in many ways that can be more difficult. And with Harry Potter, the scenes I’m illustrating have been illustrated before, dissected, discussed and analysed by millions of fans, and made into incredibly successful movies. I’ve not been party to everything that has come before, so I’m creating my interpretation of J.K. Rowling’s words. Hopefully, my illustrations will find new fans, readers will enjoy them and be attracted to them, and I will bring something new to the Harry Potter universe.

My daily routine is constructed around my two young children. My wife leaves for work at 7.30am, so first thing it’s toast, porridge and packed lunches, then school uniform and sparkly-teeth inspection, followed by the school run, before I can get into my studio. By ‘school run’, I mean ‘running to school’, because my eldest daughter wants to be at the front of the line in the playground and I have to chase after her to give her a kiss on the cheek. We live in a very small village in North Wales, so the school is only fifty yards away and with my studio window open I can hear the children playing outside. I try and take a walk down the lane at lunchtime, which is often the perfect time for inspiration and mulling over the day’s artistic problems. I work until I have to pick up the girls, which can be anytime between 3.00 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. Then I’m usually back at the drawing board once I’ve read some stories and the children are fast asleep in bed.