Yucky Adventures
Our hero Yucky, (on the left), is joined by his ‘beasties’After more than a year in the making (which is pretty quick, I’m told, in the digital book publishing world), the Yucky Adventure series has been launched into the world!
The Yuckies, horrid, dirty creatures that live in rubbish piles and fart and burp a lot, and get up to all sorts of mischief, nevertheless have an environmental tale to tell.
It gave me great pleasure to bring Bridget Cull’s words into technicolour – or rather, Windsor & Newton – life. One of the most fun aspects of illustrating these little beasties was creating their scaly, warty skin, using salt dropped into puddles of watercolour. Salt crystals have a magical effect on the paint, soaking up the liquid and concentrating the pigment to form misshapen lumps and bumps. It was a perfect technique to capture the crusty Yuckies. As for creating the animation out of traditional watercolour illustrations – well, that’s a tale for another time.
There are five stories in the series, and the first two are out now as apps (for iPad) with iPhone versions coming soon. Visit the iTunes App Store and search ‘The Yuckies’. And check out our video on YouTube now – I absolutely adore the cheeky music!
And PS, they might be gross and live in rubbish dumps, but they’re totally tech-savvy – find them on Facebook too.
This cheeky Yucky resides amongst the garbage pile, and loves his morning mud pie
One of my favourite scenes from Book 1: the Yuckies’ late night revels in the local park raises all sorts of dust and rumpus!
There is a way to stop them – can YOU figure out how?
