an EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with the WORLD-RENOWNED BUBBLE BLOWING CHAMPION . . . PICKLES!

This post is brought to you by Ben Clanton and THE HUNGRY BEAR CORPORATION.

When I do school visits I usually talk a bit about story ingredients with the kids. There are two in particular that I find to be key when making stories: characters and questions. With those two ingredients you've got all you need to discover the rest (conflict, setting, resolution . . . ). When presenting I get some help from the audience to create a character (often we create some sort of miximal). I then ask for a loquacious volunteer to come up front and BECOME that character. I do a sort of talk show role-playing where I interview the character. In one such interview the character turned out to be 2,000 years old, the inventor of video games, and allergic to sneezes. In another interview my guest turned out to have a certain meal that it loved beyond all others . . . kids and authors. One of my favorite interviews was one in which the character was an alien from another planet who did not know any Earth languages so I had to get another volunteer to be an interpreter. 

This exercise of interviewing a character is a great one not only for school visits but also coming up with stories in the first place or working out sticky story bits. Often I find myself having conversations with my characters when out for a walk or when fixing dinner, but sometimes I make the process more formal and write up questions and answers. I end up knowing a lot about my characters this way and while most of the details won't end up in the book I find that the voice of my characters are better defined when I do a Q&A and the emotional/character arc becomes deeper and more believable. BUT ENOUGH of me prattling on! We've got a special guest on the blog today.

BEN (B): Pickles! Thanks for being willing to answer some questions. Can you start out by sharing a bit about yourself?

PICKLES (P): . . . .

B: Pickles? You there?

P: Oh! Um, yes, HI!! Sorry, I was distracted. My friend Chip just sent me this video of a cat facing down an alligator. That is one brave kitty! Here . . . I'll send it to you. One sec!

B: Thanks, Pickles . . . I think I saw that one. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

P: Do you think a cat could face down a T-REX? I've heard that alligators are pretty much living dinosaurs. OH, WOW!!! YOU'VE GOT TO SEE THIS VID!

B: Huh?

P: This one is full of a bunch of otters this time facing down an alligator. THEY'RE SO CUTE!!! 

B: Hey, Pickles, I know that otters are super cute and all but would you mind focusing a little?

P: Huh? What did you say? I didn't catch that . . . my brother Eucalyptus was shouting something at me. Do you like pink?

B: Sure! Who doesn't? Now can you tell us a bit about yourself?

P: Chip doesn't like pink. Chip says purple is better. I like them both. I also like raspberries. And peanuts. Oh, and that sound when a bubble pops.

B: Speaking of bubbles . . . want to tell us how you became the bubble blowing champion of the world?

P: I once had a pet bubble-rock. But it died. Or at least I think it did. It stopped floating and sunk. Maybe it is just sleeping. Huh! Oh, got to go! Good talking with you Bugle! Bye!

B: Okay . . . I guess this interview is at an end. 

And so is this post! Thanks for tuning in! I wish you more success getting answers out of your characters than I had getting any from Pickles. :)

- Ben Clanton

Literary Miximals with Elizabeth Rose Stanton

I had so much fun with fellow Whatsit, Ben Clanton's, post about "Miximals" from last week that it got me thinking about some of the "miximals" that already exist in children's literature.
Here are some that spring to mind:

Growing up, I was fascinated by Hugh Lofting's pushmi-pullyu—kind of a gazelle, bi-horned unicorn cross:

from The Story of Dr Dolittle (1920)

Lewis Carroll's fantastic nonsense creatures came to life in John Tenniel's exquisitely detailed drawings:

The gryphon, which looks to be a lion, raptor, not-sure-what-else kind of critter; and the mock turtle— a wonderful blend of cow and turtle!

from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

 . . . and the ultimate composite Alice creature, the jabberwocky:

from Through the Looking glass, and what Alice Found There (1871)

On a more modern, and lighter note, here are a few jumbled-up characters from Dr. Seuss, complete with a variety of miximal-type names:

Joats

  from If I ran the Zoo (1950)

Finally, I think Maurice Sendak's Wild Things are some of the best "miximals" going!

 from Where the Wild Things Are (1963)

 What are your favorite miximals from children's literature?

-ERS

Miximals with Ben Clanton

In the last post I did for the whatsit blog (back in November!) I talked about different ways of keeping final art loose and free. My eighth tip for loosening up was about warm-ups. Today I thought I'd share one of my favorite warm-up games. It isn't all that complex, but it tends to be a favorite among illustrators for good reason. I've heard this game called many things, but the one I like best is 'miximals.'

When I play this game at school presentations and book readings I ask the audience for three different animal names. If you do play this game with kids it can be fun to pretend to mishear the suggestion or misremember it. For example, if a kid suggests a 'dog' then I might say 'Emu?! Great idea!' . . . the kids love to shout back what the actual suggestion was. BUT seeing as I do not have an audience in my studio tonight I decided to simply search online for a 'random animal generator' which turned out great. An alternative is to rip up a bunch of paper scraps and write creature names on the different scraps, put them in a bucket, and draw out a few from the bucket. Once you have three animal names or two or ten then the next step is to simply draw a picture of all those creatures mashed together. I find this never fails to get my creative juices flowing. It is both fun and challenging. You can also take it a step further and determine the name for the creature by mixing the names of the creatures.

There is a writing game I enjoy playing sometimes that is similar to maiximals in which I write a bunch of random words down, select a few, and then have to use all those words in either a sentence or a short story. The more words the bigger the challenge and the more interesting the result!

I'd love to see what sort of miximals you come up with!