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A profile on Kev Howlett.

July 12, 2013

Kev Howlett is the creative artist behind all of Busybird Publishing’s projects. The covers of every issue of [untitled], Journey: Experiences with Breast Cancer, and the illustrator behind Who is a Cheeky Monkey? are all examples of his work. He also photographs and illustrates for Busybird clients, and his artwork will be seen in two children’s book (The Magnificent Climbing Tree by Trish Jowett and also a children’s travel series), which will be published later in the year.

Art’s something that has grown within Kev since he was a teenager. His work so impressed the art teacher at high school that she organised an interview without his knowing to Preston (Arts) College. From there, he studied Finished Arts, where he learned (amongst other things) about airbrushing, calligraphy, and ink – tools that began to arm him for a life of creating. Photography followed when one of Kev’s projects – a book full of pictures he’d taken – impressed his Finished Arts teacher so much he suggested Kev swap to photography. Upon seeing his work, the photography teacher agreed. It’s been a constant evolution, a journey through various industries – such as commercial photography – and then into Busybird Design, which eventually grew into Busybird Publishing.

‘Like most artists, you need a creative outlet,’ he says. ‘Art keeps me sane.’

He finds nothing better than being given the challenge of trying to realise somebody else’s vision. As a commercial photographer, he was given products to shoot and the mandate to make them compelling. Now, he’s assigned the brief behind the cover of each new Busybird endeavour. Or authors give him their stories, expecting him to interpret what’s in their heads and make it come alive on the page. Often, they won’t know exactly themselves, the understanding of their own intentions amorphous, if not unwieldy. So it’s up to him to find a medium. It’s a challenge he loves.

He approaches illustration similar to photography, searching for ways to frame shots, coming in from angles you wouldn’t expect – anything in an attempt to capture the life behind a shot, so that you might imagine beyond that frame you’re seeing that the images may come to life and bound away at any moment. He wants people to look at his artwork and not only marvel, but wonder, How did you find that out of that?

‘To me a good picture is trying to get something captured,’ he says, ‘to look at it in a way you normally wouldn’t look at it.’

Perhaps it’s a modality best contrasted – and by that virtue defined – by the insecurities he feels as an artist, such as missing a moment when you know you had it, or seeing a moment when you don’t have the right equipment to capture what you see exactly in your head. Or – as far as photography goes – even when what you see in your head is too hard to replicate.

‘Illustration’s different because you can bend the rules,’ he says. ‘There’s no right or wrong. You can draw an amazing stick figure. You can go on YouTube and see amazing flash videos of stick figures doing things. It’s more the story of what you’re trying to get across.’

The satisfaction in art comes not only out of realising what he sees in his mind’s eye – and being happy with his own work – but also pleasing a consumer or client, seeing them glow.

‘It’s satisfying when a client agrees with your vision, your interpretation, or what they’re trying to do,’ he says.

Whilst he’s held other jobs, he’s always found time to go off and do something creative, finding that no matter how tough the day, a couple of hours of creativity – whether it’s drawing, taking photographs, or playing guitar (another hobby) – is relaxing and can make the rest of the day go away.

His advice to budding artists is simple. ‘Don’t take it too seriously,’ he says. ‘Treat it like a hobby. Once something becomes a job, it can become stressful. If you treat it like a hobby, it’ll always be something you can enjoy.’

Story Forms.

July 4, 2013

So, you want to tell a story; you have a brilliant idea that is simply bursting to get out, and you won’t be able to get any rest until you’ve told it. Nevertheless, a decision must first be made: how do you tell it?

Prose seems like the natural choice. It’s the most common form of writing, and can often be mistaken for the most appropriate method of telling a story. However, not only is there a great variety of other writing forms (poetry, script, etc.), there is also a huge range of other art forms at your disposal. Paintings, conceptual art, music, they all tell a story in a distinctly individual way.

It’s easy to prove how effective music can be in telling a story – take any horror film and watch it both with and without sound. If it’s a good score (and sometimes even if it isn’t) you will feel noticeably more scared when the sound is included. Even if the audience cannot guess what the actual story is, music is good at expressing the ‘emotional truth.’ Soulström, a piece by Jodie Blackshaw, told the story of the composer’s personal struggle with the aftermath of her father’s death. Although it would be impossible to guess the details, the ‘emotional truth’ – the confusion and grief of the composer – was clearly conveyed.

Art is similarly effective in expressing a sentiment or telling a story. Conceptual art, by its very nature, is driven by a concept or desire. It uses a large degree of symbolism to tell its story; Ai Weiwei’s installation Sunflower Seeds told the story of China’s static culture and downtrodden people through the eight-million handcrafted sunflower seeds. Occasionally easier to understand, physical art (paintings, drawings, sculptures, etc.) uses more technical aspects to share its story. The literal image conveys a story that is either complemented or contrasted by how the artist has crafted it; an image can be equally joyous or ominous depending on the choice of colour and line.

You don’t have to limit yourself to one form, though; there has been plenty of success in combining two art forms to enhance the story. Books can be released with soundtracks that match the mood of the chapters. Songs, combining words and music – often forgotten as a storytelling method – work in the same way, the music creating a mood which complements the lyrics. A good example is The Decemberists’ Mariner’s Revenge Song. Graphic novels and memoirs, such as David Small’s Stitches or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, use image and text to clearly convey their story. Shorter and generally humorous comics and webcomics (e.g. Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand) are another popular form combining image and text. Games – which use image, audio, and text – are becoming increasingly story-based, while still allowing the user to fully interact with the story.

When telling a story, think about the best way to tell it and the best form to use. Don’t assume that the only way to express it is through lengthy prose. Some of the most engaging stories can be told through the simplest or most abstract of forms, with or without text.

– Ariel Skippen

Punctuation: Part 1.

June 27, 2013

I love punctuation.

There’s obvious punctuation (and punctuating) you learn in primary school: e.g. full stops, commas, exclamation marks, question marks, the apostrophe, and quotation marks. Bizarrely, in primary school they teach you to use “double quotes” instead of ‘single quotes’, which are the Australian style. (Somebody needs to get on top of that – it’s seriously a Federal issue.)

This primary school (read ‘primary’) toolkit of punctuation offers you more than enough tricks to punctuate any piece of writing, whether it’s a report, a short story, a novella, or whatever the case might be. You can pack it up, keep it in some remote nook of your mind, and carry it with you wherever you go, ready to be drawn on at a moment’s notice. If you never learned another bit of punctuation, you’d be okay – well, mostly.

As I grew older and read voraciously, I encountered other forms of punctuation, which seemed … amazing. Like the ellipsis. Always arriving, interjecting, just as a thought … trailed … away, or even off into …

Some authors were adventurers. They didn’t just use ellipses, they communicated a tone to be attached to it. This was an astonishing, a marriage of two forms of punctuation to create a child. Could it really be …? It was …! This, as far as I was concerned, was like musical notes, a way to imbue tone in narrative that was much more transcendental than words.

Another favourite was the dash. It’d sit there – and then something would be appended to it. Other times, it would – to my delight – contain an appositive bit of information which, when removed, let the sentence run as if uninterrupted. There was beauty in that. Grace. Even elegance. Use the wrong punctuation here, and the sentence would be indecipherable.

For a time there (around the time I was trying to learn coding in computers), I treated the dash like a coding instruction, which means if it was turned on, it had to be turned off. As long as you did that, your sentence was fine, and could contain as many dashes as required.

Now – now that I’ve been editing for a number of years, and a writer for over twenty – I realize – to my embarrassment – that an excess of dashes is confusing – and makes things hard to follow. It’s not illegal – I’ve seen some well-known writers do it – but a definite no-no, as far as I’m concerned.

Some books had freak dashes that were seemingly interminable—they were much bigger than the standard dashes. They were brazen, defiant, and—most disturbingly—greedy, given they ate the humble spaces that usually bookended a normal modest dash. They were, in fact, megalomaniacal. It wasn’t until I was tertiary educated that I learned these different dashes had names.

The em dash also had a unique purpose, that being to signify dialogue or narrative had been interr—

The colon and semicolon were like a married couple who complemented one another, the colon bold and forthright, the semicolon sly and subtle, yet both bearing a passing similarity – both in name and appearance, as if overlong wedlock had seen each impress itself on the other.

But their purposes differ drastically. My understanding of the semicolon remains innate; I can give you a textbook explanation of when and where it’s required, but in actual use, I rely on feel – on rightness. You have to be caring and thoughtful and intuitive when dealing with a semicolon. The colon is much more blunt. It demands when it needs to be used: when the clause preceding a list or explanation can stand by itself.

I could go on and on, but think I’ve covered all the punctuation you need to know, (and nothing else comes to mind presently). It’s enough to understand my ultimate point, though.

Read any text that immerses you or entrances you, and the punctuation will be unnoticeable. Oh, you’ll see it. Your eyes will follow it, your mind will interpret it. But the punctuation itself has the power and sway of a hypnotist. You’ll do what you’re being told – pause where you need to, hear an exclamation, infer a question, etc. – without even knowing you’re being directed.

You’ll just do it, and all you’ll take from what your reading is what you’re reading.

That’s the magic of good punctuation.

LZ.

Work Experience: My First Day

June 21, 2013

On a chilly Friday morning, before I was awake, I drove across town to the leafy suburb of Montmorency for my first day of work experience.

I could hardly believe my luck when Busybird co-owner, Blaise van Hecke, agreed to take me on. I have always wondered what it is like behind the scenes of a publishing house, and I was not disappointed. Is it as quirky and cool as it seems? Well, yes – to me it is.

When I first met Blaise, it seemed unlikely that butter would melt in her mouth … until I discovered that she likes to write stories about serial killers. I first learned of her darkly delicious tastes at a flash fiction writing workshop she was running at our local library.

I met the other two members of the Busybird team, co-owner, Kev Howlett, and publications manager, Les Zigomanis, when I arrived at the studio door last Friday. To begin with, Kev provided me with a comprehensive tour of their new studio – including the basement. Upstairs there is a light and airy gallery, Kev’s studio and the editorial area; while downstairs there is a photographic studio, a conversation pit, a toilet and a full size human skeleton. Despite the all-inclusive nature of the tour, nothing was said about the assemblage of bones in the middle of the room – and I did not like to ask.

Following the tour, Les sat down with me to discuss Busybird’s range of publications and the editorial protocols. Throughout the day, both Kev and Les were warm and attentive: Les made sure I was acquainted with the tea and coffee facilities and Kev kept interrupting his work to make sure I had tea/coffee/lunch – whatever I needed. They both have an unquestionably excellent set of priorities.

After so much attention, it became necessary to visit the basement again. This time I was by myself and it was pitch black, but I eventually found the light and tiptoed across the space. It did occur to me that it would be very easy for someone to flick the light switch and lock the door. What I didn’t expect was to find a heavy red curtain, like a theatre curtain, concealing the wall on one side of the toilet. I reached out and ran my fingers across the fabric – I was soooo tempted, but thoughts of Bluebeard filled my mind … Whatever lies behind the red curtain will have to remain as another element of the Busybird mystique – unless you are prepared to uncover its secret!

The mantra at Busybird is it’s all about the stories, and the new studio reflects that sensibility. There is a fairy tale aura about the space. I can almost see stories as embodied entities – teasing and beckoning – out of the corner of my eye.

– Lisa Roberts

Book Review.

June 12, 2013

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Jennifer E. Smith
Headline Publishing Group (London: 2012)

3 out of 5 stars
Recommended for girls aged 13-20

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight follows seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan over twenty-four hours, beginning with Hadley missing her flight to London by literally four minutes. Although this means she’ll be getting to her father’s second wedding with only a few minutes to spare, her lateness allows her to meet Oliver, a nineteen-year-old British boy who – surprise! – ends up in the seat next to her on her rescheduled flight. What follows is a ‘whirlwind romance’ between Oliver and Hadley; or, at least, what’s meant to be. Despite being marketed as a ‘sweet’ romance that will make you ‘believe that true love finds you when you’re least expecting it,’ most of the book is devoted to Hadley’s broken relationship with her father. Unfortunately, with only twenty-four hours (which bizarrely equates to eighteen – not twenty-four – short chapters), Smith unsuccessfully juggles Hadley’s rocky familial relationships, her blossoming relationship with Oliver, and Oliver’s own personal struggles. Consequently, no single scene has any particular significance, and everything gets resolved all too neatly.

I was first attracted to this book by its design; the title is quirky and original, and the cover is very appealing. However, there is a discrepancy between how Hadley appears on the cover and how she is in the actual novel. As there is no thorough description of Hadley (apart from a mention of her generic ‘blond hair and big eyes’) the reader imagines her as she appears on the cover, which is fine … until Smith writes about Oliver putting his hand on Hadley’s ‘bare leg.’ Having Hadley wear a miniskirt rather than the boyish jeans seen on the cover completely changes the reader’s perception of her, so it would’ve helped to have had a proper description from the very beginning.

The writing is generally clear and straightforward, which makes it easy to breeze through the chapters. But it’s nothing special. At times there is tense confusion and an awkward transition between third-person objective and third-person subjective. There are few errors, except for an unforunate one in what is mean to be a touching reconciliation between Hadley and her mother. When Hadley is trying to convince her mother that she should marry Harrison, her boyfriend, and be happy, she says, ‘He love you.’ The majority of readers would probably be able to ignore this glaring typo, but personally I felt it ruined the moment, which was already failing to be as poignant as it wanted to be.

Nonetheless, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight is a light, enjoyable read that will entertain you for a few hours. But I highly doubt it will ‘stay with you forever.’

– Ariel Skippen