Two nights ago Daryl and I came across a crowd of people at the Kinokuniya Sydney book store.

It was the release of Shaun Tan’s new book Tales from Outer Suburbia. Being fans of his previous books, especially The Red Tree, we joined the crowd. We could barely see nor hear him, but this event reminded me of one of his others books, The Arrival.

The prompting of the The Arrival lifted much of the difficulty I had drawing the visual roughs and layouts for my project. Unfortunately this would mean, to express enough details in the story would result in too many pages for the time allowed to complete them.

I considered a comic book layout but had trouble distancing it from Japanese manga. Although The Arrival uses a similar technique, it still distances itself from the comic, pop-art look. The Arrival tells a story using only images. Each detail is shown in small squares on a page, much like a comic or a storyboard.

Even without text, Tan is still capable of telling a very powerful story. This is what I hope to achieve, using  a mix of eastern and western illustrative techniques.

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