Podcasts: Video playlist

Presenter: Welcome to Ask the Author, the podcast where kids get to ask published authors how they create their stories.

Presenter: In this episode, we are asking the author, Sarah Soh, all about how she writes and illustrates her books. Hi, Sarah!

Sarah: Hi, my name is Sarah Soh. I am the creator, the artist and writer for the Juniper Mae: Knight of Tykotech series. I am here today to talk about the visuals, the artwork, and just the whole writing process of my book series.

Presenter: Sarah’s books are a bit different because she doesn’t just write the story, she also draws all the pictures. Her stories about Juniper Mae are graphic novels, which means they are stories told with both words and illustrations. It follows Juniper Mae, a young inventor who lives in a futuristic city, full of incredible technology.

Presenter: Let’s hear from Sarah about her book, Juniper Mae: Knight of Tykotech City.

Sarah: Tykotech City is a marvelous and peaceful place filled with technology beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. But as power cuts begin to plague the residents and a sinister force infiltrates the city, the lives of the city folk are in terrible danger. It falls to Juniper Mae, a tiny, brave inventor obsessed with the legends of the Guardian Knights, to overcome her fears and save her city. Can she embody the bravery of the Guardian Knights and invent some cool gadgets to save Tykotech City in time? We’ll find out.

Presenter: You can tell a lot about the story just by looking at the cover.

Sarah: The cover on the front of the book, it shows Juniper Mae ready to fight alongside her new forest creature friend, whose name is Albie, and they are surrounded by bug bots who threaten the city that she lives in.

Presenter: We’ve got questions for Sarah about how she designs, writes, and illustrates her stories. So let’s Ask the Author.

Presenter: If you have to draw the same thing multiple times in different frames, how do you get it to look the same?

Sarah: That is a great question. For me, it really does take a lot of practise to try to have consistency with my drawings. Most of the times the first time doesn’t come out the exact way I wanted, so I just keep on practising, drawing it over and over again, until I get the illustration that I was hoping to go for.

Presenter: Do you use a certain kind of app or do you just draw it on a piece of paper and print it, or something?

Sarah: Sometimes I’ll do sketches on a piece of paper, but most of the time I actually did my entire book on my iPad. I’ve done the rough images, to taking it to the final illustrations of the line work, and the colouring.

Presenter: If you’re an illustrator and an author, do you decide to keep the illustrations from different series the same?

Sarah: Yes I do try to keep the illustrations the same, at least throughout this book series, just so that we can really follow the adventures of our main hero and her friends, and the story and journey that she goes on.

Presenter: Are the moods of your character based off your own moods or do you just find it out from what they’re doing, what they’re wearing?

Sarah: The characters’ moods are actually based on my own moods. Juniper, actually, I ended up putting a lot more of myself into her in terms of what I was like as a child. And so a lot of the moods that she goes through are moods that I went through as a kid. Along with Albie, his moods are more moods that I wish I had in terms of being loud and wanting attention and all of those things. But with the moods that Juniper goes through, I wanted her moods to end up following a journey that I wish I had gone through, of learning how to become more brave and strong and courageous at a younger age.

Presenter: How do you know if you want it to be anime or different types of what the characters look like?

Sarah: Because I grew up watching cartoons and anime, I had a very specific idea of how I wanted the visuals to be. And so, I think because I was so heavily inspired by anime, I think that’s why a lot of my drawings and the characters are really inspired by that. And so that’s why I’m leaning a little bit more towards that style visually.

Presenter: When you come up with the illustrations, are they different to now that you’re an adult? Are they different to the ones you had as a child? Or is it inspired off the illustrations you used to have as a child?

Sarah: That is a great question. A lot of the illustrations I did as a child, it definitely had a lot more imagination. It definitely had a lot more creativity in it. And because I was able to have that sort of mindset when I was a kid, it helped grow my ideas even more on how to really take those ideas. The illustrations that I used for the book are really inspired by things that I watched and read growing up. I grew up drawing because I really loved doing it, and it really took me to different places and worlds that only I could really think of at the time. And thankfully, now as an adult, I can really take those ideas and really transform them into something visually down on paper, with lots and lots of practice and a lot of patience to be able to build the world, especially for the world of Juniper Mae.

Presenter: Thanks so much, Sarah. We just have one final question for you.

Presenter: Do you have a top tip for anyone who wants to start drawing and writing their own stories?

Sarah: To sort of come up with ideas on whether it’s for writing or for drawing, it’s really just a matter of really wanting to actually start doing something. And for me, just starting from somewhere, whether it is drawing a creature or drawing a person, or even just writing a simple idea. You never really know where it can lead you to and how that story can transform or where those drawings can really lead you to. It can really take you into a whole new world that you really never knew that you really had inside of you, that you wanted to share. And so if you have an idea for a character or a creature, or a world just start drawing. It may not be perfect the first time, but that’s why you keep on practising and drawing, until you get it to how you want it to look.

Presenter: Today we learned that visual books tell stories using both pictures and words

Presenter: And that illustrators practise drawing characters again and again, so they look the same in every frame.

Presenter: Plus, lots of Sarah’s ideas come from things she loved drawing and watching when she was a kid.

Presenter: If you’ve got more questions about writing stories, there are plenty more authors ready to answer them in our Ask the Author collection on BBC Bitesize. Thanks for listening!