Sarah McIntyre

Welcome to Dinoville! And before you learn how to draw Trevor the T-Rex, I've made a little animation for you! I had a lot of fun with this one, and my friend (the writer-illustrators-comics-artist-typographer-desiger) Woodrow Phoenix gave me some help with one of the voices! (A very important voice, as you'll see.)



As ever, I'd love to see your drawings! Please post them on social media with the hashtag #DrawingWithSarah so I can have a peek! And I have lots more free activities for these books over on my website.



Edit: And here's the first one in, tweeted by Chris Craven! Nice work, Dexter, Thea and Dad!

What's going to happen next?

...And have you caught up with the previous two #DrawingWithSarah episodes?

The next video launches on Friday morning, 9am GMT!



And here are some of the wonderful drawings of Kevin (from episode 2) that have been coming in on the #DrawingWithSarah hashtag! Love seeing families drawing together - there are two pictures here by grandparents!



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Here's episode 2 in #DrawingWithSarah! Find out how Philip Reeve and I work together - in animated form! - learn how to draw our Roly-Poly Flying Pony, and our musical neighbours Nicky Spence and Dylan Perez make a guest appearance in the song at the very end.



I'm learning a lot about animation, making my own sound effects and things. (Philip typing is really me squashing cans from the recyling bin.) It was great to see the response from families stuck at home with the last Grumpycorn video, and I hope people enjoy drawing Kevin, too!



Here's the very first drawing response (from Nicky, who appears at the end of the video)!

Overwhelmed by all the wonderful drawings in response to the #DrawingWithSarah Grumpycorn video! Just wanted to post some here, so they don't slip down the social media timelines and disappear.



Here's the original video:











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With events cancelled, I've had a little bit of time to try to teach myself some simple animation skills. There have been some great how-to-draw videos by artists who started out as trained animators (Rob Biddulph! Jim Field! Lydia Monks! Fred Blunt!) and while their animation skills are WAY beyond mine (they are truly awesome people), it's encouraging me to up my game! And since I know so little (and don't seem to have any stored royalty-free music on my computer), I thought I'd go the opposite way from them and make it very low-tech (like this wooden xylophone I bought for a fiver from Flying Tiger last year).



...But maybe it's good, a lot of people will be learning things from scratch while they're stuck at home, and sometimes things with rough edges are more inspiring when people think, Hey, I could do that! I've already seen one kid named Rudra release his own How-to-Draw video, which is fabulous. And 11-year-old Alec Anderson (@CFComix on Twitter) has been drawing up a story over on the @StudioTeaBreak drawing challenge page.



It's tempting to release the videos as soon as I finish making them, to see what people think, but I should probably pace myself, because we might be social distancing or quarantined for quite a long time. I can't do Reeve & McIntyre events right now, but the next animation might just have a special guest... Oh, and Grumpycorn makes an appearance, voiced by my husband Stuart (who's working at the next desk since he got sent home from the office).



As ever, there are lots of free, downloadable activities over on my website!

A few fab pictures from the #DrawingWithSarah hashtag:

With so many of you stuck at home, I thought I'd start up a new series of videos called #DrawingWithSarah. I'm hoping children and grownups alike will find them fun, and they're not exactly school lessons, but they might fill a gap in inspiring children at home to write and draw.



I'll see how it goes, but if there's a lot of interest, I'll keep going with them. The first one features my picture book with Scholastic UK, Grumpycorn!



It's great to see people sharing their drawings on the #DrawingWithSarah hashtag! Here's the very first one in, and it's fabulous!



You can find lots of Grumpycorn-related free printable activity sheets over on my website.



And lots of authors are getting on board! Here's a great drawing video from Rob Biddulph, and another from Steven Lenton. And here's Andy Stanton reading the whole of one of his Mr Gum books.

In the meantime, watch the #DrawingWithSarah hashtag for more responses!

Illustrator Steve Anthony has started a new film series called 'Picture Book Club' with writer Fiona Barker, going around to different illustrators studios and interviewing them about a selected book. Here's their video with me, giving a look at my studio, some insight into how I illustrated Grumpycorn, and a step-by-step demonstration of how to draw him:



Thank you, Fiona and Steve! These kind of videos could be quite handy for people stuck at home in quarantine right now, or with children from schools that have shut down. A lot of writers, illustrators and publishers have lots of activities and free resources they've made for their websites, but it's often difficult to get the word out about what's available. I've tried to start a social media hashtag #FreeBookResources (with moderate succcess); it would be great if parents and teachers could get an overarching view of their options. In the meantime, I have lots of activity sheets on my website, and people of all ages are welcome to jump into the Twitter @StudioTeaBreak drawing challenges. I dare you to use some of these challenges to inspire your own new games and stories!

While he was in London, Philip Reeve shot this step-by-step tutorial of how to draw one of our favourite characters in Kevin's Great Escape, the second book in our Roly-Poly Flying Pony series. We hit a few glitches - I looked down and realised my nail polish was in a terrible state (oops, too late!) and then we couldn't manage to attach the theme tune again at the end... so we SANG it, ha ha (for better or for worse). Hope you enjoy it!



Edit... And just in, the very first response from the excellent Woodrow Phoenix!

I'm always so thrilled when people take the time to make costumes and create projects based on our book characters! Here's a roundup of photos people have shared, starting with...

Grumpycorn! (Click on the book titles for links to free book-based activities!)





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Here's another Dartmoor-inspired tree drawing, this time on a card for my god-daughter's birthday. With a little peek at Kevin the Roly-Poly Flying Pony.