Swamp Kids

The story so far

Hello all! I have recently posted a few bits of an exciting new project on my socials, and thought now would be a good time to talk a little bit more about the project and how it came about. The story starts, as most good stories do, with a kick-ass character. Being a child of the 90s raised by Disney, I grew up surrounded by a lot of stereotypical ideas of the roles women and girls play in stories. We need to be rescued a lot, we always have long, pretty hair, and we like girl stuff, such as brushing our long, pretty hair. I was enjoying playing around with bending and breaking these biases and became slightly obsessed with the idea of a mermaid from a swamp.

I really loved this idea, and what Mary’s life could be like, what would happen is she met mermaids from a different place? From the glitzy, metropolis of the ocean? I felt I could draw on my own experiences of growing up in a small, rural area with terrible transport connections; the thought of the big city was terrifying to a tiny little country mouse like me!

I explored this idea further during my favourite social media challenge, the 100 day project. I decided to choose a pose to draw each day and then apply that pose to the character. I applied the open, happy pose above to Mary the swamp mermaid and soon realised this was not what I wanted for her. So I reversed the pose and drew what came to mind.

I knew instantly this was my hero. I loved her attitude, her grungy, retro vibe. So I put this on the back burner and let it sizzle away for a while. Who is she? Why is she so miserable? What’s the deal with her hair? Is it even ok to layer long sleeve t shirts under short sleeve t shirts anymore? All these vital questions I needed to get straight in my head. The answers soon began to come to me, and they were a hazy amalgamation of a reflection of life: the pandemic and lockdown, memories of my own life at school, my love for science, nostalgic music I kept listening to, some terrible reality TV I binge watched recently…

Once I managed to organise these ideas into something slightly coherent, I sent over a very rough proposal to my illustration agent. The feedback was positive and I was given some great advice and asked to write out some actual words that could be in an actual book. This part was all very new to me. I love coming up with story ideas and always create a narrative around my portfolio pieces, but this next stage was new territory. I spent a lot fo time learning about how to plot a story and how characters are expected to grow and change. I went to workshops and had many, many, a-ha moments, and soon realised that I had a fully formed synopsis for definitely 1, and hopefully 3 books. I started to write the first 3 paragraphs and realised how much I loved it.

I realised that the joy of world-building through words was equal to the joy I felt when bringing characters and worlds to life through illustration. Imaging the incredible places they could travel to, what these underwater worlds might be like, who might live there and who our gang would meet on the way.

It really felt like I had embarked on a journey alongside my new best friends: Gogo, the awesome scientist who needs to rediscover her potential. Ryla, the strong and brilliant best friend who always gets them out of trouble, And Frey, the loveable joker with an upper limb difference like my son, because representation matters.

Oh, and Kevin from accounts, of course, the slimy toad you love to hate.

So I had a suite of characters just itching to conflict with each other, a whole underwater planet full of strange and exciting worlds with hidden secrets, and a slimy snail stuck in a F.A.R.T machine. Let the adventure begin!

I am also currently working up the story as a graphic novel, as the plot and the feel of the project really suits itself to this style and this is something I’m really excited about exploring. You can see the rough sketches below. So watch this space and I’ll hopefully have more development to show you soon. Thanks so much for reading.