| making monsters in walkinston & ballyfermot |
[May. 22nd, 2013|11:19 pm]
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It's been fabulous seeing monsters popping up all over Dublin! Or, as Dubliners seem to say, it's 'deadly'. It was deadly getting to see the huge display Dublin's oldest bookshop, Hodges & Figgis (1768!), had made of the monsters I drew. Wow! (The Dublin Writers Festival posters are a combination of drawings by Niamh Sharkey, Hervé Tullet and me.)
Photo by CBI Director Mags Walsh
And I had a great time taking monster making to schoolkids yesterday, starting at Walkinstown Library.
The teachers at St Damian's School were absolutely brilliant, the kids had been so well prepared for my visit. They had read my books, thought of questions and were absolutely pumped up with enthusiasm when I came in. A real model of how teachers can help kids get the most out of an author visit.
I couldn't believe it; by the time I came back to my home at St Patrick's Lodge that day, they school had ALREADY posted a write-up and photos on their blog. I was absolutely astounded. St Damian's, you totally rock.
I couldn't help but laugh at what one kid said. He was asking about what writers and illustrators earn, and I replied that it could be anything from less than nothing (if they self-publish and have to print the books themselves) to a very modest advance like €2000 or even a rare €200,000. He nodded sagely when I gave this last figure and said, 'Ah. That's why you can afford that kind of hat'.
( Click for more under the cut!Collapse ) |
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| monsters at coolock library, dublin! |
[May. 20th, 2013|03:39 pm]
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So Dublin Writer's Festival has started off with a bang! Or should I say... a GROWL? Today I led a big pack of boys from Scoil Fhursa in reading Morris the Mankiest Monster and drawing their own awesome monsters.
To begin, here's the monster they helped me draw.
Then they were off! We had a huge roll of Fabriano paper, oil pastels and chunky crayons, and I encouraged them to draw big and bold. And they did!
Big thanks to the teachers, assistants and head librarian Mags Curley (far right), and Irma Grothius who escorted me there and back.
More monsters! If you want to get involved in the Get Drawn In programme this week, check out the programme here! More good news: Mountains to Sea Festival in Dún Laoghaire just announced their Schools Programme today! And special treat, my fabulous studio mate, Gary Northfield, will be doing a TEENYTINYSAURS event on Friday, 6 September. Find out about it on the Mountains to Sea website here!
( Click for more monsters under the cut!Collapse ) |
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| jon klassen doodle |
[May. 20th, 2013|12:42 am]
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A couple images from today at the Children's Book Ireland Annual Conference: Here's my sketch of Jon Klassen, author of I Want My Hat Back, giving his talk. I love that book so much, how deadpan it all is. Jon said something about his characters in it being bad actors, just going through their lines. Which is terribly funny. Read it, if you haven't.
I'm not quite sure why this Vimeo version of it lists it as R-rated. I suppose it does have a disturbing element to it.
And Hervé Tullet with his book's gaping plot hole:
Herve's been introducing me to Leó Ferré this evening.
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| funday times, vern and lettuce, and dublin! |
[May. 19th, 2013|10:01 am]
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Lots of things happening! If you're getting a copy today of The Sunday Times, be sure to look out for my comic strip in The Funday Times section!
I actually did two comic strips, but the editor thought the first one was aimed at a bit older kids (and slightly crude - I'll keep it for another day), so I think we're both happy with this second one.
Here's a quick character sketch I sent her before I started it. The fat pink unicorn is partly inspired by fat rainbow pony. The shark, well, I've just finished a shark book. And the skinny pegasus might come in later.
And I noticed on Twitter that our Random House Children's Books publicist Lauren Bennett has shown off the covers for our paperback DFC Library books! I've made a completely new cover for Vern and Lettuce, and here it is. Ta-DAH!
And here's the set! I'm so excited to see Jamie Smart's Fish-head Steve; that one didn't come out in hardback so no-one's seen it in book form ever before. Find out more about the DFC Libary here!
( Click for more under the cut!Collapse ) |
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| Back online |
[May. 16th, 2013|06:02 pm]
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We've just brought User Cluster #9 back online, and the errors being caused by the maintenance should stop occurring. Notifications are sending again, but may be delayed as there is a backlog of notifications waiting to be sent. If you are still encountering any errors, please open a Support request so we can investigate the issue. |
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| Maintenance still in progress |
[May. 16th, 2013|01:42 pm]
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We are still in the process of bringing User Cluster #9 back online, and it is unfortunately taking longer than we anticipated. We are making progress, but are still several hours away from this being fixed. To address a few common questions we are seeing:
How many user clusters are there?
There are 13 user clusters in total.
How can I find out what user cluster my account is on?
You can see which user cluster you are on at http://www.livejournal.com/misc/whereami.bml if you are logged-in. If you cannot login, your account is located on user cluster #9.
I am not on cluster 9, but still can't post or edit entries. What's happening?
Trying to update or edit posts may still fail even if you are not on user cluster #9. An Error 500 will appear when loading the update/edit journal page if you have posting access to a community which is located on this cluster. The update module at http://www.livejournal.com/portal/ may still allow you to post while maintenance is ongoing.
I'm not getting notifications. Is this related?
Subscription notifications are not currently being sent as a result of this maintenance. You may still receive other types of emails, such as pingbacks and password notification emails, but will not receive notifications of new entries or comments being posted.
What other things aren't working right now?
Twitter digest posts are not currently being imported as a result of this maintenance. Some other pages & features may display errors if they need to access information located on user cluster #9. The inbox and community management pages are both known to be showing errors for people affected by this.
We will post again either when user cluster #9 is back online, or if we have any additional information to post. Thanks again for your patience while we work to fully restore service to the site. |
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| Maintenance update |
[May. 16th, 2013|03:35 pm]
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We successfully finished maintenance on cluster #7. All accounts’ owners from this cluster can now log into their journals.
We are working on restoring the user cluster #9, it will take approximately an hour. We will keep you informed. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.
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| Maintenance update |
[May. 15th, 2013|09:44 pm]
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To followup on the previous post, the same symptoms for user cluster #7 are also present for users on cluster #9, so we're in the process of fixing it as well. Having 2 clusters to work on rather than 1 unfortunately means that we expect it to take approximately 6-8 hours for everything to be resolved. We do, however, know how the problems with each cluster started and it is not something which will cause any additional clusters to have these issues. We'll post here again either when the issue has been resolved, or if we have any significant developments to update you on. |
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| Emergency maintenance on user cluster #7 |
[May. 15th, 2013|06:46 pm]
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We're doing some emergency maintenance on one of our databases (user cluster #7, there are 13 user clusters in total. You can see which user cluster your account is on here). The estimated duration of this maintenance is 4-5 hours.
If your account is located on user cluster #7, you will not be able to login to your account until this maintenance has been completed. If you are already logged-in, you will be unable to post, edit, or delete any material on LiveJournal until the maintenance is completed.
If your account is not on this cluster, LiveJournal will still be up, you will be able to login. You may be able to post, edit, and delete content, but if any communities you have posting access to are on cluster #7, you will see an Error 500 when attempting to load the update/edit journal page, or viewing your inbox if any messages have been received from a user on cluster #7. Other pages may also be similarly affected if they attempt to load usernames or data from this cluster. You may also encounter problems viewing journals, entries, comments, or private messages from accounts which are on this cluster.
We're working as quickly as possible to get everything back up & running, and appreciate your patience during this maintenance.
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