Tulloch, Scott

writers in schools information

KAPAI Children’s questions for writers

General

Where do you live?
Martinborough

What books do you read?
Airport thrillers; illustrated natural histories (artists’ wildlife sketchbooks); history, anthropology and palaeontology books; comic strip/graphic novel-type books (eg, Asterix, Raymond Briggs books)

Who is your favourite writer and why?
When I was a kid it was Richmal Compton. I wanted to be William, her famous character. Now, I can’t really think. There’s a few I like.

How do you think up your ideas?
The ‘Willy’ books are based on my own family life, but made more outrageous. A lot of my ideas are prompted by something random – something I’ve seen or more usually just a random thought.

What is the best thing about being a writer?
Getting to illustrate my own stories/ideas.

Primary School Students

What sort of pets do you have?
Chooks, ducks, a cat, sometimes pigs

What is your favourite colour?
Blue

What is your favourite food- why?
Have lots of favourites, depending on how I feel. Some of these are . . . fish and chips, crayfish soup, pizza, prawns, prosciutto, lamb curry, game-food. I do a bit of cooking and I like to live off the land, so my favourite food at any given time is likely to be something I just invented, eg. my spicy crayfish and coconut soup (mmmm, spicy crayfish and coconut soup .....)

What is your favourite movie?
Crikey. Not sure. When I was a kid it was the first Star Wars movie. More recently I’ve really liked The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley’s Game. The animated film The Triplets of Belleville is amazing.

What is your favourite game?
Soccer is my favourite game, but my favourite hobbies are diving, hunting and sometimes skiing.

How do you make books?
I send lots of story ideas to my publishers to start with, and they let me know which ones they want to publish. I then do a rough storyboard of the book. That means, using just a pencil, I draw the whole book showing words and pictures. The writing will only be finalised in my mind as I develop the illustrations. When this ‘rough’ is complete I email it to the publisher for approval. Once it’s been approved I do the full-colour final art. This is generally done by copying the pencil ‘rough’ onto watercolour paper and then colouring in using watercolour paints, ink and coloured pencil. When the final art is finished I take photos of it all with my digital camera and upload it onto my computer. On the computer I then layout the art into the same format as the final book-page and put the text in with it. I call this a final mock-up. I email this final mock-up to my publisher, and after they’ve approved it I send them the original art by courier. The publisher then takes over and completes the process of turning the artwork and text into an actual book.

Where do you go for your holidays?
Every year I go down south to the High Country, stopping at Kaikoura on the way, for hunting, diving and duck shooting and to catch up with mates. My family goes to Australia a bit to visit my daughter’s Aussie Grandma (she stars in the third ‘Willy’ book, Willy’s Grandpa). We’ve also been to Spain and Rarotonga as a family. I try to get us to go on a back-to-nature NZ summer holiday as much as possible, but unfortunately my wife and daughter prefer to go to places with lots of shops.

What was the naughtiest thing you ever did at school?
Can’t remember doing anything majorly naughty at school itself, though I was a complete pain in the butt to my maths teachers because I got really bored during maths classes. When I was 14 I nicked a crunchie bar from the local supermarket, but got caught. I had to go to the police station. The policeman was really nice but mum spat the dummy. Now I buy my crunchie bars (mmmm, crunchie bars ........). I can even play the crunchie bar song on the guitar. It’s my daughter’s favourite bedtime song. Anyway, here are the lyrics. I play it in the key of G;

Lifes a whole long journey, boy,
Before you grow too old,
Dont miss the opportunity
To strike a little gold.
Out West the folks are crossing you.
The way to make them stop,
Is to quick draw your Crunchie bar...
-And fill them full of choc.

Have a Crunchie
Hokey pokey bar
Golden Crunchie
Hokey pokey bar.

At the completion of this we generally launch straight into Fred Dagg’s immortal ‘If it Weren’t for Your Gumboots’, a terrific bed-bouncing song.

Secondary School Students

How did you get started?
From 1994 to 2005 I worked full-time as a self employed professional artist, and even had my own gallery for a time. I mainly produced paintings of scenery and wildlife for people to hang on their walls, but really I’d always been wanting to illustrate books. During 2005 I devoted 9 months to writing and illustrating (in rough, pencil, form) a comic-strip/graphic novel story about Neanderthals, Santa and the Abominable Snowman. This story, called ‘The Iceman’, was to form the back-bone of a bunch of story ideas which I intended submitting to as many publishers as I could find. Having completed the rough manuscript for ‘The Iceman’ I also covered my bases by putting together 6 or 7 other story ideas in varying formats (ie, as well as a few more comic-strip style ideas for older readers I also included some standard picture book ideas for younger readers). I then made numerous copies of these story ideas and sent them to all the major publishing houses in NZ. A week later I got a phone call from Lorain Day, the commissioning editor at Harpercollins (NZ), to say they liked my work, and in particular one of the story ideas for younger readers about a serious toddler with a juvenile Dad. As this particular story idea currently consisted of only a brief paragraph and two illustrations I was asked to produce a complete storyboard for Harpercollin’s approval. They did approve it and so Willy’s Dad was born. The marketing team at Harpercollins then decided that ‘Willy’ should become a series and so an additional three ‘Willy’ books were commissioned. Since then Harpercollins have decided they want me to remain exclusive to them so have made efforts to publish as many of my story ideas as possible, as well as giving me illustration work for other people’s stories on a regular basis. Harpercollins are aware that I still want to produce a graphic novel-type book so perhaps it will happen one day. There was one graphic novel idea I submitted that took their fancy. It was a history of pigs called Clan of the Cave Pig. I hope they let me do this one because it’s totally nuts.

Who inspired you when you were getting started?
A Dutch illustrator called Rien Poortvliet, the Asterix guys, Raymond Briggs.

What advice would you give an aspiring young writer?
Be original. And determined.

Is it difficult to make a living writing in New Zealand?
Yup.

What were you like as a teenager?
Tell us a story! Lost. Desperately in the wrong place and time. I wanted to live in the wilderness, or at least out in the country. Or in Africa 100 years ago. Instead I was stuck in the Hutt Valley suburbs in the 1980s. But because I felt so strongly about these things it made me fiercely determined to change my circumstances. So I eventually went overseas and tried to become as different from my teenage self as possible. I travelled through Europe, Asia and the Middle East. I tried my hand at all sorts of occupations. I even lived in the sort of English Village that I’d grown up being fascinated with when I was going through one of my Richmal Compton/William Brown stages. But most importantly I was determined to give my working life meaning. As a teenager I had no idea what sort of job I wanted to do. Until the age of 14 I had thought of becoming a cartoonist like Murray Ball or the Asterix guys, but gave it away because at college the fourth form art syllabus was so boring. Also I received no encouragement that art was a realistic career choice. So I gave up art and didn’t pick it up again until the age of 26. In the meantime I thought about a career with the Wildlife Service (now DoC), or working in a zoo. I’d always had a keen interest in wildlife. But after completing a BSc degree majoring in Zoology that particular desire had also been educated out of me. So I took a horrendously boring office job in Wellington for two long years, saved enough money for a one-way ticket to London, and fled the country. I was determined never to return to New Zealand unless it was with a talent for something that would keep me happily and lucratively self-employed. In the end I turned to art (so you can scrub the ‘lucrative'. bit right there). At the age of 26 while working as a bread delivery man in London I started teaching myself to paint. By the age of 28 I was selling artworks to tourists in Australia, and by 33 I had fully established myself as an artist with my own gallery back in New Zealand. However it was illustrating books that really grabbed me, so at the ripe old age of 39 I submitted my story ideas to Harpercollins and at the even riper age of 41 I was published. Never too late to learn something new, eh? It’s possible that if I was more focused as a teenager, taken art as an elective subject at high school and university, and gotten myself employed in some relevant capacity straight away, that I may have been successful as an illustrator at a much younger age. But then I wouldn’t have as many things to write about. I don’t have particularly fond memories of my teenage years, but in a roundabout way it’s the dissatisfaction that I felt back then that drove me to get to where I am now – living in the countryside, drawing silly pictures of ridiculous characters in ludicrous stories of my own deranged concoction, with the hope of becoming lucrative still springing eternal. Perfect.