The corona lockdown gave me the chance to go through my archives and look back on what I have created during the last 10 years. I realized that I have been making phantasy birds for a long time. Birds are everywhere. You see them in your backyard, they wake you on an early spring morning. That makes them easy to study. They are great to create and tell stories with.

The first time I created a story around the three birds was more than ten years ago. They decorated a birthday card for a very special person in my life who had a tiny white dog. Later I introduced our dog Duvel to his three imaginary bird friends since then Duvel and the 3irds have been up to a lot of mischief together. Curious? Have a look at the stories of The 3irds…

This story goes back to 2013. The making of the last twikga book, Tata & Squack – Mission Elephant. Only recently I went through my old sketchbooks and decided to add some of the pages to this post. For more sketchbook galleries have a look under the tag Sketchbook…

The making of the next Tata&Squack was in full progress. The pictures we took during our visit to Samburu, Kenya in 2012 were valuable input for our work. But the little plastic elephant had to do some posing for me as well. Elisabeth Visser was working on the storyline in Amsterdam and I created the visuals in Hamburg. Now and then we met to brainstorm or we used Skype to talk face to face. The illustrations are a creative mix of photographies, drawings and collages. I loved that stage of the creative process, because all the options were still open. What would Tata wear? How would the “lead-elphant” look like? Which scenes of the story were we going to illustrate? The creative team was back on the drawing board…

Tata&Squack – Mission Elephant was published in 2014. For more information about the book, have a look in the portfolio of  Tata&Squack books…

In early 2008 we started to develop the story of Tata&Squack – The Big Journey and the characters in word and in design. Questions had to be answered: what would we like her to wear, which colors, what kind of body-lanquage do we want her to display in the illustrations. This development process I loved tremendously; the creation of something new. It took more than a few brainstorms to develop Tata the way Tanja and I both liked her.

The parents of Tata are explorers and study the migration of the wildebeest in the Serengeti in Africa. Tata comes along. Like her parents she loves nature and wants to become an explorer too. When the assignment of her parents in Africa is over, she does not really want to go home. In the airplane she meets the adventurous Squack who becomes her little friend. From Tata’s magic bag, Squack pulls a parachute, catapulting them back into the Serengeti-life, to join the Big Migration. They ride along a wildebeest, called Moyo together with him, Tata and Captain Squack start hunting for the water treasure.

Squack is more than a little chubby creature on a key chain. In the book Tata&Squack the Big Journey, he becomes Tata’s friend.

Tata’s parents are researchers, who studied the migration of the Wildebeest in the Serengeti. When their assignment is over and they fly back home Tata is sad. The flight attendant passes by with a basket full of toys. She picks Squack. Suddenly out of a magic swirl Squack comes to life. Startled at first, but then all too happy to return to Africa and show her new found friend all the things she loves so much.

Together they join Moyo, the wildebeest called “heart” on an adventurous hunt for the “watertreasure”. They learn why two million animals follow the rain, year after year and how to survive lions and crocodiles along the way.