Welcome to the wickedly wonderful world of Willa’s Monster Muddle by the incredibly talented artist, illustrator, and print maker Fabi Santiago.
Willa’s Monster Muddle is out NOW and available in all good book shops and libraries.
Fabi spent a moment telling us all about her new monstrous creation, so thank you and congratulations to Fabi! (and Willa!)
You can find us and Fabby Fabi on Instagram!
How the Book Became
Hello friends!
After a long-ish hiatus, I made a picture book again. Yay!
Willa’s Monster Muddle is a spooky story that started with a screen print illustration I made a few Halloweens ago. The idea had been living rent-free in my head haunting me until I decided to put pen to paper and actually write that story.
If you, like me, love a good peek behind the chaotic process of making art, then this post is for you.
The inspiration
In the older times of Instagram (as some of you might remember), we would join several drawing challenges throughout the year. Maybe they still happen. I’m not on Instagram anymore, so what do I know?
The point is that, in that year, I joined one of the Halloween challenges. But instead of drawing a new illustration every day, I drew a small piece of one big illustration, a haunted house.
I had a lot of fun coming up with each of the rooms and the characters, drawn with limited colours in a simple, flat style. Many people liked my spooky house, too, and I turned it into a screen print to sell in my shop.
Turning my idea into a picture book
At that point, I didn’t know much what to do with my haunted house or its characters, so I focused on my other projects and left my spooky book collecting (metaphorical) cobwebs in a drawer.
Fast forward a few years, and Libby at Rocket Bird spotted that illustration on my website and asked if I could write a story for it. I only had vague ideas, a general outline and a dream, but I said yes to the challenge. Lol!
I’ve made many picture books before, so I knew what I was doing.
WRONG! I didn’t.
Every new book is its own beast, and this one proved to be a big swamp beast with pointy fangs. And lasers. Okay, you get the idea.
I had just finished illustrating Sarah Driver’s Once We Were Witches series, and I guess I was still living in that universe (who wouldn’t? OWWW is a treat!), so my first sketches were a little too sophisticated. That style didn’t vibe with the spooky-cute haunted house. Boo!
So I got back to my sketchbook. The illustrations had to be simple and accessible.
Ness, my art director, patiently reminded me of my haunted house screen print (she actually showed it back to me during one of our Zoom meetings) and assured me that it had the right energy. There was no need to overcomplicate things!
But I must overcomplicate. I couldn’t just copy the style I used for my poster—I know, it’s my own work, so it’s not “copying”—because the cute characters that felt right for a screen print poster, somehow didn’t feel right for a picture book. They needed more personality!
But let’s just skip the part about the whole month of self-doubt and jump straight into my further attempts:
Several sketchbook pages later, I was finally happy with my Willa. And more importantly, so was my team at Rocket Bird.
After a few editing rounds, the story was in good shape and I got the go-ahead to start storyboarding. Life was good.
But not so fast.
Making the text and the pictures work together
Now the challenge was the layout.
The narrative was fast-paced, with all those fun monsters chasing Willa around the house. But there was so much going on in each scene, that it felt impossible to convey all the action with only fourteen spreads. I needed more pages! (or so I thought).
It was Ness who came up with the idea to design the spreads with panels, like in a comic book. Genius!
The comic book panels made the spreads feel more dynamic and fun. They really added more drama and helped the illustrations shine and tell the story.
The magic of screen printing!
This is my favourite part in the process of making a picture book: it’s the moment when the illustrations come to life and I get to play with inks, mix the colours, make a mess in the print room… it also means I’m closer to finishing the book, which is always very exciting!
I typically do a few colour sketches to make sure my colour palette works. Then, I mix my inks and prepare a set of stencils for a sample screen print—because I don’t know if the colours are working until I see all the layers of ink neatly printed on paper.
If the sample spread looks good and passes the vibe check, I can start making stencils for all the other illustration in the book.
For Willa’s Monster Muddle, I wanted a spooky and cute palette that didn’t immediately scream ‘Halloween’. Nothing wrong with purple and orange, I just didn’t want the book to feel too seasonal (and to be honest, I don’t love obvious colour schemes).
I settled (after a failed, winter-holidays-adjacent palette) on a punchy, limited colour combo: cherry red, mustard yellow, light purple, and black. Of course I had to have black.
I’d love to talk more in-depth about my screen print process, but that will have to be its own separate post (sorry!)—this one is already longer than a picture book text.
For now, I’m going to leave you with some pictures from the print room!
I hope you love Willa’s Monster Muddle as much as I loved making it!
Stay spooky,
Fabi 🙂
