Chris Haughton

A while back I came across A Bit Lost, the first illustrated book by Irish illustrator and author Chris Haughton. As well as being a talented illustrator, (A Bit Lost has been hoovering up awards all over the world since it's release!) but he also seems to be a designer with a big social consience.
He has just finished a series of short animations for The Law Centre in the UK. They relate peoples stories and how they benefited from The Law Centre. The films are charming and engaging while keeping you focused on the narrative, something which these kind of films sometimes forget to do. This isn't the first time that Chris has dabbled in animation he has already created similar shorts for Fair Trade just pop over to his vimeo page to see more and to hear him talk about his work.


The Law Centres: Maureen's Story from chris haughton on Vimeo.

And if your reading this Chris,  my daughter's automatic response to seeing a picture of an owl is to say "Uh ohh!". The power of words and pictures!

Beautiful books

Books make great Christmas presents for kids! With that in mind we decided to take a trip to the bookshop to check what new books were on the shelves and I came across a couple of  beautifully illustrated books.

The first is called A Bit Lost and is by Irish illustrator and author Chris Haughton. It is a beautifully illustrated book about a baby owl that falls out of its nest and is helped by a squirrel to find its mum again, nothing new there I here you cry but the illustrations are breathtaking.  I have been reading it every night to my little girl and she lights up and says "Uh Ohh!" as soon as she sees the cover. I think Santa sack may be holding a lot of these this year!

Cover of A Bit Lost

What a beautifully drawn forest, look at those colours

Some spreads from the book, all images © Chris Haughton

The next one that caught my eye was a new illustrated version of Moby Dick. This isn't the full version that is part tale of man's vengeance and a history of whaling. This is an abbreviated version that has been illustrated by French illustrator Joelle Jolivet along with paper engineer Gérad Lo Monaco. The book is only about 10 pages but boy are those 10 pages good. I let the images speak for themselves…

The cover belies the surprise of the inside spreads!

A few spreads, they don't do it justice, if you get a chance pick up a copy.

Finally I came across a stunning book where the illustrations were not printed but laser cut. I wasn't really a lover of the story more of the technical execution of the book. The book is called Plein Lune and is by Antoine Guillope, I don't think it would last long in the hands of a 5 year old but maybe one to look at together.

Again you need to get your hands on this book to see it's true beauty