Digital Painting, Fractal Design Painter (now Canvas), Strata 3D, and photoshop.
The story
Daydream Charlie is a Kids’ Book I wrote and began illustrating in 1995. It came close to publication by Little, Brown but ultimately the antagonist (Charlie’s Wld Imagination – the chubby stripey guy with the bulgy eyes and curly hat) was seen as too scary.
The concept of the book is that Charlie runs from his wild imagination who has whisked him off through the closet to a diverse world of jungles, deserts, seashores, the deep ocean, a prehistoric island and some snowy mountains until eventually they reach a medieval castle.
One spread features Charlie hiding, and readers are encouraged to find Charlie, who is hidden in the background. The alternative spread shows him running through a new environemnt, populated by slightly anthropomorphic, costimed animals and bubble-headed people.
As a bonus one can also try and search for a gecko, a bug, a musical instrument, a game, his wild imagination and his grandmother, dressed as a witch, as well as his grandmonther’s ginger cat on each double spread page. The alternate spreads feature Charlie running through a new environment.
Daydream Charlie begins with Charlie's Grandmother warning him to "keep your feet on the ground, or that wild imagination of yours will run away with you".
As the adventure proceeds, the reader is invited to find Charlie when he is hiding, and to locate in each picture (both running and hiding images), a gecko, an insect, a musical instrument, a game, Charlie's grandmother (Nana) dressed as a witch, and Nana's cat.
"Run, run, run", called the Toucan. So Charlie ran.
Daydream Charlie discovers that by keeping both feet firmly on the ground he can stop his wild imagination from running away with him.
He also realizes there just may be more to Nana than he thought!
A contest is proposed to reward the first ten readers who can correctly identify every hidden character or object in the book with a trip for four to the author's home country of New Zealand, a land where imaginations have run wild for countless years, and in which you can find almost every environment in the world crammed into two islands the size of the UK, where sheep outnumber people 20 to 1 and the gorgeous environments remain pristine, natural and largely unpolluted.
