Chris Judge is the politest emailer in the whole of Ireland. He also has an extremely nice studio at the top of many, many stairs. The windows look onto Dame Street, a happy looking plant is in the corner and his Beast books are arranged neatly across the back of the couch. He is a details man. Visiting him there I feel like I’ve been invited to play an after-school sport, or visit a particularly eccentric relative. I’m not sure why. I sit on a stool across from him and try to stop my nose from running, while we talk about Offset, audiobooks and the word “successful”
How do you feel about being called ‘Ireland’s most successful illustrator’?
Ah I don’t know about that – in Ireland there’s about 60 professional illustrators, I heard in Brighton there’s about 500, so it’s pretty contained. I don’t like the word ‘successful’. That’s sort of what my Offset talk is going to be about. I’ve been working freelance for ten years, so it’s about starting all the way at the bottom and working your way up and all the mistakes in between.
What mistakes did you make?
There’s a lot of hacking away. I had a design job when I left college, and I just kept wondering why I wasn’t drawing any more, and one of my friends was like ‘just do some illustrations’. I was in Smurfit’s at the time and they published U magazine and Irish Tatler, so I started doing small spots for them – I used to get paid 50 quid per illustration, and I’d be like “you’re going to pay me?!” I was 27 then and I just took the leap and quit. I went from having a decently paid job to being flat broke. So for the first five years I really had doubts about what I was doing.
Is that what you want to talk about at Offset? The main stage is it?
Any of my favourite Offset talks are people going “look at this stuff that I like” and showing you how they work, and how they make stuff, and shit that didn’t work and projects that will never see the light of day – that’s what I’d like to do. All of my favourite talks are about the experience – they’re very successful people and they’re describing these situations that you’re going through, and you can think, “OK, cool well he fucked up there, so I’m fine.” I hope people a few years behind me see me talk and kind of feel OK about what they’re doing.
Let’s talk about The Lonely Beast – how did he come about? He’s sort of your talisman.
I’d been doing a weekly thing with The Irish Times that was all I did and then suddenly Shane Hegarty stopped doing the article and so I was out of work. That was about 5 years ago, and I was like “Fuck!” I realized I’d really taken my eye off the ball. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me, it reinvigorated me. I did an exhibition in town, I started doing comics and came up with The Lonely Beast. It all fed into that. I’d been drawing him and versions of him since I was a kid – my favourite things growing up were Yetis and Big Foot. I used to take photos or buy horrible crap prints and drawing over them. And because he’s just silhouette he looks like he’s in the thing. I was at the very first Offset and I had starting working on the Beast. I was about eight pages into it. Oliver Jeffers, PJ Lynch and David McEen were talking about making children’s books and they were just saying “give it a go, and if it doesn’t work leave it.” So I legged it home and spent the next three months making the book – I made a mock up of it, sent it to a bunch of publishing companies, got rejected numerous times, and then finally one publisher was like “OK, let’s publish it.”
All the children’s illustrators I like seem to be a little bit like comedians – they’re really funny but there’s also something sad and really dark beneath it all.
Yeh definitely. I just loved Where The Wild Things Are growing up – it was so great having that in the ’80s – and Dr. Zeuss. Any research I’ve done shows that none of them have kids! And they’re all a little unhinged. I sometimes wonder if I’m unhinged enough to write children’s books.
How did you evolve into a children’s book writer and illustrator? Do you feel that’s where you belong?
I made four or five attempts at writing a children’s books and totally missed the point of a good story, a good idea and a good plot. A lot of people will drop in with an idea for a book and I’ll be looking at it and there’s nothing in it – no plot! I’d just suggest that they look at the books they love. They either have a really catchy idea or they’ve got a brilliant plot. There’re methods to writing stories. I really struggle there.
How do you come up with the stories?
Just researching and reading – lots of walking, that’s where the ideas come from. Picture books look easy to make but they’re really not – you’re limited with words and ideas.
What is the best thing about being broke and not getting the work you want? And what’s the best thing about being where you are now and getting a lot of the things you want?
The best thing about being broke is that if you’re hungry for it, you’ll do all sorts of crazy things. Totally Dublin was just setting up when I started getting into illustration, Mongrel was still around and I used to do a comic sketch for them – the money was irrelevant. You’re getting published and you’re making projects happen for yourself. Self-initiated stuff and how it feeds back into the commercial stuff, that’s what it’s about and that’s what I want to talk about at Offset. The best thing about being where I am now? When I first started, working agencies would draw up a pitch and often they’d have images and things they referenced that they wanted me to do or imitate. Now when I walk into an ad agency it’s my stuff they’ve got. They want me to do me!
Words: Róisín Agnew
