The Great Cheese Squeeze
So how did this book come about? Well, I’ll tell you. Keith and I used to ride the train in to work at Big Idea Productions in downtown Chicago, and we decided to use that 2 hours a day for something good. We decided to write a children’s book. We came up with the basic gist of the story on the train, and then passed it back and forth until it resembled a fully realized story.
When it came to actually doing the illustrations we broke them out like this. Gruntly and Iggy live in a lighthouse. Gruntly’s bedroom and workshop are on the second floor. The kitchen is on the ground floor, and Iggy’s room is in the basement. I designed and built Gruntly and Gruntly’s workshop/bedroom. Keith designed and built Iggy and Iggy’s room. Then we both built the kitchen, which in addition to physically being between the two character’s respective living spaces, is also an amalgam of their two styles.
Then I did all the illustrations with just Gruntly and Gruntly’s room; Keith did the same for Iggy. The ones with the two of them we split up between us. We tried to make the environments look like the two characters built them themselves. The textures are hand painted; Gruntly’s furniture is kind of squat and rounded like he is, Iggy’s stuff is more spindly.
We have a lot more Gruntly and Iggy stories; hopefully we’ll get the chance to tell them!
Bryan Ballinger