About the Idea
I am often asked where my ideas come from.
There are many ways that a book can begin - it can be a sketch of a character, a situation, a joke, a setting, but in the case of Duck in the Truck it began with the rhyme. By simply listing a series of words which rhymed with Duck I could visualise a story unfolding. First of all, the image of a Duck driving a truck seemed to me to have comic potential, then the words muck and stuck suggests what happens to the truck.
This scrap of paper shows when I first wrote down the phrases -
this is really where the whole Duck in the Truck series began.
It’s interesting to see that the ‘just my luck’ rhyme wasn’t used until Fix-It Duck where it became ‘what a lot of bad luck.’ A simple rhyme lead me to an insight into Duck’s character - by putting accidents down to ‘bad luck’ he avoids responsibility for all the disasters which happen whenever he is around!
About the Artwork
It’s quite interesting drawing a scene where nothing much is meant to be happening. It is one of those gaps where everyone is lost in their own worlds. Instead of large dramatic movements, interest is created by tiny details of expression and stance - for example the way that Duck is slightly hunched as he taps a feathered finger on his shoulder. Or how Sheep is pulling down his lover lip as he thinks (sheep are slow thinkers!)
In the preceding pages there has been a lot of activity and this spread acts as a change of pace - a breathing space before more action.