Week 29 - Chris Riddell

We're nearing the end with the book taking a trip to Brighton to visit the legendary Chris Riddell.

Chris is an accomplished artist and political cartoonist for the Observer. He is well known for his collaborations with the author Paul Stewart on books such as Muddle Earth, and has also illustrated several picture books for younger children. He writes and illustrates Macmillan's awardwinning and captivating OTTOLINE young fiction series.

He has won many awards for his work, including the Nestlé Gold Award and the rare honour of two Kate Greenaway Medals. Chris lives in Brighton.

A huge thanks to Chris for taking part in the project! If you want to see more of Chris' work you can visit his website or follow his antics on twitter.

Week 16 - Ben Mantle

Week 16 finds us in Brighton at the home of illustrator extraordinaire, Ben Mantle.

Ben is an illustrator/animator who works mostly on Children's books.

He was born in Leamington Spa in 1980, and developed a very early interest in things artistic, designing programme covers for school productions and even coming first in his local library colouring-in competition. From there he went on to study animation at Surrey Institute of Art & Design, graduating in 2003.. He then gained valuable experience working on Tim Burton's “Corpse Bride” before moving to Brighton to work as 'Head of Animation' in a media company, focusing on Character and Background design.

He was also part of the Animation team creating the BAFTA winning 'Big and Small' CBeebies website. Since 2008, Ben has been working as a Children's Book Illustrator from his shared studio in Brighton and he also produces screen prints and digital artwork to exhibit.

If you'd like to know what Ben gets up to on a daily basis you can follow him on twitter and have a gander at his portfolio right here. And so we leave Brighton and head on to Henley on Thames to join the guinea pig drawing supreme, Holly Surplice. Until then...