COUNT DUCKULA

Count Duckula was created by British studio Cosgrove Hall Productions as a spin-off from Danger Mouse. In 1984, Nickelodeon acquired the US broadcast rights to Danger Mouse, which became a hit for the channel. After a few years, the Nickelodeon management came to Cosgrove Hall wishing to co-produce a new series. After being shown a number of ideas, the then head of Nickelodeon, Gerry Laybourne, spotted a picture of Count Duckula in Brian Cosgrove's office, and said, "That's the one I want".[4][5] As the series went into production, one of the writers suggested he become a vegetarian, which added an even sillier concept to the series.

A book cover for a Trap Door Activity/Sticker book I illustrated for (Harper) Collins.

A Duckula Shreddies promotion which contained mini comic books and a scratch card game.

Duckula spaghetti shapes! My illustration wrapped around the can.

MERCHANDISE

Just some of the may bits of merchandise I produced or Count Duckula. You can still find things on eBay but getting harder to find. I wish I’d kept hold of some of mine….

PRODUCING DUCKULA ARTWORK

Producing illustration for Count Duckula spin-offs and merchandise was quite a lengthy process. After sketching out my designs, I would draw Duckula and any other characters onto translucent drafting film with a brush and pen with ink. From this a transparent print was made onto clear film as a mirror image. This was then flipped over and actual cell paints as used by the animation studio were applied to the back of the print between the black lines. When dry, this was then flipped over to the correct orientation and place over a background which had been illustrated separately. I created the image below in this way for a French brochure for the character. You can see the effect of applying paint to the film, giving a flat appearance to the main colours used on the characters. This contrasts with the ink line and wash of the background. It’s this exact process that is used to create the animation itself except 24 separate cells like this are needed to create just one second of animation. A mind-boggling amount of work to produce 20 minutes worth of animation per episode.