My Strawberry Monkey

Hi all, hope all is well, its been a while since I posted any updates. I've finally completed the first of many children's picture books, you may have seen a copy a while back, but I wasn't happy with the end results from the printers and there has been many, many changes. I have also designed the website in Affinity Designer which contains games and free activities for schools and parents. Ohhh My Strawberry Monkey is the series of books and are stories of friendship based around a cute, pink, lovable, but somewhat clumsy monkey who will certainly cause a few chuckles. The website is mystrawberrymonkey.com and you can find our first paperback here on Amazon If you have grandkids, kids, nieces or nephews go check this out! Allan Thompson

Ohhh My! Maisie and Strawberry Monkey spent the day down on the farm with Mr and Mrs Horse today. Looks like they had a fun time! What have your cheeky little monkeys been doing today?

Daddy's home! Daddy's home! Guess who's excited to see Daddy Monkey? Do your own cheeky little monkeys get this excited when Daddy comes home? Loving the the direction My Strawberry Monkey is moving in, not a path I expected when I started, but it's very exciting! Stay tuned for some more revelations and exclusive insights and something that I'm very excited about! Not sure how my tiny little brain comes up with all these ideas, I love getting inspired by my surroundings and creating images, and then analysing them: What do you see? What’s the setting? Are they young or old? Animals or human? What are they doing? From questions like these, I then create more images, then I start to tell the story based on the images, as they say a picture paints a thousand words. It’s definitely an alternative approach, however, this is what works for me! Allan Thompson

Here's a look at where Strawberry Monkey used to live and where he lives today! Yep, we've had the builders in...

I created the first book around the last image I posted, the 'normal' process of creating a book would be writing away using word etc, then spend time trying to find the right illustrator! I started my process by creating an image and turning that into a book. What's the setting? How did he get burnt? Does he learn? Why is Betty there? (the Giraffe) From questions like this I was able to create more images, then I started to tell a story. Here's images from the first idea I had for the book cover, then what it turned into and what it looks like today!

Here's one of my first ideas for the full Strawberry Monkey character and what he looks like today! I think one of the biggest challenges I face with this is, learning how to illustrate and use Affinity Designer at the same time, remember, I come from a video editing background, illustration is new to me. I used a body from a business card mock up after recreating the head for my logo of my freelance company. Still learning at this point and the thought of a book still hadn't entered my head. When I did get a bit more comfortable with the app, my original idea was to create these witty one-liners feat Strawberry Monkey, aimed at adults, with a goal of producing a comic strip weekly over on Instagram. Whilst I had used Facebook and Twitter the world of Instagram was new to me and I still had to work out the platform. The second image you see is, I think it's the first (nope, just checked, it was the 2nd) of the comic strips, I did make a post on here and remember a comment from @eejits, wishing me luck but from experience he also made me aware of how challenging it was keeping it up on a weekly basis. Yep, you were right @eejits! I think I posted about 9 images between April and September 2016, so much for my "weekly comic strip" It was around this point, October, November 2016ish I thought I would have a better reach aiming this at the preschool/early years world.

I think it was early 2015 that I discovered Affinity Designer and I started to play around with some ideas for my Twitter Header, I was trying to sell some wall prints on ETSY at the time and I also used the same font and logo for both platforms. Attached is then and now, only a slight difference!

So, I've decided to share where My Strawberry Monkey all started over the next few posts. Hopefully it will inspire and encourage you to keep going at what you're doing. Looking back at these images, clearly I was blind and didn't have a clue at what I was doing, still feel the same way, well, just a little bit. My Strawberry Monkey originally was the name for my freelance company back in 2014 ish, I was working on some motion graphics and video editing at the time. Before that I was called Saffire14 Media but I really wasn't happy with the name and was inspired to change by a company I came across called Fox & Velvet, my name just felt so boring in comparison. When I did change (I will share how I came up with the name in a future post) I needed a logo. I was just learning how to use Photoshop at the time and had no skills besides video editing & motion graphics. So I used my best friend, Google and found the image attached, I worked out how to apply a couple of filters to make him look pink and the second image was the result. This was before Affinity came into my life and yes downloading an image and using as my logo wasn't the best or right thing to do, I just really wanted to get going with an Idea and I never intended to keep this logo and as I said, I really didn't know what I was doing in Photoshop, it was so daunting and complicated to use. Let me be clear, at this point in my life I had no intention to make a children's picture book and preschool website or even a clue of what to do.

"Derailed Monkey" Thanks Patrick! It's so easily done...

Thanks, just corrected it. I totally missed that one!

Here's a little collaboration between me and a blogger, it's a really nice read, especially for those that have kids! @MattP @Chris B Click the link below to have a read, would love to know your thoughts! ➦ WHY CHILDREN NEED TO MAKE MISTAKES

In this lesson we set up a document inside of Affinity using guides to create bleeds. Then we go on to create a business card. Check it out and go create. https://youtu.be/tDxQaOVVWrg *Please note that this was created in 2015 using version 1.2, there have been a lot of updates since and the upcoming release of 1.7 will solve my work arounds for this tutorial. Allan

Thanks Totte, It took a while to get to this point... Keep at it, I'm sure you'll get there. Don't forget to share your progress on the forum as well!

Ohhh My! Looks like Monsieur Tiger is taking Daddy Monkey on a Daddy day trip around France! I've always loved the idea of combining Illustrations and photography. Besides creating this for bit of fun, it got me thinking about how I hadn't thought about culture and diversity when starting out on this journey. That's something I'm going to change as My Strawberry Monkey develops and continues to grow.

Thanks Affinity, Strawberry Monkey and the gang had a great time yesterday at HQ! So much so he's hijacked the building! #sorrynotsorry Was great to see you guys! @MattP @Chris B @Ash Allan

Always nice to see the physical copy. This just arrived in the post, the top book is our latest children's picture book which was just released on Amazon... All 3 books were created in Affinity Designer, looking forward to the transition over to Publisher for the next book...

Ohhh My! It's been an incredible journey so far and it's only getting better. I'm super excited to announce that the 3rd book is finally here and available on Amazon. Learn to count with Strawberry Monkey and his friends. Your own cheeky little monkeys will love the bright and colourful pictures as we learn to count, discover colours & understand shapes. So, if you have any cheeky little monkeys go grab you copy below! @MattP @Chris B Get your copy here: 123 with Strawberry Monkey

Say hello to the cutest little characters in the preschool world! This project has certainly been a labour of love and I'm loving the development of the characters!

Ohhh My! Super excited, I've just received proofs for my third children's picture book, hopefully there's not too many errors and will be released within the next few weeks. If you want to check out the previous books and what Strawberry Monkey is all about head over to the website mystrawberrymonkey.com. It's been an exciting journey so far, with loads of learning and development over the last couple of years...

Thanks Garry, you're right there have been a number of changes since I made this. Unfortunately I've stopped making tutorials for reasons I can't say, shame really as I really enjoyed them. Looking forward to the 1,7 release which will help a lot, the date on the original post is 2015, so hopefully it would be an indication that is is an older tutorial. Thanks for the suggestion on flagging it somehow, I'm sure I can edit the original post.

Thanks for the feedback, it was a number of years ago I made this, in my early days of using the app. I haven't made any tutorials for a number of years now.

I’ve been working away on my characters for my preschool/early years project. It’s developing nicely and I’ve made a lot of changes including getting rid of some characters that I wasn’t happy with. There are also a few new faces! Head over to mystrawberrymonkey.com to see the rest of this exciting project. If you have kids/grandkids there are some free games and activities for them to enjoy!

What else do you do on a rainy day but stay inside and have some fun! It's been an interesting journey so far and a lot of learns, three of the characters in this image were not around when I first started this project. Something I did learn along the way and made a conscience decision to change was the number of male characters, not sure why I had so many, it just seemed to be my default. Being aware that it's important to include female characters in the preschool arena especially as we live in a male dominated world has changed my approach to this project. Stay tuned for some more exciting updates as I continue to document the journey. Whilst you're waiting don't forget to check out the website for loads of preschool games and activities, mystrawberrymonkey.com all created in Affinity Designer of course! Allan Thompson

Thanks Calvin...