Ben Newman
About Author
Ben Newman is an award-winning illustrator with a penchant for the bold and the bright, with vivid characters and 'Bauhaus fuzzy felt' style.
Having graduated from the University of West England, Ben didn't immediately dive into the creative market. He instead spent time developing his style while contributing to exhibitions and working on personal projects. After a couple of years, Ben decided he wanted to be an illustrator, so he set about learning how to integrate his hand drawn work into Photoshop, and starting producing posters for gigs.
Since then, he has written several books including Ouroboros and has collaborated with fellow Bristolian Scott Donaldson to create The Bento Bestiary. He has worked with a wide range of national and international clients, including Google, the BBC, the Tate and the New York Times.
Now, he is best known for the Professor Astro Cat children's book series published by Flying Eye books and written by Dr Dominic Walliman.
As well as freelance illustration, Ben lectures at universities and conferences across the UK and Europe, contributes to international exhibitions and is an occasional Art Director for Nobrow Press and Flying Eye Books.
Interview
PROFESSOR ASTRO CAT'S ATOMIC ADVENTURE
PUBLISHED BY FLYING EYE BOOKS
MARCH 2016
Following their hugely successful Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space book and app, authors Dr Dominic Walliman and Ben Newman (illustrator) have produced their second Professor Astro Cat's book, PROFESSOR ASTRO CAT'S ATOMIC ADVENTURE, this time focusing on physics.
The book is deceptively informative, using illustration, diagrams and text to introduce children to the laws of physics. Professor Astro Cat guides readers through each of the subjects, beginning with how we do experiments, through a range of subjects including forces, atoms, molecules, energy, electricity and light, and finishing with a brief introduction to quantum physics!
We asked co-author and illustrator Ben Newman to tell us more about Professor Astro Cat's Atomic Adventure:
Q: Why did you decide to explore physics in Professor Astro Cat's second book?
A: The subject of physics isn't as popular with children as Space.... yet. (see Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space). The idea of space is more accessible for children, who already have some idea of the sun, moon and the stars in the night sky. But they will be introduced to subjects like forces and magnetism at primary school, while physics, biology and chemistry are subjects they will encounter at secondary school.
Our challenge was to make physics exciting for children and to help convince adults - who might remember physics from their school days as something stuffy and boring - that it is interesting.
We started by looking at what was already available as an introduction to physics. The books we found were not the most inspiring which made us more keen to create this title - to make an alternative available. While there are some really nice books on nature, those about science are a bit dry.
Q: What areas do you cover in the book?
A: The book moves from explaining gravity to introducing quantum physics, with a raft of subjects inbetween from forces and magnetism to sound waves and electricity.
We began with gravity because that is such a fundamental part of physics and it also leads in to explaining how a scientist makes an hypothesis and how they go on to prove it; they ask questions and use tools such as time and distance to establish their answers.
We wanted to include information about quantum physics and particles to reflect where modern physics is; that is such a big part of modern studies into physics. Dominic, the author, is a physicist and I think if someone had told him about these concepts when he was this age, it would have been so inspiring for him. I hope it will be like that for children today.
Q: How do you and Dominic work together on creating the books?
A: When we are working on a book, Dominic and I will work out a running order for the book together. Dominic will then research and correlate the facts and find a way to explain the concepts. Then I will play with the text in layouts and adjust the text accordingly to make sure we are communicating the information in a fun way.
As this develops, I will come up with a context that we can use to demonstrate the concept. For example, when we are exploring molecules and how they behave when liquid, gas or solid, I will suggest, how about using a volcano to explain this? It's a fun way to work together.
Q: Where does Professor Astro Cat come into it?
A: The character Professor Astro Cat developed from a design I created for a record logo; someone had wanted a cat in a space suit. What I sent wasn't used but when we decided to have a narrator for our book on space, I thought about Professor Astro Cat.
Having a narrator helps to create a sense of coherence in the books and the character also moves the book away from being a text book. Professor Astro Cat's Atomic Adventure doesn't have an index or contents page; we don't want it to be used like a standard reference book. It's designed for readers to flick to any page and to get a general grasp of that scientific concept.
Having said that, if it is read from the beginning to the end, it would help a child to build up a knowledge of the subject. When the concepts get trickier towards the end of the book, it will feel more accessible if the reader has a grasp of the language used earlier in the book.
Q: Can you tell us how you went about designing and laying out Professor Astro Cat's Atomic Adventure?
A: While our first book on space was about simply presenting the subject, in Atomic Adventure we had to work harder to get the characters to interact with the subject matter and to help explain the concepts that way.
I began by revisiting some old science books because I love how they were designed, especially before they started using photography to illustrate concepts. Some of the photography used in today's books is good for detail but it's hard to get a sense of motion in the images.
Also, a lot of the subject matter in physics can seem quite abstract, for example atoms which are so small, or how forces work. So we had to find ways to illustrate these by hand, to make it seem less abstract. Where the concepts were more complex, like the pages on quantum physics, we wanted the pages to look very clean.
The book's design and colour is a big part of making it more accessible and eye-catching. A lot of the older science books used lithography with simple colour palets and quite bright, saturated colours. Our book on Space used a lot of black but because physics is a less accessible subject, I wanted the colours to be more bright and eye-catching.
Q: Do you have any favourite spreads?
A: I loved the pages that cover the amazing new materials being discovered - probably because I love the idea of being able to walk on the ceiling, or being invisible. These are the 'what ifs', based on what scientists are exploring now. Dominic is very good at explaining these concepts.
I created more of this book digitally than the first space book, which is half digital and half drawn. Atomic Adventures needed the text to be laid out first and then moved around to get the design right and we often had to edit the text down. But I also scan in hand made textiles and designs so it doesn't feel sterile and there is still a warmth to the design.
Q: Who would you like to your readers to be?
A: We know that our first book, Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space, is being used in schools for projects and workshops and I hope that will happen with this book, too, at KS2 and KS3. We are covering subjects that children will be familiar with from school, but we hope they will enjoy reading this at home, too.
We don't want to speak down to children so we are comfortable presenting some of the bigger ideas like quantum physics. We think that if you explain things in the right way, and deliver it textually and visually very well, then no subject is out of bounds.
Q: What will be next in the Professor Astro Cat's series?
A: We are currently working on the next book in the series, which will also be about science, and there will be an offshoot of Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space in the summer - so watch this space!
Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space
