There’s only a fortnight until the release of The Last Viking Returns on Sept 1st! This is my last behind-the-scenes post before then.
I’ve been focusing on one of the main settings in the book – a theme park called Viking World. There’s a moment early in the book where the family arrives at the park for the first time, and I wanted Josh to have a sense of awe. The text only says “Wow”, so I was free to fill in the rest.
My first sketch looked like this. Not terribly impressive, not awe-inspiring at all, but it helped me to figure out what goes where.
What I wanted was that sense of excitement and majesty that happened in the film Jurassic Park, when the characters go through the park gates for the first time. You might remember the scene:
It uses a worm’s-eye perspective (also sometimes called an ant’s-eye perspective). It’s a good viewpoint for emphasising how big something is compared to something else. It’s great for making your reader feel small and for creating a sense of awe.
So I changed the perspective in my sketches.
James Foley 