My Dead Bunny is my latest book. It’s a tongue-in-cheek picture book about a zombie pet rabbit. My illustrations took a lot of inspiration from movies.
I’ve already written about how one scene was almost an homage to The Shining, how the family home was inspired by a farmhouse from The Walking Dead and how a lot of the images use camera angles and clichés from film.
Today I’m writing about why the illustrations use a black and white (plus green) colour scheme.
My Dead Bunny is my latest book. It’s a tongue-in-cheek picture book about a zombie pet rabbit. My illustrations took a lot of inspiration from movies.
I’ve already written about how one scene was almost an homage to The Shining, and how the family home was inspired by a farmhouse from The Walking Dead.
Today I’m writing about how some illustrations were inspired by clichés and camera angles used in film.
My Dead Bunny is my latest book. It’s a tongue-in-cheek picture book about a zombie pet rabbit. My illustrations took a lot of inspiration from scary movies.
The book features a spooky house. If it looks familiar, that’s because it is – most American films about ghosts and ghouls take place in a house that looks pretty much like this. But which house is it inspired by?
Continue reading “Which spooky house influenced My Dead Bunny?”
One of my favourite parts of illustrating a book is helping to design the cover – you get to sum up the whole story in one image.
Here’s how the cover for My Dead Bunny came about.
I love seeing early sketches for a project. You can see how much work goes into a project before the final images are created, and it’s fun to spot glimpses of the final characters showing through in those first designs. I also like to imagine how different a story might have looked if the creators went with different designs to start with. It’s as if you’re seeing the story as it appears in a parallel universe.
Here are some early sketches for My Dead Bunny. Some spoilers below.
My Dead Bunny includes a scene in a hotel lobby. It seemed like a natural opportunity to reference the classic horror film The Shining. My idea was rejected.
Continue reading “How ‘The Shining’ influenced ‘My Dead Bunny’”
Thanks to Zac from bestfriendsarebooks.com for naming ‘My Dead Bunny’ in his Top 10 Picture Books for 2015.
I’m very chuffed for Bunny Brad to be in such good company.
This year has been another great year for picture books. There has been a good mix of laugh-out-loud picture books to read aloud to groups and picture books with lots of details to share one-on-one. Below is my list of favourite picture books from 2015 (some with links to my reviews). I’ve been doing lots of school visits in my library role this year and most of the books below have been real winners with the kids I’ve read them to. Some of them I didn’t get a chance to review (these I’ve elaborated on) but they have proved to be very popular.
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What a mental month! My Dead Bunny is finally out in the world after launches in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne.
Zac at ‘My Best Friends Are Books’ wrote this great review of my latest book ‘My Dead Bunny’. Cheers Zac!
So you like picture books about cute bunny rabbits who nibble on carrots or deliver chocolate eggs in a basket? Well this is definitely not the picture book for you. However, if you like picture books about gross, stinky, horrible creatures then this book is absolutely perfect for you. Meet Brad the zombie bunny in Sigi Cohen and James Foley’s new picture book, My Dead Bunny.
We first meet Brad when he is visiting his owner in bed one night and we’re told of how Brad came to be dead. Brad was just a normal, cute, fluffy bunny until the day he decided to chew through the TV cord and got electrocuted. The family bury him but the boy misses him and decides to dig him up and check on him. This is when Brad starts to cause a panic, scaring everyone silly, stinking up the house and making a…
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Here’s a post I wrote for Zac over at ‘My Best Friends Are Books’, talking about how I designed Bradley the zombie bunny.
Bringing My Dead Bunny to life – James Foley
www.jamesfoley.com.au/books/my-dead-bunny
I have never owned a rabbit, let alone a zombified one, so when I began working on ‘My Dead Bunny’ I had no idea how to approach the character of Bunny Brad. I knew plenty about zombies, having watched all of the Walking Dead and the original Romero film Night of The Living Dead; but I didn’t know how to draw a decent rabbit (or, as this book required, an indecent one).
In addition, I wasn’t sure what illustration style would suit the book; in the first few pages I needed to show a live rabbit being electrocuted, then coming back as a zombie, and I needed to accomplish this without making the audience want to stop reading, close the book, and burn it immediately. As you would expect, it was a challenge bringing a dead bunny to life.
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James Foley 
