Meeko and the Malefic Morphis
During the early nineteen-eighties, while visiting friends in the Hogsback Mountains of the Eastern Cape, the idea of realistic anthropomorphic characters in a natural environment, came to me. I imagined a small character hopping from stone to stone to cross a picturesque stream. How I would eventually achieve this, was the major hurdle.
Two years later I moved to Pretoria to study film production. During an interview I was asked why I wanted to make movies. I replied that I wished to express my creativity through the medium. After informing me that ‘there is no art in movies – only hard work,’ my interviewer hastily escorted me to the Art Department and in 1984 I began to study graphic design. At some time I discussed my idea of creating realistic imagery involving anthropomorphic characters with one of my lecturers. He rejected the idea outright, for reasons I find hard to understand to this day. I nevertheless benefited from the course and, in particular, from photography. My photography lecturer, a tiny German lady, proved to be a great inspiration to me for a very long time to come.
Many years later I imagined the same anthropomorph, drifting past the moon in a strange little craft. Armed with the loving support of my wife and daughter I left my full-time employment in pursuit of my dream. In no time at all I was writing furiously, creating a storyboard, designing characters and their garments, building models and photographing in the forests. I taught myself the complex photo-editing programs on my computer.
My library of images was juxtaposed into ideal settings in which the characters live out their tale. I developed my own techniques to transform lifeless models into living creatures filled with emotion. Hard potter's clay was transformed into soft clouds, water flowed where there was none! Each illustration is constructed of hundreds of objects and multiple layers. It was a constant process of trial and error – a journey of growth and discovery. Sometimes I worked on a scene for months but decided it had to be tossed into the digital bin. At least once a year, I polished the story and made the necessary changes to the affected images. Under normal circumstances, a similar project would require a sizeable budget and the collective skills of a creative team, a 3-D scanner and so forth, in order to achieve the desired results. I was compelled to set my work aside once or twice to supplement our savings, but I never abandoned my self-imposed task.
Fifteen years on, I trust that Meeko and the Malefic Morphis may successfully convey its theme of protecting our forests, our creatures, and, ultimately, our earth. I place my hope in educating future generations to appreciate what we have: a planet that is not disposable.
I would like the story to encourage eight-to-ten-year-old boys and girls to read. The short chapters are designed to draw them in without intimidating them, while the images are intended to captivate their imagination. I would be most happy if they could get lost among the words and images, allowing their imaginations to float freely in the spaces I have – on purpose – left for them.
This book is intended to bridge the transition from picture books to novels. The messages in the subtext are intended to touch the readers for the rest of their lives. How the universally acceptable anthropomorphic characters deal with fear, forgiveness, courage, good, evil, and so on, should ideally continue to set an example long after the words have faded.
Finally, part of my dream was to have the story presented so attractively that no adult could resist purchasing it as a gift for their child, and no book fanatic or collector could resist adding it to their collection.
Despite all my hard work and the artistry involved, I would take it as a great compliment if my images succeeded in convincing my young readers that all I had to do to produce them was to hide and position my camera, and wait for the right moment to depress the shutter-release button.
Johan Oosthuizen