I went straight from the CLPE London Children’s Book Swap event on Saturday to the Southbank’s Imagine Festival to see Nikalas and Tim perform at one of their brilliantly interactive children’s events based on their Mega Mash-up series (the series is also brilliantly interactive, and you’ll get a tiny sense of their lively presentation style as a duo from the opening video).
They provided a glimpse inside their studio and talked about how they worked together (perhaps it helps that Nikalas is right-handed and Tim is left-handed, so they can even draw on the same piece of paper) before drawing some of the characters and scenes from the books, with embellishments suggested by the audience. They then took improvisation and interactivity a stage further by coming up with a mash-up character to order based on “consequences”-style suggestions from the audience. They drew a head (a robot’s), a body (a zombie’s) and legs (old lady legs) to create Gooey Tom, who likes flying planes and who works as a cleaner.
Tim with Gooey Tom
You can find out more about Mega Mash-ups here and you’ll be able to see Nikalas and Tim at various festivals throughout this year, including Hay, Edinburgh and Bath. Keep an eye on the bottom of our home page to see where you can meet Nosy Crow authors.
