Last year I finished on of the most ambitious ELT projects I've undertaken to date; Cambridge University Press' 'Life's Adventure'. Even though I'd worked on many ELT titles, over the many years, I was unprepared for the scale and ambition of this project. Multiple characters, with animation capability, travelling through a variety of environments and surrounded by a supporting cast, ranging from talking animals, circus performers, whilst surrounded by many friends and family along the way.
Spanning several titles we follow then Friendly family as they, run a family cafe on a riverboat, live on a farm and travel the world with an international circus. As we join in their adventures, we watch the children grow in age throughout the length of the course.
Of course, this not only meant the children were growing older before our eyes, but furthermore their adventures demanded a vast array of environments and an ever-changing supporting cast.

As with expect with such a large project, the process started with character design and development. However, unlike previous ELT material, these heroes needed to be animated afterwards. With this in mind, I designed each character with different mouth shapes and separate limbs.

After the character designs were completed and approved the real work began. In just under 18 months, with not many days off, nearly 500 illustrators were created, to populate the course.

After such a marathon, I was at first unsure of taking on such a large project again. I'd previously worked on other long-form projects, but this had been the longest. However, after seeing the material in print, all the hard work seems worth it and I look forward to getting my teeth into such a project, if it ever comes my way again.