Neal Layton
Neal Layton lives in Portsmouth with his wife (who is also an artist) and their baby daughter. He completed a BA in Graphic Design at Newcastle, and a MA in Illustration at Central Saint Martins, London.
The walls of Neal’s studio are covered with pictures, drawings, scribbles, badges, photos, packaging and anything else that he finds inspiring. He purposefully uses all sorts of different media to create his illustrations (pens, ink, pieces of collage, a computer, bits of stick, old toothbrushes, dough, leaves) to keep them as fresh and spontaneous as possible.
Humour is also crucial within Neal’s work: “I like my work to be funny and stupid and nonsensical and meaningful and sensical all at the same time. Humour is a very powerful and multifaceted thing – and it’s fun, too!”
Though many of Neal’s illustrations are created in collaboration with other writers, such as the recent Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, Neal’s own self-illustrated books have also gained much critical praise.
Smile if you are Human is the first book he wrote and illustrated. It was based on an idea he had at college which combined his interest in animals and space travel: a young alien family come to earth to seek out this strange species they have heard about – humans.
He has had continued success with his own work and won the Bronze Nestle Smarties Book Prize in 2002 for Oscar and Arabella and in 2004 for Bartholomew and the Bug. In 2006 he won the prestigious Gold award for That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown written by Cressida Cowell.
The sequel, Emily Brown and the Thing, follows Emily Brown and her is old grey rabbit, Stanley, on an adventure to uncover why their newfound friend ‘Thing,’ is so scared of the dark. Neal has also written and illustrated a series of books for older children called Mammouth Academy following the adventures of two woolly mammoths, Oscar and Arabella, when they go to school.