RESEARCH Jon Puglisi (Tarzan) and Chris Riddell

Chris Riddell is the illustrator who worked on The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart. After reading the book I truly believe the unique style of spindley, rough illustrations really made the view I had of the world spectacular. Unlike with most relationships like this between artist and author, I find one really over shadows the other. While the images are amazing and valuable to the writing, this is not so true with the positions reversed. I got the feeling the writing only provides more details for images in the book, almost like when you see the movie before you read the book. Not, in this case, was that a particularly bad thing, the images formed such a unique style and form that they shaped the way the story played out in my head. So in some ways, certainly not all, even with a novel, having both images and text can be too much.

The images themselves (left, below) are so delicate and so unique they have this preciousness to them, I have rarely seen anything so animated yet detailed.

John Puglisi is the man who created Tarzan's parent's treehouse (left), and while I have not touched on animations or films so much, seeing them as too simple in a way, finding this image has opened my eyes to the possiblity of further research. The precariousness of the structure screams fantasy and much like Riddell, it appears to be something to be looked after. The treehouse itself was meant to be the best of a bad situation for the family, but represented their future together. This comes through in the sheer complexity of the design and the (limited) luxury of the homemade house in the jungle.