Speaker 1: Rapunzel and the Evil Witch is officially available right now.
It is not in pre sale, it is not a
pre order, It is in the warehouse. You can just
go to rapunzelbook dot com and you get the book.
We have a new distribution system which has just been amazing.
People are getting their books in a few days. All
the pre sale and pre order books have already been shipped.
People already have them. And so this is the third
book where a lot of the symbolism is going to
come out. It's our celebratory tone, the third book in
the series of the Tales for Once and Ever, illustrated
by Heather Pollington. This is where the symbolism is going
to start to show, where the characters are going to
are going to repeat. So I'm particularly excited about this
book and the continuation of this series. And so go
to rapunzelbook dot com now and you can just get
the book. Get it in a few days. So thanks everyone.
Hello everyone, I'm here with Heather Pollington. As many of
you know, we are getting ready to put out our
third fairy tale book. We've already sent it to people
in a kind of quick presale and the reactions have
been really great. We're quite excited because in some ways
it feels like this book has been the culmination of
the last two in terms of storytelling, but also in
terms of the art. Heather is the one who's illustrated it,
and it feels like snow White was like practice for
this one. It's hard to believe because snow White was
so beautiful, but people are just being are amazed. I
have been just amazed at what has been going on
in the art of this book. So we're quite excited
to present it to you. And so Heather, thanks for
thanks for coming to talk about it with me.
Speaker 2: It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: This is Jonathan Pejel, Welcome to the Symbolic World.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really excited it's coming out because I think
I worked on it for about a year on and off,
so it's been a long time coming. So it's good
to see now that we're here and we can share
it with everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, one of the things we're trying
to do, and people I think can see in the
images is we're really trying to be deliberate about what
we're doing about the images, and so that's why obviously
it means that we can't just put these out every
month or something. We have to put out one or
two a month. But it's because we also want them
to be to be absolutely excellent in every way, and
so we spent a lot of time talking about how
to Let's say, one of my dreams from the very
beginning of the art that I was making wasn't in
some ways to integrate medieval and Byzantine style tropes into
popular culture. And so I was doing that, you know,
making t shirts, trying to figure out how to do that.
We did that a little bit in the first God's
Dog Cord, trying to have a few tropes and stuff.
And when I met Heather, I found an amazing partner
in this particular crime like she was all in and
she also had this she was able to see things
almost like through my eyes, and I could. I was
always amazed at what she was coming up with. And
in this particular book we really hit I think a
high note on that and I think it's going to
be an example for people of how to how to
do that in some ways. So we thought we would
go through some of the work that she's done, some
of the you know, some of the decisions that she's made,
and we're going to show you a lot of the
illustrations of the books. It's going to be great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so just before I show the images, I
just wanted to talk a little bit about my journey
to Rapunzel. So it was it was in twenty thirteen
when I was working for Disney and I did this
film called Into the Woods, and that was the main
set that I worked on, and I really fell in
love with the Rapunzel story as an hour because obviously
I'd read it as a child, came back to it
and got really interested in the design of the tower
and things like that. And then shortly after that, I
had my daughter and when she was about five, we
were reading Rapunzel together from the library, but it was like.
Speaker 2: A new edition.
Speaker 3: And the ending of that book, I think I told
you about it. Jonathan had the prince and Rapunzel not
getting married, but Rapunzel lived next door as his engineer
at the end, So I think, we know, that's kind
of an extreme, you know, solution. But what I was
finding I was kind of asking myself, why is this
happening in culture? Why are these fairy tales being messed
around with? And I think there was a couple of reasons.
I think the sort of the feminist criticism of these stories,
they did kind of have some justification in the way
that the stories were presented in the twentieth century, because
they tended to.
Speaker 2: Be, you know, the princess weren't very well rounded.
Speaker 3: They tended to be presented sort of through the male gaze,
as they would say. But I also found that a
lot of the other versions of Rapunzel that had been
around for the last ten years were kind of had
been kind of emptied out. And I had this vague
memory of childhood where the prince actually became blind and
it seemed to disappear. So there was two aspects that
were missing for me in this is around kind of
five ten years ago. The prince going blind had disappeared,
and the cabbage had kind of disappeared and remoplaced with
a flower or you know.
Speaker 2: Through various versions of the tale.
Speaker 3: And then surely after reading that the Rapunzel as engineer
I happened to on one of your videos called the
Symbolism of Hair, and I was just really impressed with
how you'd managed to recover the sort of traditional tale
but also kind of answer to the modern can concerns
with some of the fairy tales, and I thought.
Speaker 2: That was really enlightened.
Speaker 3: So I was I was intrigued by your reading of Rapunzel,
and then obviously when we started working together, this opportunity
came up, and I really wanted to see if I
could kind of speak to what you were doing in
a visual way, therefore kind of uncovering like traditional ways
of presenting story, you know, from from medieval artists, from
my iconography, and see if that could answer to some
of the kind of issues today in the sort of
in the visual landscape that we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I think that your
concern is really the same concern that I have, which is,
I do think that some of the feminists and postmodern
critiques of the twentieth century version, like you said, like
some of the even some of the Disney stuff, wasn't
completely off. You know, those movies are still beautiful, but
they do have a tendency, and the fairy tales are
far more subtle. I think the old fairy tales are
far more subtle, And in our version of Rapunzel, we
really have the two characters going on their own transformational arc,
and they both in some ways have something lacking in
the way that they're being and the way that they're acting,
and they have to kind of recover. They kind of
spend and the princes even more in this version. In
some ways, the prince in our version is a little
weak and is a little and isn't really doing what
he should be doing, and for that reason, he kind
of has to He has to learn a pretty rough lesson,
you know, before they're able to be together. And that's
why both both it's like as if they both have
to learn a lesson before before they come together. And
so yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I mean, I I didn't.
It's funny because the story of Rapunzel, the Disney version,
the Tangled version, you know, they there are some things
they did in that which were which were good. There
were some ideas that they had in order to kind
of make the story makes sense that we're fine, but
there are also a lot of decisions that made it irrelevant.
Like the question of hair in the story was just
lost its meaning. You didn't even know what the meaning
of her hair was. In the Tangle version, they kind
of use it as a plot device. You know, she
does all these funny things with it, but it lose it,
It lost it's it lost its sense because the prince
isn't even there because he's attracted to her. He's there
for accidental reasons, and he's there because he wants to
steal the crown all this stuff, and and so what
what's going on? Like what is the hair? Actually? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I was also interested because one of my favorite novels
is called it's called Jane Eyre and it's seen as
a kind of early feminist novel in English literature, and
that has actually the same pattern in it that the
male protagonist has to become blind before he can actually
marry the female protagonist. So it's interested in this idea
that seems to be elsewhere, you know, in the kind
of psychology and the storytelling and how that might relate
to Rapunzel. So I just noticed that and thought there
is a connection, and you seem to you seem to
answer to all of these things. So that was really exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's I mean, and it's like this story
just it just tags on in some ways to the
Snow White story in a really interesting way. It's like
the opposite of Snow White, but a lot of the
same tropes and questions are being dealt with, like the
question of superficial beauty or the question of external beauty
and the difference between internal beauty. And there's also the
fall and the thorns. Like there's just so much going on.
Yeah that you know, we in some ways people will
see when they read it, they'll see it. I even
treated the story of Rapunzel and snow White almost as opposites,
almost as here's an excess on one side, here are
excesses on the other side, and how they they answer
each other. Definitely excited to see how people people reading
it and seeing what they think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think that you explicitly explain that to me,
but we kind of instinctively did some things in the
visuals that that helped that association.
Speaker 2: So hopefully people will find that as we go along.
Speaker 1: Shall we have a look at some right, Yeah, some
of the images.
Speaker 2: So here's our title.
Speaker 3: As you can see, it's in the same style as
the as the Snow White book.
Speaker 2: We did. It was important we had that continuity, and I.
Speaker 3: Just wanted to share these really early sketches that I did.
I don't normally show sketches, but I think it's important
to see the the you know, the narrative of making
a book like this, because people always see the finished version,
but things can start quite loose, and I think my
intention here was really just to find the characters. You know,
we see now Rapunzel here as she is in the tower,
and then I was figuring out how she might look
at the end of her arc. And then also you know,
just doing some samples on the prince's hair and his
crown that has some other details from snow White Stress
because he's actually her son, So figuring out all those
details without worrying too much about the sort of illustration compositions.
And the biggest challenge in this book was developing the witch,
because she's obviously a character that's come from the snow
White Book, but we're seeing her many years later and
she's very much transformed, and just very loosely thinking about
how she might have changed, how her kind of vanity
and love of jewelry might be transformed into you know,
new styles by her situation because now she's a witch
living in a cottage. She doesn't have access to duels anymore,
so she's making necklaces from bones. She still has her
head dress, but it's it's a different shape and it
has it's ornamented with like a spider's web.
Speaker 2: So we're just trying out.
Speaker 3: All those ideas at the beginning in a in a
very loose way.
Speaker 2: And then, like I.
Speaker 3: Said before, I definitely wanted to look into the same
kind of styles that we've we've used in snow White,
and largely because you know, in the style of iconography
offers you a series of device that is for telling
stories in a very direct way. Like you know, you've
talked many times about how you know, perception is primary
and iconogally tends to lend itself to kind of an
aesthetic of perception. So we can we can play around
with scale, we can play around with color, we can
play around with different perspectives to tell our tale.
Speaker 2: But obviously, with the icon tradition.
Speaker 3: That is intended for a particular purpose, and we needed
to find something that would work in the world of
fairy tales. So in my research I have and upon
the Palek tradition. And I told you about it straight away,
didn't I It was very exciting to discover and I'm sure,
if there's any any listeners who familiar with Russian art
will be very familiar to them. But the story of
Pelek is that it was a place in Russia that
had a huge history of icon painting, an amazing tradition,
but in the twentieth century, for various weeks or political reasons,
they weren't able to make icons anymore. So they turned
their skills to making lack of boxes with these incredible
fairy tale illustrations on and there's many, many beautiful examples.
So I looked to that initially because it was the
same rules as iconography, but it was a much more
kind of florid and whimsical style that was suitable for
a kind of much more fantastical universe that we were
trying to create.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was. In some ways it took the basic
tropes of iconography, the way that space is laid out,
you know, the way that the clothing has done, lighting
is done, but almost as if it was in a dream.
You know, there there is this, you can see it
in the images that you picked. There's there's a whimsic
and there's an excess that which is made possible. You know,
all of these mountains ranges also all all of a
sudden become like stretched out. You know, there's there's all
this smoke and the clouds and it's really beautiful. You know,
some of the some of the solutions that these artists
came to or are really quite stunning, and so how
can we integrate it? And it was for me it
was important that we tried to integrate as much as
we could from that style, but also keeping some of
the best aspects of nineteenth early twentieth century illustration, you know,
more sensitive faces, because in icons there's less emotion that
can be read in faces. We're so so used to
reading emotions and faces in Western art that I thought
we it's sessly for children's books, we kind of need
to still see something in the faces. And you'll see,
I mean, Heather, it came to some pretty some pretty
beautiful synthesis here. Also, the thing we need to say
is that from the moment of snow White to Rapunzel,
you started studying actual icon painting, and it made a
difference in terms of some of the solutions you were
able to tap into because you started to master some
of the especially some of the clothing tropes. You know
some of the folds because it's very complex, It's not
it takes a while to be able to master those
those those styles.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been studying for nearly three years now with
Aiden Hart, and yeah, I mean it's it's been an
amazing experience and like you say, just a much through
that course, a much better understanding now of and getting
familiar with the language.
Speaker 2: It just made it easier to draw.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I've been a bit on a bit on
a bit of a journey myself. So but I'll show
you the first piece I did. So each of these
books has what we call a frontispiece, and I wanted
to start with that because again it's it's it's the
first thing that you see in the book, and it
kind of establishes the tone of the book, the character,
and it was a way for me to, you know,
see what's the style of this thing. And you'll see
on the left is like my first sketch for the
frontis piece. And I've been looking at lots of perleect
books and I almost made her hair into ornament and
then afterwards I realized that actually the ornamentation went too far,
and I kind of lost a little bit of her character.
So what you see on the right is a solution
of that, and it's it's it's somewhere between mannerism and
naturalism in terms of the figures.
Speaker 2: And then we've got.
Speaker 3: More stylized ornament on the outside, because as Jonathan was saying,
it was kind of important to keep the figurative aspect
to the actual characters in there in terms of their
facial expression, but in terms of what was surrounding it.
But we could go really stylized. So that was the
first image that I made, and Jonathan really liked it, so.
Speaker 2: I basically carried on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love how we went to the to
the kind of anthropomorphic sun and moon too. That's a
great that's such a great thing in the Palaque images.
I mean it's there in icons, but in the Palaque
images it's quite remarkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: I really loved those, and I was able to integrate
them into most of the images. So you see that
how the sun had been change over through the different scenes.
Speaker 1: And I love how you did this intertwining of thorns
and hair. It's such a great it's such a great
Sometimes Heather comes up with these solutions that I never
would have thought of, and when I see them, I'm like, oh,
this is so right. It's just like it's just perfect.
Speaker 3: Okay. So this is the opening page, and I was
looking at this this morning and remembered actually that the
image that you see on the left here was actually
taken from a mosaic in Sicily of Adam and Eve
after the Fall. And obviously, like I don't know how
conscious you were of this, Jonathan, but I think when
I read this opening passage, I couldn't help thinking about it,
because you've obviously got a situation where you've got a woodsman,
they're poor, she's pregnant. You know, it's it's it's exactly
like Adam and Eve after the Fall. So I look
to that, to that image, and then you know, you've
obviously also got a garden, a snake in the form
of the witch, and.
Speaker 2: Like a fruit in the form of the cabbage.
Speaker 3: So even though there wasn't there was an echo of it,
if you know what I mean of that scenario that
I that I wanted to kind of hint at, maybe
in a subtle way. So and obviously here as well,
you see the witch for the first time and so
this is moving on from sketch how she's how she's
transformed through time.
Speaker 1: And some of the things to call out, because at
first we don't say it straight out who she is.
We kind of if you're paying attention, you'll discover who
she is as you read the story. But you know
some of the visual decisions, for example, to use the belt,
like the belt was one of the things you said
you decided to do to If you paid attention to
the snow White book, you recognize that kind of free
flowing belt from one of the from one of the
queen images. So and the same with the little the
little cabin at the top, you know, the little Dwarf's cabin,
and so again we don't say that it's the dwarves
cabin in the story. But for the children, we're hoping
that the kids that are attentive will start to pick up.
I already saw someone on x posting images of their family.
They read Rapunzel and they said, we finished for Punzele,
and we all immediately went back. And you can see
the kids, you know, with like puzzled looks, going through
snow White and through Jack trying to trying to because
I guess they had this sense that there was something
going on, and then going back and finding all the details.
Speaker 2: So it's fun so good to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people are actually looking for it because there is
quite a lot there, I think, between the books. Okay,
so the next image, so this is kind of like
the eating of the fruit moment where he's picking the
cabbage and at this point we got the witch in
the background as a shadow because he can't really see her,
and then his wife dreaming of the cabbage, and we
see the little baby that's growing inside her. So this
I think this one was influenced by more by medieval manuscripts,
you know, because it's got that decorative border and I want,
I really wanted to show the garden kind of elevated
and flat here behind him.
Speaker 2: So it's quite a weird composition.
Speaker 1: But it's such a great solution. I mean, people looking
you can see the border of the garden comes down
and then becomes in some ways, you know, kind of
flips and then becomes horizontal and then becomes the bed
in which he's sleeping. It's such a such a simple,
elegant solution, but it's quite it's quite powerful. Yeah, and
so and then the trope is the trope for us
was really emphasizing in some ways the fact that it
really is a sin that the that the man and
the woman are engaging in, and a sin in the
technical sense, in the sense that the woman in some
ways has this desire for the cabbage, and even though
they start to see the consequences, they start to understand
what the consequences might be of them taking this cabbage,
they do it anyways, and then they kind of have
to pay the price.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And I think if you look at the flowers on
the outside, I drew them in a way that kind
of suggested alarm, like they're kind of prickly and like
spreading out because something uncomfortable and bad is happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the things I wanted to catching this,
which you know, when you read these stories often there
are some narrative elements that aren't to me, that are
there hidden in the story, but they're not made explicit,
and so sometimes for modern readers you can't actually see
the narrative, the narrative logic. So one of the things
that I did in my book is basically the witch
when she says, if you take my cabbage. I'm going
to steal your child. It's as if she doesn't totally
mean it. At the beginning. She's just saying that to say, like,
get away from my cabbage patch, and if I see
you again, I'll take your child. But then he comes back,
and then she thinks, what this guy's willing to trade
his child for a cabbage. What a horrible parent, So
I should take their child. I should take the child.
I would make up much better parent than that. Obviously
she's wrong, but you can almost see there's I wanted
to like, I wanted you to be able to see
how in her from her point of view, the logic
of taking her child was arrived at you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The next one is her eating the cabbage. And
I think I mentioned to you I was drawing this
when it was lent and I was and I was fasting,
so I was really thinking about that when I was
drawing her just like laying into these cabbages, and I
tried to put that look on her face, you know,
like she wasn't really aware of what she was doing.
And and we have the detail of her covering the
the bump with with the cabbage because it's almost like
she's forgotten about the pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great because with the previous image you see
the baby kind of through her belly, which is a
which is a iconographic trope that you see often in
some of the images, especially at the when when Mother
of God meets her cousin and you see like the
two babies kind of greeting each other. And so I
thought it was a great It was a great idea.
And this is so simple. Just show the cabbage in
front of the baby and it says everything you need
to say about what her decision is. Yeah, this is
one of my favorite images. I have to confess I.
Speaker 2: Did this about four times.
Speaker 3: This is about the Yeah, this is about the fourth
attempt I think to get it right. And I think
you had asked me to get the balance right between
kind of creepiness and tenderness, which is quite difficult. But yeah,
I wanted her to be, you know, nurturing that baby
in a way.
Speaker 2: But if you look at the the.
Speaker 3: Witch herself, you know, the baby is playing with this
bone necklace which is pretty sinister, and then you've got
this owl in the background, which is obviously pretty terrifying
coming towards you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with the blonde hair that it just works
so well. You just really see she does look like
she's holding this little golden cabbage, because that's how she
kind of cause her like my precious golden flower, and
she kind of plays with the Rapunzel name and the
way you did the hair, and this one really really
works well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you've got these cabbages in the border, and
then so you've got one, two, and then three is
the actual hair itself. They're almost like the same motif triangleing.
And this is also the introduction of a Rapunzel really
being just seen for her hair, because that's what's going
to happen in the story. And the witch starts that
she sees the golden hair and that's what she's looking at,
and then you know, the prince continues seeing the hair.
So yeah, I wanted to establish that idea early on.
So the next one is the one thing I.
Speaker 1: Want to say maybe for people to notice, is that
this in this book, Heather really tried to make an
effort to integrate the pages together. You know, in the
snow White Book we had sometimes little details on the
text page, but for this one, there really is a
thought of how the ornament on the left page and
the ornament and the image on the right page go together.
You'll see in some of them that it's actually quite
integrated in really interesting ways. So yeah, that's also one
aspect that really increases this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think I really tried to do that.
Speaker 3: In fact, I think I really learned from what Elouise
did in Jack, you know, because she's so good at
doing spreads, and I really wanted to continue that into
this book in a slightly different way, in a more
kind of ornamental way, but in an approach it was
more holistic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is this is for people. So
in some ways, what we have this progress in the
story where in some ways the witch obviously keeps taking
Rapunzel more and more into the forest, kind of more
and more hidden, and we kind of have it in
apps where she builds this this this little tower at
the beginning, this little kind of tall house at the
at the outset, and this is the this is the
first one, and she she creates this circle of magic,
circle of protection around the house, which is what makes
her hair grow. Because that's also an issue with the
story in Rapunzels that obviously fair tales are great because
they don't have to you don't have to explain it.
But for modern readers, like why does she have long hair?
For goodness sake? You know, And so we kind of
made the fact that she's the witch is trying to
protect her with this dark magic, is also making her
hair grow, which analogically makes sense because that's what hairs for, right.
Hair is there to protect you. It's there to protect
your your your body, and so it makes sense that
her hair would be would be growing, you know. And
in some ways, the fact that she's trying to isolate
her and protect her is creating this thing that she
has which is also going to attract at the same time,
you know, it's doing both at the same time. So
it's quite deep.
Speaker 2: Right, and it's cooled the circle of protection.
Speaker 3: But we see also the witch's belt is going around
the circle, and that's another reference to snow White, isn't it,
because the belt was one of the things that.
Speaker 2: You know, kind of strangled her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so it's that thing how protection can be oppressive.
So it's it's it's it's a kind of guys, isn't it?
The circle of protection?
Speaker 1: And I love this image I love this image. There's
there's something also with the colors in this particular book.
I think the color is the coloring is it's more subtle,
like there's a subtlety to the coloring. And yeah, this
is really beautiful. And I think the fact that you've
also mastered a lot of the iconographic flowers and iconographic
leaves and everything, it makes all of the all of
the trees more like ornamentation than even in a way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so here's another tree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this image. This is Yeah, I love that.
When my daughter saw this particular image, they really I
don't know why. I mean for me, I mean, it's
a beautiful image, but I've shown several my both daughters
really love this image. They really kind of wow. And
there's something dreamy about about what's going on here too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's a lesson more thing because with this
particular passage, we meet a boy called Zoran, who's not
he's not a really big part of the story, so
I didn't really want to show him because we're going
to see the prince later. So it was a bit like,
how can I illustrate something without really showing it? So
my solution was it's to kind of portrait of a
tree and have the characters just kind of tiny and silhouette.
So so yeah, I'm kind of surprised people like it
because it doesn't it doesn't really show the action that much.
But maybe it's more intriguing in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's something. There's something about it, and I
think it's also I mean, it comes close to what
it is I wanted to suggest in the book, because
one of the things I wanted to suggest in the
book is in some ways, Rapunzel has this moment with
this boy who takes her up into a tree, and
so she kind of goes up high and then she
also has but she experiences it as a kind of freedom,
you know, a little taste of freedom, and then the
Witch basically uses that and then turns it into a prison.
She's like, oh, like, you like going up in the tree,
did you. Well, I'll put you up somewhere, you know,
where you'll always get to have the same view. It'll
be wonderful, you'll be you know, And so she kind
of flips her her desire for freedom and that experience
of elation into a prison.
Speaker 3: That's right, So now we're seeing the inside of the prison,
and yeah, I think this one started. It's obviously an
iconic image from Rapunzel. You've got to show inside the tower,
But originally I did it in the daytime. And then
I think when I was coloring in I was listening
to a Martin Schure book Martin Shaw, and it was
called I Think Smoke Hole, and he was talking about
this mythology of something called the moon Palace, and he
described it as a place where you can see everything,
but there's no connection, and there is something about that
that I just thought, well, that's what I'm drawing. So
I decided to turn it into the moon Tower, and
I changed it into kind of nighttime, and I think
it really suited the mood that she's isolated and lonely.
And it's also a portrait of, you know, an inclination
that you see a lot these days, where people want
to raise their daughters, you know, in isolation, you know,
with an emphasis on the intellect and reading, but not
actually giving them access to life experience. And so I
definitely wanted that to come across.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is really I think where you start
to see there's an image in the snow White Book
where you see snow White, you know, as she's being punished,
you could say, like her punishment is to be cast out.
And you see her in the house of the Dwarfs,
you know, in kind of rag type clothing, and she's
cleaning the house. So she's working hard. She's in this
little kind of dwarf prison, and it's so wonderful to
see how it's the opposite of this, you know, in
this one. You know, she's basically she's been now put
because she's not a princess, right, Rapunzel's not a princess.
She's a commoner. But now she's put in this beautiful
you know tower, you know, everything she wants, you know,
she's in this beautiful kind of castle like tower. Uh,
and she has you know, she has all of these
these externals, but she's she's lonely and so and she
has nothing to do, and so she's like the really,
it's just I just find it fascinating. And she she's
wearing beautiful clothing and she's got her beautiful hair. So
it's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a really good point about snow
White because.
Speaker 2: That connection to the earth.
Speaker 3: And so in this case, I drew a Punzel with
she's not even touching the ground, like she's actually got
her feet on her own hair. Yeah, and she's she's
elevated up away from the world.
Speaker 2: Basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. Just simple solutions that you've done
where you have at the bottom of the image people
can look you kind of have the hair swirling around her,
and then you actually put the trees there as if
like her her hair is like on top of the trees,
and so it's this is I mean, these that's why
iconographic type images, you know, especially if you use them
with a little more fantastical you know. I mean, if
you're making images of for religious purposes, there's a limit
to what you can do. But if you use the
logic of the iconographic image and then you push it
a little more, you can come to some really wonderful
formal solutions that are have so much narrative depth.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean it's just as a lang, which it's
just really a gift to work with, which is why
I love drawing in it.
Speaker 1: You know, which is why we people. I mean, I
think most people watching this are already convinced of this.
But you know, when I sometimes describe the Renaissance as
almost like an artistic decadence. This is what I mean
is that it's actually quite limiting. It limits what's possible
instead of opening it up. Whereas the Medieval style had
so much possibility in terms of how you could use
images in order to render something, and then the Renaissance
just like narrows it to the snapshot type of composition.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's all completely story driven.
Speaker 3: So any point you want to make, you really have
the tools there to do it, and you're not limited
by naturalism. I mean people will have noticed seeing all
of these images. Really, I don't largely use naturalistic color.
The color tends to be more driven by emotion or drama.
Some some of it's naturalistic, but but but yeah, not much that.
The next one I think is probably the most naturalistic
image that I did, and that's the green forest.
Speaker 2: And this here we see there the external.
Speaker 3: Tower for the first time, and this is really drawn
as the prince's point of view.
Speaker 2: So he's encountering Rapunzel.
Speaker 3: He's in the he's in the forest, and all he's
seeing really is the hair and the witch and the tower,
and he's hearing her voice. And so I've done some
musical notes there too, to indicate that he can hear
the music. And the design of the tower took it again,
took a few goes, because the Rapunzel tower is quite
iconic in this kind of timber, you know, German design.
We see it in lots of places, and I didn't
want to do that, and we we discussed it and
I ended up doing like a mother of pearl room.
Speaker 2: At the top.
Speaker 3: But I think the whole actual, the whole design was
influenced by the Jack and the Giants book, because you've
got like three steps there of articulation. You've got like
the rough rocks, and then you've got the stones, and
then you've got the kind of you know, articulated mother
of pearl part of the top.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's so amazing because we didn't talk about
this at all, Like I didn't say, hey, why don't
you make the tower using the same structure as in
the Jack book as these three tiered kind of heavens.
And then but then it makes so much sense, like
because for those who haven't read the Jack Book, the
final castle that he goes to is like this golden
mother of pearl crystal castle, and so you can see it,
especially in the image you showed before and the next
one we'll see, like you really get this sense that
this is what's what's going on here. So it's because
I also make in the Rapunzel book, you know, I
make a reference. I connect the harp to Rapunzel, and
so there's a little bit where in some ways there's
the story of Jack is being told in the Rapunzel book,
and you realize that there's a connection between the Singing
Harp and Rapunzel. So it all just makes so much,
so much sense that you did this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yeah, interesting you say about the singing Heart
because the window there, which is a circular window, is
kind of like the voice, you know, like a mouth,
and so that explained the design of the window as well.
So it's really about music and height and hair. So
in the next image we it's when the Prince encounters
Rapunzel for the first time. And I had a feeling
here that I wanted to do a kind of repeat
image of the one I did in snow White, where
snow White encountered the Prince in the palace and they
met each other and you saw different narratives. He was
climbing up the ivy they were meeting in her room,
and I wanted to do I loved the format of
that and thought, wouldn't it be great to do something
like that and Rapunzel. But with the Rapunzel tower, it's
so small. I felt like I had to kind of
expand the architecture and kind of like a net like
pull it out, and then also make that window much
bigger so you could really see what was going on.
So this is quite a fantastical layout really, and showing
the kind of simultaneous narrative of them meeting maybe over
you know, twenty four hours, and they encounter each other,
then they meet, and then in the last one it's
obviously they've fallen in love. And Rapunzel at that point
you can't can hardly see any of her except her hair,
and that's really what she becomes to the Prince from
this point on.
Speaker 2: That's what involves in love.
Speaker 1: With Yeah, and I mean I love how again. In
terms of the difference between Rapunzel and snow White. In
some ways, snow White, you know, she warns the Prince
that it's not the time like this is this is
too soon when he tries to kiss her, but Rapunzel
in some ways, you know, she's so alone, like it's
just so hungry. You know, the Witch has made has
put her by trying to overprotect her in some ways,
she's put her in more danger of the very thing
that she doesn't want to happen.
Speaker 3: That's why she falls in love with the first man
who comes away, and she's got no tools to discern
whether he's suitable or not or what his intentions might be.
So yeah, she's she's she's more vulnerable than she would
have been otherwise.
Speaker 2: I think the next one is.
Speaker 1: By the way that image, it's that's the most the
one before that, it is the most It's like the
most Disney. It's the most Disney one, like in the
sense that it is like I think, I think I
love in some ways how because we know in the
story that we also show the negative elements of this
kind of romantic moment. We both show how it comes
together at the end, but it's also there are some
challenges and difficulties. I think it means that it was
it was great to show it though, Like there is
something that every eleven, like ten eleven year old girl
will look at this and be like, oh wow, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: I think when I first read the story, I knew
there was some dark moments, and I did really want
to grasp the opportunity of doing something that was light
and romantic, and you know, just for the contrast, but
also to have that moment, because you know, many of
us have a romantic soul and want to see that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that's okay. I think that's what's
great about these stories that in some ways you you
you can show something in its fullest sense and then
also then show the consequences in the fullest sense, and
like you can. I think that's what's great about it.
It's it's not just one thing. There are all these
things happening in the story. And even you could think
that a child or even adult reading it in different
moments or different moods would pick out certain things more like,
would would be attentive to certain things more than others
and would come at the end and like my wife
read it, it was super interesting and she said, oh,
there's some elements in the story that are kind of
similar to our relationship, let's say, And I thought, yeah,
I think you're right, and she told me what it
was and I'm like, oh, that's not the same as
what I thought. You know, I had other other tracks
that I thought it was similar to our relationship, but
I didn't like, I didn't push it because I thought
it's all there, like there's all these things that you
can that you can pull and you can see as
reflecting and the same could happen with snow White or
with Jack. You know, there there are these threads that
you can notice that they connect to your to your life.
So I love that absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The next one is I mean that that the composition
of this is quite bonkers, but I just knew.
Speaker 2: New elements that I needed to have in there.
Speaker 3: And so the idea is, it's the it's the Prince's dream,
and you can see again like he's grasping the hair
and he's covered by the hair because that's how he's
perceiving Rapunzel. But the reality of what's happening in that
window is quite different. And she's obviously on the threat
from the witch.
Speaker 2: The witch is.
Speaker 3: Closing in on her and so are the thorns, but
he's not done anything about it yet. So yeah, I
was bringing all those two things together and the other
thing for those that are attentive. Is that he you'll
notice he's sleeping in the snow white castle.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, see I didn't even totally catch that, okually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you might recognize that that set up from
my white book.
Speaker 1: So yes, yeah, and that's for us that it's all
there in the story. What's wonderful in the Rapunzel story
is that you can also show the image of the
of the man who is a little too taken up
by externals and then also isn't willing to make the
right sacrifice is you know, And so that's how we
present him that he should have rescued her from the tower,
like he should have figured out a way to do that.
And he is a prince, after all, he probably has
the means to get her out of the tower, but
he just kind of just keeps going to see her,
you know, and then is yeah, and so so then
he has he's going to have to pay the price
for that.
Speaker 2: So that's right.
Speaker 3: So this is just before the prince is full, but
he goes on a bit of a journey and I
think this was an interesting aspect that you introduced to
the story that we may not know from the original.
And that's his interaction with a hermit.
Speaker 1: And something I've completely added to completely added to the story.
But it's because we have this hermit character who is
there in the Jack story, you know, who's the in
some ways the kind of puzzling, the puzzling character that
asked the riddles of Jack and also sells in the
beans and everything. And this character is going to continue on.
Wanted him in some ways to meet you. I mean,
if it was a woman, it would have been like
an Old Crone type character. And in some ways, that's
what the hermit is acting as, you know, as someone
who is helping the prince reflect on his decisions and
kind of see what's actually going on. That's right, And
I love how you have that, Like I don't say
that because he's blind, so the prince doesn't see what
the hermit's doing. He just hears what the hermit's doing,
and he just hears the flax being transformed into thread,
and so you know, in the image you see what
he's actually doing. And I just I just love those
little details where if you're not paying attention, you can
miss it, you know, and then later in the next
in the future stories, you might remember, wait a minute,
there was something going on in this early story that
we didn't say, what is happening? So good stuff. Oh
and by the way, let's go go back to that
one too, And this is this is actually one of
the examples where that where Heather really fell in love
with kind of the cave iconography that you see in
the in the Pallex style, but also just in icons
in general. And there were some really beautiful images of
people in caves that had this little little encompassed sense
with the opening and h and so she said, look,
because in the original version I wrote it as like
a cabin and she's like, oh, we have to make
it a cave. And when she said it, I'm like, yeah,
obviously we have to make it a cave. It's so
much better. And so we just went and made it
a cave. And I love how you did it because
you also add a little bit of naturalism through the
way the light appears on the inside of the of
the cave opening, which which just adds just a little
bit of magic to the image, which which I love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for changing that. I think because I'd
already drawn two cabins. I saw the I saw the
cave reference and just thought, I really got to do that,
so it was really lovely to draw.
Speaker 1: So yeah, now this cave is gonna is going to
continue on in the store, so that's great.
Speaker 3: So this is a sort of resolution image, and this
is the Prince finding Rapunzel again. He hears her voice
once more and he finds her behind the cabin, and yeah,
I just absolutely love drawing this. I think one thing
to mention is how Rapunzel has been transformed from the
early images. So in the frontispiece, for example, you know,
she's very idealized, she's very young, she's got tiny feet,
and I wanted to joy a different version of a
Punzel here. She's older, she's been through childbirth, she's become
a mother, she's sort of she understands what it is
to be kind of grounded and you know, involved in
the earthly tasks. And so her feet are actually bigger
on purpose here, and that there's two reasons obviously, to
make her look more connected to the earth. But the
other thing is that after pregnancy, especially if you have twins,
your feet actually slightly bigger physically as well, because the
bones have to spread to carry the weight. So I
wanted to draw her just as a much rounder figure,
you know, much more real character at this point after
her transformation.
Speaker 2: So that was important from my side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was. It was interesting because this is
a great, great suggestion that you made. Also, so people
know how we kind of do this because I do
write the story, but then we look at it together,
Heather and I and and she sometimes she'll give me
these suggestions. And so what I wanted was in some
ways the prince. So my vision of the Rapunzel story
is that the prince is too seduced by her external appearance. Obviously,
you know, she's beautiful. You know she's up there in
the tower. She can just go see her and get
everything he wants. And it's like he basically is blinded already,
you know, by by he can't really see her. And
there's the scene where the witch is behind the hair,
so she cuts the hair off and now she's when
he goes up the tower, he sees the witch and
then he falls. And I really had this intuition that
in some ways that's actually something that can happen to
any everyone, Like it's something if you're not careful, like
if you, let's say, a man who falls in love
with a woman and then doesn't get to know her
for who she is, like, doesn't love her for the
person that she is. At some point he is going
to face an old woman, Like, at some point he's
going to come face to face with someone that has
lost that beauty, and if you haven't dealt with it properly,
then you're going to fall like, you won't be able,
you'll in some ways be in a difficult situation. So
what I wanted is that when he finally comes and
sees her in some way, she's lost some of the
external beauty, and but then he loves her nonetheless because
he's also been through this whole this whole process, and
a lot of people, that's what happens a lot of
men like when their wife has a child because of
everything that it puts her through and all of the
difficulty that it brings, and in some ways seeing their
wife in more difficult, vulnerable situations. You know, it's obviously
when a woman has a child, she doesn't she can't
take care of herself as much. She's not as you know.
And so I thought, like, this is something that happens
to a lot of guys, So it has to be
in the story, right, he can't see her. He's blind.
He can't see her for actually too long. She has
these children, and he can't interact with her anyway. So
I wanted him to kind of come to her and
see her as this woman that in some ways has
lost some of her beauty but he still loves her.
And Heather was like, yeah, but you know, we need
to add a little detail, and so she said, you
need to say that he can see her like beautiful
green eyes. And I thought, oh, that's a great idea, Like,
it's such a simple idea because it connects. It connects
to her voice too, because that's how he finds her again.
It's hearing her voice again instead of her hair. So anyway,
so I just thought it was an interesting idea. And
then I went back in the story and then we
added i think the green eyes in the story in
certain parts to kind of tie it together so that
when he sees her her emerald kind of green eyes,
you know, he recognizes her.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: Kind of connects to the cabbages as well, I like
to post, doesn't it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was important that it.
Speaker 3: I think the first reading I felt I felt a
bit sorry for a punzol. I thought there's got to
be something there that's, you know, that he can grab onto.
Speaker 1: But it's it's I think, I think it's super interesting.
I think from a woman's point of view, you've been
able to help me think about things that I wouldn't
have completely because in some ways you you brought up
in our conversations in some ways, how is it that
because we have the old hag right as you and
she's and I remember you kept saying like, is there
some beauty that we can find in an older woman?
Like you know, it does an older woman just becoming
And that's something that we've in some ways worked into
the story. People will see in the future. How we
try to work that back into the story. How there
is in some ways that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'm trying to answer to the accusation
that these things are first of all, is too simplistic.
And second of all, you know, I do hear friends
of mine, female friends will say it's either the maiden
or the witch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and that's the problem for women in.
Speaker 3: Fairy tales, that you've got these two extremes, and you know,
in the culture that we're living in now, it's obviously
you're still obsessed with the maiden. It's like, you know,
I see fifty year old women now trying to look
like twenty year olds, and there is no kind of
dignity in the mother or or you know, the matriarch
or you know these kind of older forms that you
find in fairy tales. And so through our discussions, what
I was trying to do is like, yeah, we visit it.
Is there a way of again staying true to the
original stories, but finding those those more nuanced characters and
kind of exploring these different identities for women, because I
know that they're there and and but I think they've
kind of been edited out over the years, and so
you know, I'm obviously i'm uh middle aged women, and
so I'm reading them and thinking, well, I'm not a
maiden anymore, but I want to find interesting kind of characters.
We had the widow queen in Snow White, and now
you've got the Witch and we're going to see what
happens to her. But I just think it's about presenting
different possibilities for women as we see in you know,
traditional Christianity. You've got You've obviously got the Mother of God.
But then you have the female saints, you know, and
they're they're all different and interesting, and it's like, how
how does that then relate to the fairy tale world?
Speaker 1: No, I think I think that that. I think that's right,
and I hope that we were able to capture that
and people will see because that we're not done with
the with the Witch. She's she's she has a whole
part of her story that still needs to be told.
So that's right. Yeah. And I love the color like
this is it's such a like it has this kind
of fall colors, and you know, the late day, kind
of end of day, and the sun. I love the
sun is just kind of chilling. The sun's just just
because there's a great image earlier on where you see
when the prince is going up to tower, where the
Witch is going up to the tower, where the sun
looks very worried. Oh yeah, it's just like a worried look. Yeah,
it's that one. Yeah, and you see like, oh, no,
you know, I love I love I love that, And
so I love the fact that at the end of
the story, the sin is just the sun is just
just just relaxing with them, and he's just.
Speaker 2: Happy, happy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, so this is the final image of
the book, and yeah, I suppose this is both of
them at the end of their kind of story arcs,
and you've got the prince has kind of found a
humble profession starting life, you know, stitching and mending things,
and she has the twins and you can I tried
to draw her here in a state of fulfillment, and
I wanted her looking directly at the reader, because I
really wanted it to be about, you know, a contrast
between this position and when she was in the tower
on her own. It's like they're poor, but she really
does have everything. It's like a hopefully a kind of
image of completeness.
Speaker 2: And even though she's lost her.
Speaker 3: You know, kind of initial youthful beauty, there's still a
beauty in motherhood, which is like this sort of beauty
of sacrifice or something like that that was trying to
capture in her, even though her hair's kind of shorter
and messy, you know, hopefully, it's a it's a lovely
image to end with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. I found myself surprised that this was
one of my, if not my favorite image of her,
because I think you were able capture exactly what it
is you're saying. You know, she looks she obviously looks
like someone who has become wiser. You know, she's been
through a lot. She has this look where she has
this look where she's looking at us with a lot
of like almost like an inside joke, like and she
has this inside knowledge that she's communicating with her look.
And and but then you can also see she has
just a beautiful little smile and you can tell she
doesn't care that her hair is a little messy and
that she has got patches on her clothing. She's like, no,
this is what I've chosen, Like, this is actually the
life that I that I want, and I love it.
So I think I think it's a great I think
it's such a great representation of her. And yeah, and
in some ways it does show this really positive aspect
of family and motherhood. And yeah. But the Prince, though,
you can see that he's not as as he's not
as content. There's a little bit of a you can
see that he has a bit of a worry in
his eyes. There's something going on, yeah, you know, and
so yeah, but his story is not over also, and
so Heather's already thinking of the next book when she
made this, made this this little portrait of the prints
working on his on his sewing here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: So this is our Yeah, this is the cover. So
the book's going to be available pretty soon, I think
on general distribution, is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so in the next few weeks. I think
mid August is when it's going to be available. People
can pre order. What we've done is obviously we did
like an actual pre sale where we had a thousand
books and we sold them in like twenty four hours,
twenty six hours, we sold all the books. But now
what we've done is people can still pre order. And
the reason to pre order is that I recorded an
audiobook for this and we also made like a little
family worksheet that people can used to interact with their
children about the story and uh, and so those will
be offered for people who get it in pre order.
And our new shipping system has been amazing. One of
the reasons why we started with the one thousand books
was to test out our new distribution system. And uh,
I mean some people were getting the book on the
same day, which was crazy, and then some people got
it the next day, two days, but really just a
few days before people got the book, especially in the
United States. So we're so happy that we're here. We
finally have been through all our difficulties. We you know,
we are set for the future. And so Rapunzel in
Someway's marks the new beginning for the press. So you
can go to rapunzelbook dot com and pre order your
book and you'll get it as soon as the as
soon as the books are in the warehouse, they will
they will ship it to you with the audiobook. I
really enjoyed reading it. I actually then then I read it,
and I had so much fun reading it. And then
even some people said, oh, when you read it, some
things about the story that I did realize were there
because of just the intonation of the way I read it.
So I thought, okay, wow, So now I just I
read all all of our fair tales, and so I
went back and I read snow White, and then I
read Jack. And also I also read the next book
that's coming out in the fall, which is Little Red
Writing Hood. So I read that and so yeah, so
I can't wait for people to see it, and I
can't wait for people to tell us what they think,
and Heather to maybe finish off and tell us what
it is that your final thought, let's say, of your
experience of making it, and it'll move on to the
next book after this.
Speaker 2: Gosh, it's just always a bit of a dream.
Speaker 3: You know, you embark on something you don't really know
how it's going to turn out, even though you have intentions,
and so you know, I'm sitting here at the moment
in my studio surrounded by all the Rapunzel reference that
I used, but it really turned into something unique, I think,
And so it's always a surprise at the end when
you look back and think, oh, it's that. But that's
why it's such an interesting process, because there's the things
that you think you're going to do, and then there's
a whole subconscious level that you know is doing something else.
Speaker 2: As an artist.
Speaker 3: So you get to learn about yourself as well when
and other understanding and maybe you know, like you say,
things I might have picked up from you wasn't totally
conscious of, but that made made their way into the images.
So yeah, it's always an interesting experience, and more so
because I get to collaborate, you know, with someone like you,
and we we kind of keep up the communication through
the process. It's not like I receive a manuscript and
then we never speak again. It's like there's a constant evolution.
And yeah, it's it's it's just been. It's been great.
So I'm looking forward to doing the next one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the next one in this series is
The Valiant Little Tailor, and that is actually being illustrated
by Elouise right now. And uh, you know, it's a
giant killing story. So she's really a lot of the
solutions she came to in the first in the Jack
Book are now kind of taken like they're just being multiplied.
And so the images we've been seeing have been coming
out are really wonderful. And then the one after that
will be Sleeping Beauty and and Heather will be illustrating that.
So we're working on the next two and I and
I can't wait. And these and for people who don't know,
the Rapunzel Book is where the stories start to merge together,
where you start to see how the Jack Book and
the snow White Book are related to each other. But
that's just going to that's just going to increase, and
a lot of these characters are going to come back
are going to repeat and so when they all have
their own little transformational art. So so this is I'm
getting I'm excited because in some ways, this is where
the the let's say, the the risky part of this
of our endeavor is going to start to pay off.
We're going to start to see how people react to
all of the all of the threads kind of coming together.
So yeah, I'm excited. That's right. And Heather, thanks for
thanks for putting your heart into this. It's it's much appreciated.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a real privilege to do so, thanks very much.
Speaker 1: All Right, everyone go to a punzabook dot com and
uh and get your book. Thanks everybody, Bye bye,