Superbat!

Published on: 26 August 2019 Author: Chris Priestley

Ideas can come from many different places. sometimes it’s just a situation you see or something you hear someone say, but for the most part I do my thinking up in the hills. 

I go for a run most mornings. It's more of a trudge these days, but it gets me out of the house in the fresh air and the views are lovely; even on a wet or cold day there is always something to see up there. Once you get into the rhythm of the run you kind of go into a trance, so much so that you kind of forget you are running! I just jog along and think about stuff... For me it's the best part of the process... An idea comes to you and you can't wait to get home and get it on paper before it goes.

SUPERBAT came to me as I was thinking about different animals and I thought, wouldn't it be sad if you were a bat and you wanted to be BATMAN?

You would have to be BATBAT! And that led me on to thinking that all the other bats would have the same skills as you, so it would be very annoying! And that's how PAT the Bat came about!

I am a graphic designer by trade and not really not really a children's author or illustrator so it took me a while to come up with an illustration style that worked. I wanted SUPERBAT to be bold and bright and graphic and I only used the colours from the two superheroes SUPERMAN (red / blue / yellow) and BATMAN (black) This worked really well, but even though the style looks very simple it actually takes me ages to do as I have to sketch, draw, trace then put it all together like a jigsaw!

I wanted SUPERBAT to do three things...

• to have a positive message about being yourself and having the courage of your convictions
• to hopefully make both children and parents chuckle
• and also to help kids learn a little about how amazing bats are

I hope you like it!