Graeme Base is perhaps best known for his picture book Animalia, that, on the surface, was a simple 'Alphabet Book' for children. Each page showed a different letter of the Alphabet with animals and objects all beginning with that letter. What set it apart from a crowd of similar books, was the incredible depth of each picture. A child, or even adult, could spend a lot of entertaining time finding things hidden in the background. Beautifully detailed pictures became his trademark.

Biography

Base was born in England on 6 April, 1958, and moved to Australia in 1966 with his family. Once in Australia, he attended Box Hill High School, and then Melbourne High School.

'I'm going to be a commercial artist'

From about the age of 12, Base knew what he wanted to be, telling people at every opportunity: 'I'm going to be a commercial artist'. It seemed a heaven on earth. You drew pictures, and you got paid for them. When he had completed his Higher School Certificate (HSC), he went to Swinburn College of Technology and did a graphic design course for three years. He was hoping to do a fourth year, as there was a degree attached to the course, but it seems he was urged to leave earlier.

He then went into advertising, where he was paid well, and hated every moment of it. Most of his work was newspaper ads which he described as 'killing'. He went through three jobs in the two years he was in advertising. He was fired from his third, and last, job for incompetence.

Freelance

Even while working in advertising, Base had done some freelance work for book publishers, doing things such as book jackets. With no job, he began following this path full time and began showing his portfolio to various publishers.

Base met Bob Session who worked, at that time, for Thomas Nelson in LaTrobe Street. Base had few firm plans with only some vague ideas about something to do with dragons. Bob wasn't impressed and suggested he do something Australian.

The result was My Grandma Lives in Gooligulch, a book in verse with six illustrations. It was published in 1983.

Next came Animalia, perhaps his best known work, which was published in October of 1986 by Penguin. It took him three years to complete the illustrations for it.

He moved to Nelson for Days of the Dinosaurs, before returning to Penguin with The Eleventh Hour, an illustrated mystery in verse eventually published in 1988 (it pays to be observant, as all the clues required to solve the mystery appear in the detailed illustrations).. In 1987, he travelled overseas collecting ideas for The Eleventh Hour(1989), spending a month in the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania.

Base then illustrated Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky with Macmillan in 1989. This has since been reissued (1996) as a 'pop up book', where each page opens to a three-dimensional diorama. He also illustrated Creation Stories for Macmillan.

Base had earlier produced a calendar called Dragons, Draaks and Beasties with illustrations of those mythical beasts. He followed this up in 1996 with The Discovery of Dragons, which used many of the same illustrations along with a great deal of descriptive text describing the adventures of those who discovered the various species of dragon.

Base then took a slightly different direction. His major hobby (outside his illustrating) is music. In 1999 he combined both to produce The Worst Band in the Universe which, while having less illustrative detail than his previous works, contained a CD of songs 'played' by entrants in the Worst Band in the Universe competition.

His latest work, The Waterhole (2001), is almost a return to his Animalia days. Instead of an 'Alphabet Book', it's a counting book. However his 'trademark' level of illustrative details is back in full force.

Rikitikitavi

Base played in a band called Rikitikitavi¹. He started out on drums, eventually moving to playing keyboard. It was here he met his future wife, who was the lead singer.

For the most part Rikitikitavi was a support band, playing what Base described as 'a sort of English technofunk' and they thought they'd really made it the year they broke even instead of losing money. Due to the realities of playing 'pub music', where you had to cater to the dance crowd, slightly at odds with their style, they eventually broke up.

Children's Books?

Base's works are mostly viewed as children's books. However, he never explicitly set out to produce a book for children. He writes his books for himself in order to fulfil creative desires. It's really only after that that he looks at the requirements of a 'children's book'.

Animalia

Animalia deserves a special mention as it was the book that first brought him to international attention.

It looked, for a while, like it would never be finished. Bob Sessions wished to publish it, but he couldn't fund it. For the first year nothing happened. Then an overseas publisher, Abrams, an art book publisher, saw some of the unfinished work at Frankfurt Book Fair. They agreed to an American edition and gave Base an advance of $10,000.

Once it was published in America, Penguin Australia did a print run of 11,000, which was a measure of the confidence publishers had in it, as a normal print run for a children's book was five or six thousand. A week before publication, interest was so great that Penguin announced a reprint of 10,000 (where a reprint was normally 2000). A week after the release date, Penguin announced another reprint of ten thousand. Some time later another reprint of 25,000, then 15,000.

It has now sold more than two million copies worldwide, and in 1996 the publishers released a tenth anniversary edition, Abrams published a limited, individually numbered edition of Animalia, featuring embossed gold jacket, gold endpapers, gilt edges and a gold collage on the title page.

In 1987 it was named an Honour Book in the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Picture Book of the Year Awards. In 1987 it also won the Young Australians' Best Book Award (YABBA) Picture Book and was Secondary Winner of the Kids Own Australian Literature Awards (KOALA) in 1988.

Controversy

Strange as it may seem, Animalia is the centre of some controversy. In fact, some parents have asked for it to be removed from some library shelves as it may disturb their children. Why? Some of the images are seen as controversial and disturbing. For instance under 'D' there is an image of someone drowning. Under 'S' there is a picture of a swastika².

It's interesting, however, to note that once this controversy started, many people started looking for subtexts and further 'evidence' of evil intent.

The Artist's Tools

He works on a hot press board which is good for doing high quality airbrush work. He doesn't use oils and has said 'I find working with oil paint akin to wrestling in mud'. In addition to using airbrush, which he uses for backgrounds, he uses things such as gouache, watercolours, transparent inks, watercolour pencils and lead pencils. In addition he occasionally uses a scalpel to remove coloured areas. Essentially he uses whatever will get the effect he requires.