Swinburne University of Technology - Melbourne Australia

The dragons that breathed fire into an art student's dream

Story by Melissa Branagh-McConachy

Graeme Base rates his Swinburne student years as among the happiest of his life, although his memories of the Hawthorn campus are sometimes blurry – possibly because he usually dashed between the cafeteria and his drawing board, always anxious to get back to a world of spatial dynamics, fonts, colour ... and dragons.

"I wanted to put a dragon in everything I did – it was like play to me," says the children’s writer and illustrator from his home studio in Melbourne.

Like the animals – real and imagined – that leap from the meticulously detailed pages of his books, it is easy to imagine Base bounding enthusiastically through the corridors of the renowned Faculty of Design building. "I ran everywhere," he recalls.

At 50, Base’s vivacity and infectious enthusiasm have not waned and are patently key ingredients of his international success. His capacity to relate to young readers, to enter – and create – their worlds, is evident in titles including Animalia, which has sold more than two million copies, and most recently Uno’s Garden, which won the 2007 Green Earth Environment Award for Children’s Literature in the US. The book’s quirky characters featured in the 2007 Myer Christmas windows in Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall.

But there is also a correlation between Base’s celebrity as the world’s leading creator of picture books and his steadfast participation in the whole publishing process, a trait that has its origins at Swinburne in the late 1970s.

"I am unusual in that I am involved in every aspect of a book’s production, from selecting font size to monitoring separators on pre-press and discussing paper quality with printers," he says. "At Swinburne, we were encouraged to develop knowledge across all components of the design process and I believe in keeping tight tabs on everything until I absolutely have to let go."

The approach, which Base tags "the need to control", has saved him on numerous occasions, including an eleventh-hour colour correction to The Eleventh Hour – the 1989 Children’s Book Council of Australia picture book of the year. "At least this way if a mistake is made it’s mine, and I can live with my own mistakes," he says.

Against the recommendation of his high school art teacher, who campaigned for his enrolment in the University of Melbourne’s fine arts degree, Base insisted he was "more practical and project driven", opting instead for graphic design at what was then Swinburne College of Technology.

"I was interested in applied art. I wanted to draw for projects – not for art’s sake. Swinburne was made for me. The course had a very strong practical nature, but creativity was encouraged; it was perfect."

According to Base, the classes were hard work; challenging and confronting. "Stuff was put on walls and harshly criticised. There was an incredible attrition rate – you had to have a thick skin, but I took it on the chin. I was keen to learn."

After second year, the course split into diploma and degree streams. Base was deflated when he was not accepted for the degree program, which was geared towards art direction. "The lecturers, particularly Geoff Hocking, could see, better than I, that I wasn’t driven in that way. I was bent on illustrating and they thought I should get out there and do it," he says.

So the pent-up illustrator was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world, where he spent three years "as a square peg" in the advertising industry, before moving into book illustration. It did not take long for him to tire of the prescriptive nature of matching pictures to other people’s words, and so he started to write his own.

My Grandma Lives in Gooligulch was published in 1983, but it was his second book, Animalia (1986) – a fantastical alphabet book with a menagerie on every page – that brought Base international acclaim and a tribe of fans.

The dragons conceived during his university days made a comeback in The Discovery of Dragons (1996), and The Sign of the Seahorse appeared in 1998.

Most of Base’s books have revolved around his abiding interest and passion in the natural world and, more recently, his concern about its demise.

The Sign of the Seahorse was inspired by a scuba diving experience during which Base learnt of the ruination of coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean Islands. Water is presented as a precious resource that must be looked after in The Water Hole (2001), and Uno’s Garden (2006) explores environmental sustainability.

Base’s books have always represented an inventive fusion of verbal and visual wit, mystery and arithmetic, but the subtle messages have become more pronounced over time.

"I’m a dad three times over (to James 17, Katherine 15 and William 13); it makes me think about the future," he says. "When you are a parent you have a major influence on a small number of kids, as a teacher you influence even more kids, and if you are a book writer and illustrator you can potentially influence millions of kids, albeit in a tiny way.

"It seems natural for me to take the opportunity to say something that just might generate awareness by creating allegories of reality using fantasy and animals that are less ‘in your face’. The best way to teach children is to entertain; that’s what playing games is all about."

Base has a keen appreciation of the importance of education and also of a disciplined approach to his work. "Swinburne impressed on me very early that deadlines are sacrosanct and you meet them; that quality counts – from conception to promotion; that presentation engenders confidence; and that one cannot be too esoteric about work. It is work and there is a commercial imperative attached to it.

"But I have the best job in the world – it’s a guilty pleasure."

Base has published a dozen books in 30 years and has another dozen ideas stored away. A 40-part animated television series of Animalia will screen shortly in Australia and overseas; his next book Enigma: a Magical Mystery will be published later this year; and, in October, Penguin will release The Art of Graeme Base, a coffee-table book that traces his work – and those dragons – from the page, back along corridors to a drawing board at Swinburne, where it all began.