I got awarded an Artist Bursary from The Arts Council of Ireland in 2024 to help me with the development of my non fiction children’s book, Growing Up Human. The book will be all about connecting to nature, trusting your intuition, and holding onto the playfulness and creativity that is so important in both childhood and adulthood. I’m making a series of beautiful nature illustrations right now for it. Each illustration will become animated when you view it through an app on your phone through Augmented Reality. So excited to create this! And now I’m doubly excited to be accepted on a short course with IADT and the Creative Futures Academy – Immersive Storytelling – where I will be learning all about AR, and doing some app building in Unity. Right now I’m really enjoying making the animations in stop motion – all hand drawn frame by frame, made in Dragonframe.
Keep Going, Little Snail, my new animated short, is now in production, with the help of The Arts Council of Ireland, Donegal County Council and Creative Ireland, and Westmeath County Council.
Little Snail overcomes various obstacles in their quest to reach the best dinner ever – the lettuce plant.
A fox settles down to sleep for the day, listening to the beautiful birdsong in the forest. However, a noisy duck moves in next door and won’t shut up. What does the fox have to do to get some peace?
Naturama and My Naturama Nature Journal were a joy to illustrate. The books were co created with the writer Michael Fewer and published by Gill Books (I was called Melissa Doran back then!) Naturama came out first and is a beautiful introduction to Irish wildlife. It was so cool to see it become a number one bestseller (with over 12,000 copies sold!) and to meet the wonderful children who were loving the book! My Naturama Nature Journal came out the following year. It’s full of interesting nature projects to do, along with sections to write and draw in. It’s the perfect companion book to Naturama, designed to be brought out and about with you. Click here for more info….