Owlpoo visits Mirdiff Private School, Dubai for Earth Day

Owlpoo visits Mirdiff Private School, Dubai for Earth Day

Recently I was very privelidged to meet Dana Ghandour, counsellor of Mirdiff Private School in Dubai. She was organising an "Earth Day" event which allowed the school to educate the children about energy saving, recycling and other earth related matters. I gave "creating animals" workshops to children on the day, there were plays and songs delivered by the children...and we were even lucky enough to receive a visit from Ronald McDonald!





I also created 2 factsheets related to energy saving:-

The first one is a "Where's Wally" style sheet were the children must find all the "baddies" in the scene. Devious floating plastic bags, broken bottles and smokers must be spotted!

The second is an energy saving factsheet, full of puzzles and facts for the children to complete. They can also colour in all the elements in the scene.



So remember everyone, stay green & let's all help to keep this earth clean!

Laura Parry
www.owlpoo.com

Owlpoo exhibited at the Dubai Character and Licensing Show!

Owlpoo exhibited at the Dubai Character and Licensing Show!
www.character.ae

October 27th-29th was a very important date for Owlpoo, as I was able to exhibit my website and show my work to all visitors. Thanks to eye of Dubai, an online portal for everything Dubai, I was given my own space and large TV screen to show Owlpoo on big screen.

It was a very sucessful event which was greatly receieved and a lot of interest was formed. Owlpoo made numerous new contacts, clients and business opportunites.

Owlpoo will shortly be working very closely with schools and now we are working constantly to create Owlpoo into education software for children.

With new inspiration, new stories will be added soon. There will also be an option to translate the stories into arabic and have an audio feature.

See below, a new set of desert character have been created. These will eventually be stories promoting wildlife in the UAE. These are organic illustrations showing the gecko, caracal, camel and falcon.

Owlpoo can't wait for next Dubai Character and Licensing show in 2010!




www.owlpoo.com
Organic Illustration

Dubai Desert Scene - Owlpoo.com

Desert Mural

Over the hot summer months of Ramadan, I painted a Dubai Desert Scene on the wall of our bedroom (which is soon to be demolished!)

This scene depicts two arab men relaxing in the desert, playing music, eating arabic food and being surrounded by all of UAE's wildlife. The oasis contains flamingo's annd arabic leapards drinking from the pool.

Murals are an area that I plan to get into. I'd love the opportunity to do more, so if you're a nursery or school in Dubai wanting a scene, or anything creative on your walls, I'd be happy to get involved. I will even approach private homes, so why not provide your child with a unique bedroom wall which will delight eyes of all ages.

See below of images of the mural, any questions or queries contact me via the website.

www.owlpoo.com
Organic Illustration

Hermit in the heat!

The heat has been intolerable these last few months! With 40 + degrees meaning a short walk to the local shop turns into an all mighty sweat, I've transformed into an indoor hermit!

Owlpoo is in the process of business plan writing.Very soon the website will undergo further changes, and the stories will be part of a school incentive scheme program designed to persuade children to read. Features will include unlockable codes on books, characters you can print out and create and much more. Watch this space!

I've been doing a lot of research on Children's Publishing, I picked up this AMAZING book from Amazon called "Writing with Pictures" by Uri Shulevitz. It has such invaluabe advice for putting together your story/picture book. Methods such as storyboarding, creating a dummy book, page and text layout are all covered wonderfully! My hours before bedtime are engrossed with trying to cram in as much new information as I can from this masterpiece of a book!

I'm delighted to be working with Anne Millen and providing the illustrations for her story. Without giving too much away, it's a cleverly written manuscript describing the cycle of a hermit crab. I've come up with a very rough storyboard and sketches of zoeas (baby crabs!) and the character choosing it's shell! Will post full colour spreads soon.

For a side project, I've started painting a mural in James' room! The villa is soon to be demolished, and so many paintable walls are going to be turned to rubble. :( I've started creating a Desert scene featuring two Arabic men enjoying each others company surrounded by wildlife. It's just one of many murals that I aim to create as part of my portfolio. If anyone in the UAE would like a mural for their nursery or school, then give me a shout!

That's all for now!
www.owlpoo.com

Owlpoo.com - Officially Launched!

Owlpoo.com

An Organic Illustration Site!

Owlpoo.com is an interactive site created using hand drawn Organic Illustration and Animation. Aimed at children of all ages, its purpose is to entertain and educate. Parents and teachers can read along with the stories, or children can interact directly with the characters and objects on stage.

Please spread the word by telling your friends, children, nephews and nieces!

Stories

Featuring the new story "Foxgloves". Drag the fox into the hollow, and a new adventure begins!

The website is still in beta mode, so if you have any issues viewing the website correctly, or if you encounter any bugs (of the non-insect variety!), please don't hesitate to contact me and we'll do our best to get the issue resolved as soon as possible.

Enjoy the new site, please email me with your feedback and critique (use the website contact form for a special surprise!).

Visit the Website!

Join the Owlpoo group on Facebook!

Owlpoo.com - Near to its completion!

Owlpoo.com - Near to its final completion! Well, it surely has been a while since blogging! Since my last post in February a lot has happened personally and in the world of Owlpoo. A whole month in March and April consisted of finalising plans to move country, moving out and moving in went smoothly and now Owlpoo will be based in Dubai. :-)

I'm feeling more inspired than ever and recentely there has been a change in my drawing style. I began drawing an image for an up and coming story "The Albino Peacock" and decided to add much more thorough detail and began experimenting with different mediums. I produced an image that I was incredibly proud of, and decided that a lot of the images used in Foxgloves look pale in comparison. This made me re-think all my past drawings, and I have therefore had to remove old drawings and replace them with newer ones, perhaps changing the composition or adding more colour. I simply hated my past drawings and didn't want them featured on my site!

I'm SO excited to announce the launch of the Owlpoo website, it's so close, and I know that another hard day's work of preparing material such as moveable flowers, ;) mushrooms, ;) scrollbars ;) and new illustration etc means another day closer to the launch.

For those that don't know, Owlpoo is going to be an Organic Illustration Site, featuring Children's Stories and hand drawn animation. The illustrations are going to accompany hand written text, these stories will be written by myself.

Hands down, without my wonderfully inspiring James with his incredible knowledge of programming, non of the amazing features and interface of Owlpoo would be possible, a big big thank you with all my heart. :) Us two as illustrator and programmer have been working non-stop to get everything together.

I'm wanting to spill the beans about the website interface ;) but perhaps I shouldn't let words tell the story, but leave it to your own eyes. Owlpoo is going to be an interactive experience for children, with moveable character's on screen. It's nature in all its glory. That's all I'm going to say for now!

I'll leave you with a few new Illustrations, please feel free to give comments and suggestions! Not long until the launch, watch this space! www.owlpoo.com

Foxgloves - Final stages! www.owlpoo.com

Well, good news in the world of owlpoo!
Yesterday, I finished the “Foxgloves” story. It contains 9 pages, with embedded text and images. It fits directly to the website dimensions. Everything is imported to Flash, so all there is to do now is to get the buttons working so you can read through each page, then continue when needed. It’s really rewarding seeing everything fit into place!

I’m looking forward to showing it to everyone, so it can be viewed on the site. I want to approach primary schools and younger children to get their feedback on the story and illustrations. If I get mostly positive feedback, I’d like to eventually add simple animations to the story.

Next time I’ll post here is when the Foxgloves story will be available to view off my site, in full finished glory!

That’s all for now, I’ll leave you with an example page from the story of Foxgloves:-

www.owlpoo.com