"Elcosaco Elburro"
1865
1865
Welcome to TopsyTurvyTales.com!Upside Downs have appeared in advertising, newspaper comics, company branding and even in political material, with some very old works still for sale today including Gustave Verbeek's compilations, Rex Whistler's drawings and Peter Newell's books Topsy Turvys 1 and Topsy Turvys 2. These are not story books, though. The closest example I could find to what I've created are Verbeek's comic strips. Most Upside Downs are single images. Although they were well commercialised in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Upside Downs generally only pop-up these days as almost 'doodles'. Even Arvind Nadale's impressive creation of a 4-sided image in the 1990s is not heavily publicised in the sale of his work. The only really commercial use I've seen in recent years was the DVD cover for the 1999 film Topsy Turvy. Again, a single image. (Click on any image to zoom in. The image will then rotate every few seconds.)  "Waiting Maid"
by Peter Newell, 1893  "Ostrich / Elephant"
by Peter Newell, 1894  "A Fish Story"
by Gustave Verbeek, 1903  "Turn Me Over"
by Charles Ledere, 1923  "Two Faces Bombay"
1927  "Garibaldi / Stalin"
1938  "Niblets Corn Advert"
1953  "Crackerjacks Sticker"
1970s  "The Mysterious Island"
by Istvan Orosz, 1983  "Lion Girl"
by Arvind Narale, 1994  "Topsy Turvy Film"
1999 I do not have any figures on previous successes by Upside Down story books, as no others exist. I also found no examples of this art form in the children's market (other than some Cracker Jack stickers back in the 70s). But I had the idea, and created it anyway. Here you can see my original sketch for the King & Queen and then what a rather talented artist with a wonderful piece of computer software was able to do with it. See if you can tell which is which? 
  [Hover over an image to rotate] This was hugely interesting and incredibly challenging to develop. My first attempt was a story about a large eagle that carried two stick men treasure hunting. I could only get 3 images though, which wasn't enough for a story. The King & Queen was the first concept I got to 10 images, providing a 19 picture story. The images look very simplistic, but they're not. On my computer, there are over 300 variations of the 10 images, each either slightly or hugely different from the last. Trying to find the optimal balance between 'recognisable' and 'rotatable' was a genuine, literal nightmare. Everything from boats turning in to windows and frogs turning in to deer had to be painstakingly researched and sketched out numerous times. At one point, I showed the original sketches to my 5-year-old daughter Erin to gauge her reaction and interest. I tried reading the story, but she snatched the book from my hands and began twirling the images around. Every time I took the pritt-stick-bound booklet back and turned the page over, she would snatch it back again before I could read. After all the pages had been spun, she got up and walked off. I slumped back in my chair, figuring I'd just wasted the past few weeks of my life. 5 minutes later, Erin marched back in to the room and handed me a bit of paper. On it, she had drawn a princess. "Turn it around," she said. I did, and the princess turned in to a monster.  Until I had the idea to create this, I was unaware of most Upside Downs. The only one I'd seen was the generic sad face that looks happy when you turn the page around. My daughter had coloured one in some weeks before and I guess it had stuck in my head. I have no idea where she got it. I'm really pleased that I've been able to incorporate three ambigrams in to this first Topsy Turvy Tale, too. Whilst researching rotatable art, some rotating words were appearing in the search results. I thought they were interesting, so worked on finding a few that would fit as a little extra for the book. Although other people have been very artistic with their ambigram lettering (like Peter Newell or John Langdon), I was conscious of children trying to work mine out, so stuck with as basic a structure as I could ... taking lessons from the ambigram-heavy tattoo industry for the most part!
As I got in to the actual drawings for the book, I began to research online ... mostly to check that I wasn't drawing something that had been drawn before. (Accidental un-originality is still un-original.) However, it seems that I have been very original ... suspiciously original in fact. Despite the art form existing for over 150 years, it appears that no-one has ever tried to create a children's story book based on upside down art ... OR WORSE, they have tried and the idea was so badly received that it was buried in a deep hole ... :( On the plus side, Gustave Verbeek's topsy turvy books still rank on Amazon at No. 81,183 on the Bestsellers list. That might not sound great, but considering that these are 100-year-old comic books -- ranking eighty-thousand out of tens of millions of books is a pretty incredible feat! The illustrated version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is only ranked 158,534 on that same list.
So at this point, I don't know whether to be excited or worried. But thank you for visiting, and if you would like to see a copy of the full storybook, please get in touch. Topsy Turvy Tales / The King & Queen Created by Mike Beverley T: 07702 210825 E: mike@topsyturvytales.com There is no photo of the author on this page because I am a 34-year-old Scotsman. No-one wants to see that. The wrinkles in my face and on my forehead mean that no matter how much you rotate my head, I still look like I'm frowning. |
