Matty Long & the Super Happy Magic Forest series
About Author
Illustrator Matty Long has a First Class Degree in Illustration and a Masters degree in Children's Book Illustration. Most of his work is drawn by hand and coloured on a computer. His first published picturebook, Super Happy Magic Forest, was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press, followed by Super Happy Magic Forest: Slug of Doom and Super Frozen Magic Forest, and was followed by a young fiction series set in this world.
Matty is based in Cambridge. He likes robots, video games and ketchup but dislike carrot mash, writing bios and audience participation. You can find him on: Twitter - @Matty_Long; Facebook - MattyLongIllustration; Instagram - superhappymatty
Interview
Super Happy Magic Forest and the Humongous Fungus (OUP Children's Books)
April 2020
If you've not yet caught up with the Super Happy Magic Forest series, you're in for a treat. The original three picture books have now been moved up the age range by author and illustrator Matty Long, and Super Happy Magic Forest and the Humongous Fungus is his first young fiction book for early readers (six to eight years).
Like the earlier picture books, the scene is set in the Super Happy Magic Forest with its magic crystals, rainbow dragon and frolicking forest folk - and the wise wizard himself, Gnomedalf. But once again the peace, happiness and frolicking are under threat, this time from the Humongous Fungus, and it's up to the band of heroes to save the forest once again.
Children who enjoy this story will also enjoy going back to the picture books to explore them - they'll give the parents a giggle, too!
Q&A with Matty Long
Author and illustrator Matty Long tells ReadingZone about Super Happy Magic Forest and the Humongous Fungus,
and how the series came about:
Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and when you started writing and illustrating children's books?
A: I grew up in Surrey and now live in Ely, Cambridgeshire. It's a tiny city with a massive cathedral.
I was always more of a doodler than a serious drawer but when the time came to start specialising I focused on art and went through various institutions including the Cambridge School of Art. There I undertook the MA course in Children's Book Illustration and graduated in 2011. My first book, Super Happy Magic Forest, was published a few years later in 2015.
The first picture book concept I worked on was in my second year of my BA Illustration course at Southampton Solent University. It was called The Light That Lumo Lost and was about a boy with a lantern on his head setting out to find a way to light it up again. It had a much different look and tone to anything I've actually had published and I sometimes still look at the artwork through gritted teeth.
Q: Super Happy Magic Forest started life as a picture book. What gave you the idea for the fairytale forest, and its band of intrepid heroes?
A: I'm heavily influenced by video games and the Super Happy Magic Forest world was really just every fantasy computer game I'd ever played bubbling to the surface as I doodled in my sketchbook. The heroes came first - I was drawing gnomes and fairies and unicorns over and over and as I assembled the group the next step was to think of somewhere for them to live and then want to fight for.
Q: You're now writing Super Happy Magic Forest books for early readers, starting with the Humongous Fungus. Why did you decide to write for slightly older children, and what differences does that make in how you create the stories?
A: It was something that my publisher, Oxford University Press, had been gently pushing me in the direction of for a couple of years and I took a bit of persuading. I was resistant to it because I've always seen myself as an illustrator first and foremost and didn't feel much need to write or even have much confidence that I could do it. I got to a stage though where I'd done four picturebooks and felt the time was right to branch out. To my surprise, I really enjoyed it!
The difference comes from having more pages and room for text. It's a chance to slow down. Picturebooks are very limited in the amount of room you have and they need to be highly visual. So it works best to have multiple varying scenes and characters joined together by the heroes progressing through them. Each page is a new kind of adventure and visually different from the last. You can't have 190 pages of that in the young reader format and due to the greyscale palette it wouldn't be as effective visually either.
However, there's more room for lore, jokes, and to get to know each character and setting further. The first book - Humongous Fungus - is set entirely within the Super Happy Magic Forest. So my idea from the beginning was to use these books as a way to zoom in on characters and locations rather than the whistle-stop tour of the world they live in that we get from the picturebooks.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your heroes? Do you have a favourite in the group?
A: There's Hoofius the faun, Blossom the unicorn, Herbert the gnome, Twinkle the fairy and Trevor the mushroom. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses and contribute to quests in different ways. Humongous Fungus explores what Trevor's strengths are, as he has a pretty hard time of it in the picturebooks to say the least.
My favourite changes quite regularly so I can't really choose. I always see different parts of myself in all of them!
Q: How do you create the illustrations, and decide what each character would look like?
A: I draw with pencil on paper, use a lightbox to pen over them, scan them to an iMac, and then clean and assemble (things like speech bubbles and text all need to be on different layers) and colour them in Photoshop.
I don't really have any rules as far as character design goes, but I usually start with basic shapes and work out from there. They can't be too intricate or realistic looking but despite this I spend a lot of time trying to keep them consistent with every passing page.
Q: You send the heroes on all kinds of quests - Is it hard to think up new quests, and villains?
A: Fantasy is a very deep pool to fish from so at the moment I'm okay. But that answer might be different in a few books time!
Q: And what's with all the Lord of the Rings references?
A: I like to include references to influences and pop culture as a way of paying tribute to them but also as something adults can see and (hopefully) find amusing as they sit and read with the child.
Q: Your forest folk are, generally, very happy. Do you have to be in a 'happy place' to write the stories, as they are also very funny? In fact, how do you make the stories funny for grown-ups as well as children?
A: Unfortunately as a full time illustrator / author you have to get things done regardless of what mood you are in! I'm happy if I'm progressing with things as I hoped to.
A lot of humour is universal, I grew up watching The Simpsons at its peak and I think I learnt a lot about humour from that. It was a show that had something for all age groups and some bits I only understood when I was much older and I think that's fine. I just try to hit a nice spot where the humour doesn't feel too young to exclude older readers.
Q: What next for Super Happy Magic Forest, and how many of these books do you plan to write?
A: I'm currently working on the artwork for the second book. I'll hopefully continue to make them for as long as I feel I have new stories to tell. In the picturebooks I show a huge world, but we don't get to stop in each place for very long and explore them. That's what we can do now - it's great to be able to get more out of the content I'd already created.
Q: What else are you working on? And where do you do your best writing and illustrating?
A: I'm working on a new picturebook alongside the Super Happy Magic Forest young reader books. It is an entirely new idea, so no pixies or unicorns here. I do most of the writing and illustrating from my home studio. So far the writing side of things has coincided with the summer months so I like to do that in the conservatory with the sun pouring in and the windows open. But anywhere will do as long as I'm in the right mindset really.
Q: What's your favourite escape from your desk?
A: Video games, mostly. Or walking around the country park I live next to. My folks also live on the north Cornwall coast so I like visiting them down there, the scenery is amazing. I wrote some of Humongous Fungus there, too!
Q: Have you read any other early readers that stand out for you?
A: Check out Elys Dolan's '...for beginners' series if you like what I do (or even if you don't). They're very funny. Also, the Stick Dog series by Tom Watson was my go-to at the Children's Bookshop I worked in when I knew I could get away with a couple of minutes of covert reading.
Super Happy Magic Forest: The Humongous Fungus
