
Tohby
Riddle: some backstory
Tohby
was born in Sydney, Australia, and has lived there since. His early
years were spent at a Steiner school where a love of making things and
making things up (mainly with drawings and words) flourished.
After
high school, Tohby went to Sydney College of the Arts where he majored
in painting and average guitar playing. After graduating he worked in
a number of jobs that usually involved carrying things larger than himself.
All the while he was unsure what kind of art he wanted to make. He loved
illustrated
books and cartoons
but it never occurred to him that he could do such things. One night
a friend said, "Let's make a children's story!" They did,
and it was not very good, but it gave Tohby ideas …
Then Tohby got another
job. He still had to carry things but it was in a small but growing
publishing house. He was mailing clerk at what was then Pan Books Australia.
This was a great education for him. Apart from knowing what it would
cost to send a non-standard letter, weighing over 500 grams, to Queensland,
he saw first-hand how a publishing house worked. He also saw what manuscript
submissions looked like and what rejections slips looked like. And his
kind employers introduced him to visiting authors (from Jackie Collins
to Oliver Sacks) and included him in many of the publisher's functions
and book launches.
The experience served
him well when later he decided to try another picture book. (He had
also read a terriffic book on the art of Maurice Sendak that showed
in some detail how Sendak made up Where the Wild Things Are.)
Knowing he had a better chance of illustrating a book if he wrote it
himself, Tohby produced a mock up of a story called Careful with
that Ball, Eugene! It became his first book.
The year it was
released Tohby began studying architecture at The University of Sydney.
He found this to be an excellent all-round education in art, design,
and the making of three-dimensional objects. Interestingly, this course
has a history of producing not just architects, but cartoonists, scriptwriters,
film directors, comedians, set designers and art directors.
Indeed, interest
from publishers and a desire to keep trying out ideas for picture books
– and by now cartoons – led Tohby to make the difficult
choice between practising architecture or becoming a dedicated artist
and writer. He chose the latter, but his architecture training continues
to serve him well – his ideas, he believes, have to be well constructed
and not leak!
Since that time,
Tohby has produced a number of books, cartoons and illustrations. Some
of the books have been published internationally, some have received
awards, and one (The Great Escape from City Zoo) had the feature
film rights to it bought by a Hollywood studio.
Luckily, considering
Australia's wealth of talented cartoonists, Tohby's cartoons have been
able to find a regular home in the newspapers. Tohby is also lucky he
didn't listen to the first newspaper art director he visited. After
looking at Tohby's portfolio, he politely suggested Tohby think of another
career. Tohby didn't necessarily disagree with the art director's advice
– he just couldn't think of another career. So he tried to do
better work.
Tohby has also visited
schools, universities and writers' festivals across Australia to talk
about his work and other things that come to mind, and has spent a number
of years as an editor. He still believes that if you stick at something
long enough, perhaps even decades, you could become an overnight success.
A
Profile in Words and Pictures