Emma Allen:
“…professional, friendly and very helpful. The illustrations he produced for our project perfectly reflected my words.”
Towards the end of 2020, Prof. Paul Clarke, Emma Allen, Sheila Atuona and Dr. Paul Cawley published this research paper. It documents the importance of facilitating a delivery room cuddle between a mother and her extremely premature baby. The significance of creating such a bond - especially when the baby might not survive beyond the first few days - is striking.
Prof. Paul Clarke got in touch with me with the idea of producing some simple images that might bring the report to a wider audience. He took me through the research paper which included this remarkable personal testimony from the mother of two of his tiny patients, almost 15 years earlier.
The story was so powerful… Emma had tragically lost one of her premature twins, but not before she was enabled to connect with him in the delivery room.
In my view, this was the best bridge for the wider public to access the team’s findings. I got to work breaking the story into chunks and creating some images that would communicate the key moments.
These were my early sketchbook scribblings where I knew that Emma’s story had to be the public bridge into the research report.
I am wary of misreading things (it’s a long story: too many mistakes in the past), so I was put in touch with Emma and walked her through my first draft just to get a feel for what was and wasn’t working - this was her story and it was important that she felt confident that I was reflecting it faithfully.
One of the benefits of living through this ‘pandemic-zoom’ age is that it is relatively simple to set up a video call where I took her through the first draft rough panels. (My advice to any illustrator out there is to get live feedback on your work from the client early on) this session was hugely valuable for guiding my thinking. It was clear that there were some really strong ideas in this piece, but it still needed honing.
This is a snapshot from my zoom session with Emma (hilariously it looks like I am talking to myself but she was very much present!) giving vital feedback on my initial grasp of the story.
From here I made some further edits to the text and created this final sequence of images in PDF form.
The feedback I got from Dr. Paul Cawley left me a little dizzy to be honest. I had to sit down for a few minutes. Surely this is what illustration should be about?
Simple animation
At this stage Prof. Clarke decided that the project would work better as a simple animation and encouraged me to develop it further along these lines. As you can see from the final piece, I decided against animating the drawings. Partly because of budget, mainly because of time: I focussed on trying to tell the story in the most cost-effective way possible.
What would communicate most directly with the audience? What was the one thing that could transcend our limitations? It was Emma telling her story, with her own voice.
I gave Emma some remote recording instructions and she sent me a couple of superb recordings (such a pro!) which I then worked into the edit. After some initial music choices of my own, Prof. Clarke and his colleagues gave me some considered feedback and the final piece emerged soon after.
My joy for this project lies in the fact that it is such a valuable cause. I hope that it will lead people to consider making this practice the default rather than the exception. Emma’s bond with Jack will clearly be treasured for the rest of her life.
As I finish this write-up it is well worth saying that my other delight here is the collaborative nature of my time working with Prof. Paul Clarke. In any creative endeavour the balance can be spoilt by either side pushing too much (or not enough). I love that we worked together on this and the end result is the better for it.
Paul wrote a very kind comment for me to share:
“This project was vital to promote wider dissemination of our neonatal unit’s research and practice. On accepting this commission, Jason undertook the careful prior legwork necessary to understand the detailed subject matter. Long before putting pen to paper, he had thereby been able to immerse himself in what was in many ways a complex and tragic real-life personal story yet one with a powerful positive message of hope and inspiration. His unique artwork consequently captures the very essence of Emma’s story perfectly and complements both her narration and the accompanying emotional-but-positive backing composition. His resulting final creation, achieved with the close collaborative input of all the research coauthors, is a beautiful, powerful and - we hope - inspiring piece that will help this project and Emma’s message reach a much wider audience for the benefit of many future very preterm babies and their families. The end result is exactly what we wanted.”
For any nerds who might get upset - here are the tools I used:
Sketchbook (of course!)
Clip Studio Paint on iPad and Mac
Affinity Publisher - this has become a really useful tool lately for all sorts of projects
Keynote
Final Cut Pro