Joseph and the Triumph of Grace

JATTOG is the project of a lifetime¹.

(I have produced two videos for this post - here is the first that gives an overview of the book. The process film follows at the end)

Three years ago I had the pleasure of seeing Dear Theo step out into the wild. At the time I remember feeling such pleasure being able to be involved in a project alongside Biblica - the International Bible Society no less! In October 2018, Trevor Wilson and I met for lunch in London (remember those days?) to discuss possible future steps and we got into an interesting chat about the Joseph story arc in Genesis that arrives at this line in chapter 50 verse 20:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

I had been teaching this story throughout my time as a schoolteacher and continued to be fascinated by the way that Joseph was empowered to overcome serious wrongdoing by his brothers. In our discussion, Trevor and I wondered whether there might be the possibility of making something that could bring the story of this triumph into earshot of contemporary culture.

Although we had no formal agreement in place I decided that this was too important for me to sidestep developing the ideas, so I set about repeating the journey that I had taken with Dear Theo. Printing out a book of the Genesis text, I got to work scribbling ideas as I reflected on the text.

Here is a section from that initial document:

From chapter 40 where Joseph interprets the dreams of the Baker and Cupbearer.

The initial annotation of the text took me some time - with the intensity of schoolteaching and numerous other pressures I didn’t finish it until August 2019. From here I honed the idea and produced a pitch document. Already I had JATTOG as the working title and the dual coding concept in place.

From my initial pitch document: I saw JATTOG as an exercise in dual coding. Me old mate Andy Tharby writes here about it with his considerable pedagogical brain.

Dual coding is something that I have been doing naturally for years without realising that there was a proper label for it. Essentially, it is when you expose an audience to multiple forms (or codes) of information. Bouncing between those different codes can be a very fruitful learning experience because it encourages the reader to make fresh connections. As I see it - the book of Genesis has too many assumptions being dumped on it by a cynical secular culture and I wanted to create a space where you could lay a fresh pair of eyes on the storyline.

Those Lovely Scots

May 2020 - around the time that the pandemic was really digging its heels in - I was idly looking through my twitter feed and realised that the Scottish Bible Society were following me. I had heard that they had being printing a lot of Dear Theo copies so I got in touch with them to see what the situation was.

What emerged at this point was something a little surprising to me - the team at SBS not only liked my work - they understood it and were really using it. Jen Robertson had been writing some excellent resources for youth groups that encouraged deeper reflection. This was very exciting!

You can probably guess what came next: I found myself nestled in the project of a lifetime. Fiona MacDonald and the senior staff team committed to JATTOG as a key project going forwards and we began in earnest developing the work. The video below outlines the process in a bit more detail.

One thing that the video doesn’t mention is that at each stage of sketching and drafting we had review zoom meetings. This was fabulously helpful to me - and links back to Scott Berkun’s third principle. In the end this process has been such a delight - partly because of the end result but also the meeting of minds. Although I have ended up despising anything zoom related, it did facilitate a new network of friendships with people I have yet to meet in person.

Pete taking a thirsty break from a detailed review session with me and Emma.

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If you would like to purchase copies of this book please visit www.scottish.bible/joseph.

Thanks

There are a number of people who were key to this project who I want to express some gratitude: to the many students who sat in my classroom over the decades - I hope you enjoy this book and it brings back memories of the desk-shaking zombie cow sequence; Fiona McDonald for your motherly ownership of the vision; Jen Robertson for seeing the point and gently helping me walk through every zoom discussion with fabulous feedback; Adrian Armstrong for your penetrating insight and theological support (although the biggest thing for me was how warm you are); Emma Galloway for so ably (and cheerfully) managing the project; Pete Barnsley for your expert attention to details that most people take for granted; The senior staff team at SBS for committing to this project wholeheartedly (I hope to have some haggis with you soon); Trevor Wilson and Biblica for the foundations and encouragement; My wife and son who mean everything to me - especially those unexpected healing hugs - and finally Graham and Rosemary Legg who have been such a source of grace for so long.

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¹ although I am praying for a longer innings!

Telling Emma's Story

Emma Allen:

“…professional, friendly and very helpful. The illustrations he produced for our project perfectly reflected my words.”

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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.”

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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

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