Well Alice in Wonderland came about because there was a television company in London who were
wanted to do a series. They were going, they wanted a series of Alice, the actual stories for them to carry on, and they had a sort of competition and asked various illustrators would they come up with a new Alice and various other characters.
And they asked me. And they
luckily they did choose my new Alice, and that had taken me a long time and quite a lot of work to come up with a new Alice because to do another Alice after so many had been done is rather daunting. It comes with a lot of luggage. And of course, the illustrations of Tenniel are wonderful, the original Alice.
So I had to just sort of get myself in a frame of mind where I had to think, well, just do it, just do it, don’t think about it too much. And I came up with the Alice that is now in the book. Anyway, so the whole series of Alice films were going to be
the whole department folded up, and people left.
And that was that. That was the end of Alice as an animated film. So I went to my publisher and said look, I’ve done so much work on Alice, and I know now what she looks like, and I know what sort of little girl I think she is.
Shall we — shall I have a go? Shall I do it? And they said yes, alright. And it took me three years to do, and after that I thought, well, don’t anybody ask me to do Alice Through the Looking Glass, and I’ve really had enough. And I did another two children’s books.
And then for some reason, I read Alice Through the Looking Glass and thought oh my God, it is just, it is so good, and I ended up illustrating that as well. So they now are a pair.
So I thought, I’ll make Alice a child of today, and children today are very physically, very
their body language is confident.
And the clothes they wear are
they’re allowed to move easily. So that was the idea I had behind this Alice that I did.
