Bruce is no ordinary cloud.

He loves to make children laugh.

However.

Sometimes he tries too hard.

Sometimes his frustrations get him in trouble.

Find out how his friends help him out.

This wonderful story is aimed at young children.

A few years ago, Mel started developing a set of modules to help and support young people with stress. She had been visiting schools with various career programs and noticed how teenagers and children were finding it hard to manage their emotions. In order for younger children to engage with the program, Mel wanted to create characters that represented the emotions.

"I had ideas in my head, however drawing really wasn't my thing! I knew Rebecca Dyer could paint, and after a few conversations and doodles, Bruce was born. Over the next few months, we had created characters for anger, happiness and sadness, to name a few. Each character was introduced at the beginning of each lesson, and the children loved them. I had a back story with each one, and the children began to relate to both their emotions and their adventures."

“Finding Bruce wasn’t a huge challenge as Mel had painted him to life in my imagination with her words. I just had to get what I saw in my mind down on paper!

The first step for me was that I had to get the shape, I needed to get Bruce’s fluffiness just right. After a few doodles and experimenting with him, I had it! The first image of Bruce was him breathing out calmly; it felt right for him to be breathing out a gentle gust of wind mixed with little thunderbolts, almost as if he were breathing out all of his tensions and stresses in a calm and controlled way.

When I got to this stage, and before I knew it, Bruce needed some colour to bring him alive! Mel had described the heart as a cherry red, so I added a shine to it. There was a fair bit of experimenting with Bruce - outlined, shadows, different blues to give his cloud-shape dimension. I tried coloured pencil crayon and acrylic paint, which were nice but not right for Bruce. Then I started playing with watercolours, and Bruce just transformed into the Bruce you’ll find in the book! He was ready! The Bruce in my head was the Bruce on the paper before mine and Mel’s eyes.”

Rebecca Dyer

Each illustration was scanned before going through a two-stage digital cleaning process to remove hair and dust. The first stage used Affinity Photo, followed by Adobe Photoshop. Each stage made sure that the images kept its paper texture and natural artefacts from the paint’s interaction with the page.

During the process from paper to digital, Bruce lost some of the cloudy-edge to his shape. Using Affinity Photo and a series of cloud brushes, Bruce slowly returned back to being a cloud. We then used this technique, with other brushes, on all of his friends - making sure that each image kept it’s hand-drawn feel.

One of the unique visual elements of this book is its collage feel. It was a deliberate design choice - and one that we are all proud of. Each image and character had their own separate file. Happy Bruce, Sad Bruce, Breathing Sol, Worried Cloud and so on. From there, each internal spread was put together as you would a collage (in some cases, trimming landscapes, turning them around and resizing certain parts). Why such a time-consuming process? We are big fans of those old-school felt picture toys - especially how a small change can open up a scene in a new way. We wanted to replicate that in how this book came together. In creating a book for children, could we tap into that ‘felt-like’ magic we had as kids?

We think the experiment worked.

For a paperback, it needed to be cost-effective but stand out in a crowded marketplace. We found that balance.

Bruce’s cover is 300gsm gloss, and the internal pages have a 170gsm smooth gloss texture. This subtle feel as you turn each page is intentional, making the book a little different from the norm.