Help for Heroes: Guest post by Paul Collicutt - Author of Robot City

You know you’re with a good publisher when you ask them for a few books for a charity auction and they get right back to you and say “Hey here’s a couple of boxes of £150 worth of Templar books!”

 That is exactly what happened to me. I’m taking part in a charity auction on February 16^th organized by Cineworld in Brighton in aid of “Help For Heroes”. 

Last year I did a day drawing Robots in their Cinema Foyer and talking with people about Robot City as they queued up for the launch of “Avengers Assemble”. It was so much fun they asked me to take part in this year’s event. I thought….why not paint a picture especially for the event.

“Help For Heroes” is a charity that I support. Both my brothers used to be in the Army and I was always in awe of the way they coped with difficult situations…but don’t tell them that! They both served in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and they both wore the red and white Hackle on their caps. It was obvious therefore that I had to paint an image of Curtis The Colossal Coast Guard who sports a red and white livery.

I’ve blogged about the process of painting this image on the Robot City Blog on the Robot City website. The painting itself is 30in x 22in ( 762mm x 559mm ) and is in Acrylics on Illustration Board. It is finished off with a "Japan Gold Size " varnish.

The painting will be auctioned on the day in conjunction with an auction website and you can start bidding on it right now. Go ahead and pick up a bargain and support Help For Heroes at the same time. The auction website is now live! You can bid for the painting here. All the money goes to Help For Heroes!

Big big thanks to Templar and Emma O’Donovan for their instant support on this event…quicker than Usain Bolt. They got back to me within two minutes of me sending an e-mail…..and that’s just enough time to reflect on what a great publisher I’m with!

Paul  Collicutt

Author of Robot City Adventures

The Robots Return to London

We've had an incredibly fun and action packed half term here at Templar Towers!

Sshh, artist at work!

A few days after Tuesday's event at the Royal Festival Hall, Paul Collicutt and his robots were once again London bound. Yesterday, Thursday 16th February, Paul set off to enthrall and inspire young Londoners in the Science Musuem.

Paul with a young fan!

He spent the day drawing and interacting with his young fans, demonstrating how he brings his robots to life. Everybody, artistic or not, shared Paul's enthusiasm for his drawings, with some receiving some helpful tips! It was an extremely busy, but enjoyable day - Paul ended up staying an extra two hours longer because he was having so much fun!

The finished pictures from the day!

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Templar @ Imagine Children's Festival

Yesterday was the first event I have attended as an Intern with the Templar team at the Imagine Children's Festival.

Having successfully navigated my way through London, and its commuters, I was relieved to be saved from battling with the highly technical Artist's Entrance to the Royal Festival Hall by Jayne, our Press Officer, who had arrived moments before me, arms laden with caffeine. 

I was lured into a false sense of security by the scene that greeted me: the Robot City posters were up, the paper was rolled out and Paul Collicutt was ready to go.

Paul limbering up for
the pancake competition

 
As we added the finishing touches to our workshop, the rumbling of small excitable voices became louder and louder. There was just time for Paul to participate in a pancake tossing competition with The Book People (he achieved a very respectable 9 flips of the pancake in 10 seconds) before a tirade of children joined us.

Although space was limited, the children and their parents squeezed alongside the long roll of paper to create their very own robot city. Paul's enthusiam was contagious and soon all the children were busily concocting robots with a magnatude of special powers, including flame throwing robots, a cooking robot and my personal favourite: a gardening robot.


Paul met and gave encouragement to each and every child, leaving them, I'm sure, a little more inspired than they had been forty-five minutes earlier.

As soon as the robots had been carefully rolled away and the rogue pen lids had been found,  it was time to create pop-up cards with Templar's very own designers and paper engineers. Andy and Nghiem had created templates that the children could chose, colour and then construct to make their very own pop-up cards. Getting the children to colour was the simple part, aside from our frantic pencil sharpening, however the construction proved to be a little trickier, particularly because Jayne and I were pretty clueless about how the more complicated designs worked!

The children's patience didn't dwindle and it was worth getting various limbs stuck together to see the look of joy when a child opened their pop-up for the first time!

We had survived the morning, but after a quick lunch break it was time for round two! The afternoon saw more excitable children, eager to create and have fun. One little boy decided that when he got home, he was going to write a story about the robot he had drawn with Paul. It was a great day and I think we all fed off the children's enthusiam for creativity and imagination- I hope the children enjoyed themselves as much as I did!

If you have a spare few days this half term and are running out of ideas to entertain your children, it is definitely something I would recommend checking out!

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Not quite a Rocket Car, but just as cool!

Illustrator of our Robot City Series, Paul Collicutt has already achieved one of his goals for 2012!

Paul told us: This year I woke up and thought "What I really need to get 2012 off to a flying start is a Rocket Car or some big Robot City Banners." Having checked with NASA, local second hand car dealers and my Bank Manager I decided against the Rocket Car mainly because the parking restrictions in Brighton are horrendous! Luckily I was able to advance my plan to get some Robot City Banners made up much more easily.

I share a studio with a lot of other illustrators, designers, writers and even one printer! Steve Woodgate at Inky Solutions handled all the production on the banners and as you can see they turned out amazingly well. Of course now I have to make tea for Steve for the next month. I wanted the banners in order to create a better impression at signings and other events. Now I’m thinking I might get some more made up because they look so good round the studio although I still think a Rocket Car would be great!

Perhaps the Rocket Car will have to wait for another year...

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