Who is the Troll

For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a classic story “Three Billy Goats Gruff”. I had wanted to illustrate the story for some time, so when I was asked to do so, I was excited and I thought that it would be “a walk in the park”.

Of course, it turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I got stuck with the troll.

Who knows what the troll looks like? I always thought that a troll needs to be mean and scary to deserve to end up the way he ends up.The first sketches were SO scary, that the Korean publisher sent me the best feedback I’ve ever received- “There won’t be any point in publishing a book which the child would open only once”. I had to admit that they had a point.

In fact I started to be scared myself.

The publisher made a comment, that the troll needs to be scary, but not too much. He needs to look silly, stupid and a bit funny too. So I started to do more sketches.

Once or twice I thought I’m nearly there.I tried in colour.But even this troll was still a bit too much. The publisher wanted the book to be for very young children, so I had to smooth him up a bit more.

And so here is the final troll from under the bridge.

I hope he now looks a bit stupid,a bit sillyand scary enoughto deserve to end up in the river!