Video transcript
2018 NSW PRC author interview - Shaun Tan

[swoosh]

TAMARA RODGERS: Hi, I'm Tamara Rodgers from the Premier's Reading Challenge. We're backstage at Riverside Theatre at Parramatta for the Sydney Writers Festival All-Day YA sessions. Super excited to catch up with Shaun Tan backstage. Thanks for joining us, Sean.

SHAUN TAN: Well, thanks for having me.

TAMARA RODGERS: So at the PRC, we're really strong supporters of developing a love of reading and stories in kids. Was that something that was a part of your childhood when you were growing up?

SHAUN TAN: Of course. Yeah. I think there isn't a childhood without it. And it's interesting, you know, I now I have a very young daughter. And the thing she wants more than anything else is just a story. She doesn't care what it is just as long as I, well, once upon a time there was a-- and then you're off.

And I guess my interest in books and stories was the same as any other kid's. I loved them just as much. I didn't have a special fascination with picture books any more than any other kid. And it's just as an adult that I've come back to it and thought, you know what? This is a really good form for expressing ideas in these sort of short narratives. They just suit the way that I think about things, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

TAMARA RODGERS: So you're known and loved us as an incredible artist and Illustrator. Can you tell us a little bit about how you started that journey? Was there a point where you realised that I can draw things that have power, that people connect with?

SHAUN TAN: Sure. When I was a kid-- well, I loved drawing. But all kids love drawing, I think, as it is natural. But I noticed when I started going to school, so about six years old, that I could draw things better than other kids, you know? And I don't know why. I guess I picked up a few tricks. If you do this, it looks like a triceratops, and you do this, it looks like a tyrannosaurus rex.

And as a small child, that was a great source of power. And power is important to children because you don't have much and doubly important for me because I was a very small child. I'm a very small adult. But I was a real small child. And, you know, I was also, like, a bit different looking to other kids at the schools that I went to. And I was very self-conscious about it.

I didn't want to be known as the smallest kid. I wanted to be known for something else. And so drawing was a-- yeah, drawing was a really good way of communicating with other kids. And there was a few times when I probably got out of being bullied a bit by just saying, let me draw you a picture, you know, just to do something that's a bit surprising and friendly instead of confrontational.

And writing has also been a bit similar too. I think I first started realising the power of language. Not that I was bullied that much, but it always happens to kids. But I became very good at very snappy comebacks. And I thought, aha, these words are pretty good. I can really make other kids back off or confuse them by saying something.

They'd call you a name, or you might-- you say, I agree with you. Let's elaborate on that. And then they're all confused and back away. Yeah. I found that that was something that interested me. I realised words and images are powerful things.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. So you talked a little bit about the experience of feeling different. And that's the focus in a few of your books-- this idea that you're not quite a part of everything around you. I'm thinking particularly of 'The Arrival,' of that story. Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis for these? What prompted you to want to tell this story which is so beautifully done just with pictures. No words, but the message is so powerful.

SHAUN TAN: Well, you know, I'm always looking for things that will work as a book that I can do, that I have the skills to do. Some ideas I come up with, I don't have the skills to realise that. In this case, well, it's funny. It often starts where I don't know what it's about. And in this, it was an image of a man or a creature or something arriving somewhere with a package. So that was important.

Just a person with a package. They got to do something with the package, whether they were courier or something, and they don't know anything about the place that they're in. I mean, it's completely alien and scary. And as I kept sketching it, I realised that the package turned into a suitcase. And it was just images of a man with a suitcase.

But he's dressed normally and looking a lot like myself in a place that was completely incomprehensible. And I started realising this is not an alien experience. This is not a fantasy. This is a real experience that a lot of people experience and have experienced for centuries or thousands of years, and that is moving to a new country. You don't understand what people are saying. You don't know how to get around. You don't know where you going to sleep, how you going to eat.

The tiniest little things become a challenge. And so then I started-- still with that weird idea of a strange place which I always liked doing-- I started to do more focused research. And I thought, OK, now that I know this is about something that's not really fantasy, it's about something real, I'll read a lot of migrant stories.

And there was a show on SBS on TV at the time which was called 'Tales From the Suitcase.' And a lot of what the people were saying, they're just telling their stories about coming to Australia, it was really chiming with me, and I was getting the visual images of a displace into another world because I was talking about how strange Australia was and strange animals, strange food.

The climate's weird, and people's behaviour was, like, incomprehensible. And my father is Chinese from Malaysia. And, you know, I grew up with him telling, ad nauseum, all his stories about coming to Australia, so I wasn't interested. And then you reach an age where, you know, actually, I am interested in that.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. Can you tell me that one again? Yeah. Because I wasn't listening the first time. Yeah.

SHAUN TAN: That's right. So dad, tell me about the time this happened. You know, little mishaps. And he actually worked as a train conductor in Melbourne, I don't know, at least a ticket collector in the '60s. And he didn't know any of the streets and misdirecting people, and little things like that. And just reading other migrant's tales about the perilous journey and some of that, which I tried to translate into images in the book.

And just weird things like a immigrant not understanding how can the same electricity socket produce heat for the oven and cold for the fridge? That doesn't make sense. So all of those little things kind of transmutted into these illustrations. And I really wanted to show what it's like to not know anything. And the best way to do that is present a world that no reader has ever seen before.

TAMARA RODGERS: So another world that presents a really kind of alien landscape is possibly one of my favourites, 'The Lost Thing,' where this boy discovers this thing and can't find a way that it fits in his world. What I love about that book is the beautiful layering of so many different images in the background. Do you use a lot of found things in your work, generally?

SHAUN TAN: Yeah. In fact, all artwork is working with found things. I would argue that even the moment you put a mark on a piece of paper, that's a found thing. Because you don't really know what it's going to look like before you do it. And then you find it, and you go, OK, that makes me think of something else.

But in 'The Lost Thing,' and also a number of other books where it's less prominent on the actual final illustration, I often use a technique called collage, which is finding existing pictures or pieces of pictures and rearranging them. And it's a great way of, first of all, getting over the hurdle of drawing. It's great if also you're not a very good drawer to actually just work with collage because you can create images quite quickly.

And in the case of 'The Lost Thing,' I had a whole stack of old physics and engineering books that my dad used as a civil engineering student. And they were really out of date. And some physics books, like, explaining how vacuum tubes work and transistors and, you know, like, you really need to know this now, but I thought, beautifully illustrated.

Like, I love those technical illustrations. There's a real art to them, and it's a bit of a lost art. And so I kind of worked with the themes in the book. I just started cutting the pages and glueing them to my picture. It actually, strangely, the decorations around the edge inspired the universe of 'The Lost Thing' which was a very mechanical world where-- a world without literature, basically.

Or the only literature, the only books in this world would be manuals. Why would you have stories? You can't use them. Just have a manual. And so the idea was it was a book that a boy had made. He thought, I will make a book with a story in it, and there's no other paper around in this world, so I'll have to make it out of old manuals and paint over the top of them. And so that was the idea of that book.

TAMARA RODGERS: I'm assuming that when you were starting to work on 'The Lost Thing,' you didn't think that that would take it to the Academy Awards.

SHAUN TAN: No.

TAMARA RODGERS: No.

SHAUN TAN: Nah.

TAMARA RODGERS: So the process behind taking this beautiful picture book that you've done and turning it into a short film?

SHAUN TAN: Oh, boy, that's a real long story. But a long story for a short, 15-minute film, because it spans 10 years. But basically, there was a production company in London. And one of its directors saw a copy of 'The Lost Thing' at an Italian book fair. And this is the way-- books, they're very-- I love books because they're so fluid internationally. They end up in all the strangest places.

And he was looking for a project, and they'd made some really good short films before. The story resonated with him. He particularly identified with the creature in the story, I think, as a lot of people do, and contacted me and said, do you want to make this into a short film? I said, no thanks.

The book's fine. You don't really need to adapt it. I'd seen a lot of bad examples of adaptation. Then they sent me some examples of their work, and their work was really good, and I got really interested. And then, anyway, to cut a long story short, they started working on it. And I said, you know, I'll be involved a little bit. I'll do some sketches for you and stuff.

And then I just got more and more interested. And then I began directing the film. And it was like learning how to make a film while making a film. There's a lot to learn. And I had really great people helping me, and they were teaching me. So it was kind of like a weird relationship-- I'm directing them, but they're teaching me.

And yeah, after many, many twists and turns, we had a film, and it went out there, and it failed to get into festivals. The first couple of tries, we're very disappointed. We thought we'd failed. We were a bit sad about it. We loved the film, though. And our friends loved it and everything.

And then over time, I don't know, something happened, and it just started to get picked up by festivals. Actually, Sydney Film Festival was the first one to really pick it up. And then it just-- God knows how that it led to an Oscar win. And I remember going there. And when they announced the name I was like-- my first thought was, this is ridiculous. This is gone to-- this joke's gone too far.

You know? But yeah, it was a very strange experience. And as soon as it was over, I went back and started doing books again. So. You know, it hasn't really changed much. But it was a very, very interesting universe. I feel privileged, a really privileged tourist into that world. It's like going on a tour where you actually get to go onstage and backstage for a bit before you head home.

TAMARA RODGERS: A nice little exchange student moment.

SHAUN TAN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So very much like 'The Arrival,' actually. Very much like um, I don't know what I'm doing here. Who are these people? And, you know, but that was-- it was great. I met a lot of really interesting people.

TAMARA RODGERS: So a lot of kids at school watching this are probably-- they're familiar with your work. And as you said earlier, kids love to draw. What advice would you give to kids who are still trying to find their way into how they tell their stories, whether that's through words or through pictures?

SHAUN TAN: Oh, boy. Well, first of all, they have a lot of advice constantly blasted at them regardless of whether they're asking for it or not. So the first thing to say is, only take advice if you're looking for it. And secondly, I could say a lot of things. I'll just say two main things. If you're interested in the visual arts, become a really good communicator about your work.

Don't be shy. And it doesn't mean you have to be, like, selling yourself all the time, but you have to be articulate. I found that's really important. So even if you're a very visual person, and you think, oh, I don't know about talking about my work. No, sorry. You just really have to talk about it, and you have to help people to understand what you're doing, really help them to see things the way you do.

And secondly, expect to be depressed. Because I know going through school, and I went to an art school and everything, a lot of those students-- some of them are way more talented, and then they I didn't continue. And I think it was because the obstacles for an artist are very great. And they will lead you to doubt yourself. It's a extremely self-doubting profession-- painting and writing.

And the trick is finding a way-- I don't how you do it-- but just find some way to get past that. And sometimes for me it's not even sharing my work that widely in the early years. It's like working privately and avoiding getting crushed. You know, like, just sort of this. But just also do things for yourself and be authentic. Just with any career, be authentic.

That's not like be yourself, because that's a tricky thing to say. Because when I was a younkers, I did not know who that person was, so how could I be that person? But be authentic. And that just means do things that you feel strongly about and that are actually fun, you know? Not because somebody says, oh, this is cool, and you should be do--

No. You do it because you really like it, and because it's fun. And if you feel that way, the people that see the work will feel that way too. They just will. It might take a while, but you'll find your audience.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. Even if that audience is just yourself, I guess.

SHAUN TAN: Yeah. You're not alone. You'll be surprised. You can come up with the most wacky, weird ideas. And you think oh, this is so embarrassingly personal. And I'll say, in the age of the internet, it's much easier to connect with people. It's harder when you're not standing out. But there are people who are thinking exactly the same thing, and they have the same concerns, and they want to talk about it and, you know, they really dig what you're doing.

So yeah, it's just sort of about hanging in there and persistence. And it's tricky. Sometimes it's knowing when to quit and try something else. So it's not always about if you don't succeed, keep trying. No. Sometimes you really have to just-- you do have to quit, but you've got to try something else. Yeah. And that's good advice.

TAMARA RODGERS: And I think that's good advice for drawing or for, you know, cleaning your bedroom or for anything, really, that finding something that's authentic.

SHAUN TAN: So at some point, take the really fun thing also, will really stop being fun. And that's going to sort out the real writers and artists from the people who are just interested in having an artistic experience. At some point, it's gonna just be debilitatingly not fun, and you just got to keep going. And all I can say is you keep going, it gets fun again. You know, you get through to the other side.

TAMARA RODGERS: Is there something that you're working on at the moment that you can share with us? Or what are you playing with in the studio?

SHAUN TAN: I'm playing with different things. I'm doing a lot of painting at the moment. So I kind of just change. I don't always do stories. I do a lot of other work. You can follow me on Instagram. And often, I just do paintings of my local landscape, and things like that. I've got a couple of books coming out this year, which is unusual for me to have that much work coming out.

And one is a book called 'Cicada' about a bug working in an office that is very unliked by his coworkers. And then another book later in the year called 'Tales From the Inner City' which is a follow-up to this book here. But it's a much bigger book about animals living in urban environments.

TAMARA RODGERS: Thank you so much for joining us, Shaun. Thanks everyone at home. We hope that you enjoy reading Shaun's books for the PRC this year. Happy reading.