Pre-Production: About "Here Be Monsters" And Character Designs

Jonathan Emmett is a children's author and paper engineer based in Nottingham. He has written over 50 children's books and has been published in over 30 different languages.
http://www.scribblestreet.co.uk/author/biog.html
Sourced 6/7/2015

Poly Bernatene is an Argentinian born illustrator who has worked in advertising, animation and comics, he has had over 60 published books over many different countries.
http://www.polybernatene.com/#!about/c240r
Sourced 6/7/2015

Here be monsters is a children's picture book written by Jonathan Emmett.
This book has changed many times over the 18 years of making and was once going to be a pop-up book about a little girl that uses a map to find monsters.

As this idea wasn't being accepted by publishers, Jonathan Emmett shelved the idea and continued to work on other books.
After working with illustrator Poly Bernatene on two other books, Jonathan brought out Here Be Monsters again and began to re-work the story.

Sending the story off to Poly Bernatene to work on Jonathan got a surprise when the characters came back as animals instead of humans.
He soon warmed up to the idea and with a few adjustments to make the characters more menacing the book was finished.
http://www.scribblestreet.co.uk/pictures/herebemonsters/herebemonsters.html
Sourced 6/7/2015

The treasure-hungry Captain Cut-Throat leads his villainous crew on a perilous journey to a mysterious island, surrounded by mist.
Disregarding warnings that the mist is teeming with monsters, the Captain urges the crew to sail on.
"Monsters simply don't exist!" the Captain assures them, but the unfortunate crew soon discover otherwise.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/61031.Jonathan_Emmett/blog?page=5
Sourced 6/7/2015

Character Designs

Speaking Characters

Captain Cut-Throat