 Hello, I'm Axel Schaeffler, and I'm an illustrator. I've done many, many picture books together with Julia Donaldson. One of the books I've done with Julia is the story of a dragon called Zog. So I would have to develop the main characters, which in this case was a dragon. I sketched lots of dragons before I decided what Zog looks like, and as there are lots of little dragons in the dragon class, they all have a different colour. They're all different kinds of dragons. A very diverse dragon school. Dragons are imaginary beasts or creatures, and I always prefer those to drawing real existing animals, because I have more freedom so I can make up what a dragon or a grappler looks like. And then of course there's Princess Pearl with a kind of fairy tale dress. And of course her doctor's bag. This is the initial stage of developing the character. And then I sketch the whole story, like a storyboard. I would start quite small, but these little sketches can be blown up, and then they know where to put the text, and I know how big the drawings have to be. So my job is an illustrator to add things to the text that are not necessarily there, because I've noticed that children really love that to discover things. The blue dragon has drawn something into the sand. One of them is doing exactly what's on the blackboard, catching a dragonfly. Of course there are lots of flowers and lots of animals that I can add, like a mouse, a squirrel, a crow. There's a little nest in the corner, some mushrooms. It's all part of creating an atmosphere. So another example is this picture where the text just says, so Zorg is trying to capture a princess, but it doesn't describe the whole surrounding. It doesn't describe where he is, what he's trying to do. We can see Zorg trying to climb up the tower of a castle, but there are many, many obstacles. There's a boy throwing an apple core at him, and there's an old lady trying to fend him off with a spoon. And on top of that, there's also a bear biting his tail. So he's not having a great time. It's nice to do the initial stage of the work, but then drawing the pictures is also nice, because it's quite meditative. You get really involved. I sit here and really kind of disappear into the world of castles and knights and princesses and dragons.