The little white bunny known as Miffy was created by Dick Bruna in 1955 and disobeys many of licensing's set rules. While
other properties change, evolve and reinvent themselves to satisfy buyers' demands, Miffy remains completely still. She has
hardly changed in 47 years. Until now, that is. The broadcast of a new 3D stop-frame animation reveals her in three dimensions
for the first time.
Dick Bruna was born in 1927 and it was always supposed that he would join the family publishing business, A W Bruna. With
this in mind, he was sent to London and Paris to learn more about publishing but discovered he preferred drawing to business,
a decision his family didn't think highly of at first. It was also in Paris that Dick studied the paintings of Matisse and
Leger, whose flattened perspective and simple colours had a profound influence on the way he would work.
Back in Utrecht, after proposing to his wife Irene, Dick took a job in his father's firm as a book jacket illustrator. It
was a job he loved and in it he met characters such as Simenon, the crime writer who created Maigret. His abstracted style
was well-suited to the 'bought-in-a-hurry' paperbacks then very much in vogue.
Dick Bruna draws meticulously and slowly. First with a sharp pencil point onto tracing paper which leaves an indent in the
softer paper underneath. He then goes over the indented lines with a fine inked brush to create the drawing. The lines evolve
millimetre by millimetre and hundreds of sketches can be made before the right one is achieved. His printer transfers the
drawing onto a transparent piece of film under which Dick Bruna then places different combinations of cutout coloured paper
to decide on the final assemblage of colours.
Miffy facts
|
For a book with 12 pictures Dick makes several hundred sketches and throws most of them away. He is almost completely self-taught
and says the basis of his skill came from the traditional primary school he attended. He limits his work to five colours,
red, yellow, blue, green and white. Painstakingly, two more colours have been added; a grey for an elephant and brown for
Boris Bear.
Dick Bruna's books are square (15.5cm) and sturdy, to be better for small hands. The format is always the same: 12 pages with
a picture on the right and words on the left. When he has finished telling the story in pictures Dick Bruna sets to work on
the words. These are always four-line verses with the 2nd and 4th lines rhyming. His characters always look straight out of
the page, establishing contact with the reader.
As far as licensing is concerned, the commercial aspects of Miffy's life are not the most important thing for her creator,
Dick Bruna. As he says, his work comes first. However, he approves artwork and licensed products and has unflinching opinions
about what can and can't work. Designers from all over the world may be tempted to develop his images and colours but usually
end up agreeing with him that it somehow isn't right.
Miffy is the result of 47 tireless years of effort honing her image in pursuit of simplicity and of perfection of form. There
is no other licensed property on the market which has been afforded the clarity of artistic vision as Miffy. For this reason
she occupies a unique position in the licensing world. Dick Bruna's painstaking methods and chosen purpose reflect dedication
in a truly artistic sense. The fact that consumers all over the world have embraced his art is an extraordinary stroke of
fate. Miffy's future depends on her creator's continuing commitment to refining and simplifying or, as Dick Bruna would say,
commitment to making himself a nice picture book.
At the point of creation, do you think: 'What would children like?' Sometimes I think that on the other side of my table there is a child, waiting to tell me she likes this or not this. But
firstly I am thinking that I want to make a nice picture book for myself. I want every picture to be 100% right, so that you
could take it out of the book and hang it alone. I'm very happy that what I like, children also like.
Your son describes you as being a child at heart, and having a child's sense of beauty. Yes, sometimes I feel like a child! Like I'm four years old. I make books in the first place for the fun not the education.
Often my books are a child's first books. They start being a toy and then the child looks at it differently.
It's nice to work for an age group, which is so very honest. Parents are polite and kind but the children tell me they like
this and they don't like that.
Do you think children have a strong visual vocabulary at that age? Visual language is very important and children have a good grasp of it at that age. My books have been translated into 40
languages but I have never changed a single drawing. It's the same farmhouse here as it is in China and children understand
this.
Do you think adults and children have the same visual imagination? I think children have more.
