THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! Lovers of all things warm, fuzzy and cute will surely have heard of creator Beatrijs Brouwer, professionally known as Beastly Worlds. Renowned for her delicate prints (largely featuring her character, the Tiny Gardener), stunning zines (including magical Fox Flight Market Night), pins, apparel and more, Brouwer has gone from strength to strength as a small press creator. Prior to this year’s Thought Bubble, we caught up with her to discuss her upcoming zine (debuting at TB!), merchandise to look out for, as well as behind-the-scenes secrets!
BROKEN FRONTIER: This is your Thought Bubble debut! How are you feeling?
BEATRIJS BROUWER: Wow! Thought Bubble! I’ve seen creators whose work I admire talk about visiting or having a table there and I’ve wanted to go for many years. Somehow something always came up which meant I couldn’t make it, so I’m super excited! Until recently I hadn’t even properly envisioned going there with a Beastly Worlds stall and my own comics, so I’m also feeling a little nervous. It really is something I’ve been dreaming about for a long while.
BF: Tell us a bit about yourself. Have you always wanted to create your own comics? What graphic novels have inspired you? And, I’ve always been curious… where does the name Beastly Worlds come from?
BROUWER: Aah haha great questions! Where to start!? My name (Beatrijs) has been shortened to many different versions, usually I go by Bea, but my sister’s affectionate nickname for me was (and sometimes still is) “Beastly”. (Definitely affectionate, I promise.) So, I guess I have to thank her for the name, it goes way back to childhood. I’ve also always loved reading about, and dreaming up, different worlds and stories set in them. So, when I was tentatively publishing my first online platform many years ago, a WordPress blog, I combined those two elements, and since then the name Beastly Worlds just stuck.
I’ve always loved reading and drawing, so making my own comics was always something I wanted to do. There’s something about the visual storytelling that’s really fun: when to use words, when to just let panels be silent – I love the possibilities of it, for background shenanigans and playfulness or for conjuring up atmospheres and feelings difficult to put into words.
Fox Flight Market Night
It’s really hard to pick just a few graphic novels to mention as favourites! When I was little I poured over weekly Donald Duck magazines (these are very big in The Netherlands!), and then fell for manga, first Ranma 1/2, and quickly many others, and how creative and varied they are – a few favourites are Neighbourhood Story and March Comes in like a Lion. I also really love the art, stories and characters in Thieves by Lucie Bryon, The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag, Plain Jane and the Mermaid by Vera Brosgol, and the Octopus Pie series by Meredith Gran.
I get a lot of inspiration from just day to day observations too, everyday life is full of interesting quirks and details, like what’s happening in my plant pots outside. (This forms the main inspiration for my Small Gardener Diary series, about a tiny cat-shaped plant guardian learning how to take care of the plants in its patch.)
Fox Flight Market Night
BF: I absolutely adored your comic Fox Flight Market Night (which we reviewed earlier this year on Broken Frontier!). Can you tell us a bit about the story, and how it felt to craft your first graphic novel?
BROUWER: Thank you so much for your kind words and the review, it made me so happy and I’m so glad you enjoyed the comic! The story is about two shapeshifting fox siblings, Sam and Dot, who sneak into a (human) night market and the adventures that ensue.
Sam and Dot have just moved to a new town and Sam is anxiously studying for a test for her new class, but her younger sister, Dot, yearns to go out and explore, including a visit to the (human) Night Market. She’s sure her shapeshifting will be good enough, just as Sam is sure that it’s a terrible idea filled with dangerous forest creatures and market humans. They get into a fight and when Dot runs off by herself, Sam ends up having to face her fears to find her.
Fox Flight Market Night
The story was inspired by a jumble of different things, a big one being sibling relationships, of course, heavily influenced by my experience growing up with my sister. Also, shapeshifter and trickster folklore; I love reading about different myths and legends. I studied Chinese and my final project was about fox spirits in traditional Chinese folklore, so while these foxes are not quite the same, they definitely were a big inspiration. Not to mention (night) markets with their entrancing wares and snacks!
How it felt to craft it: I’d been wanting to make a longer comic/graphic novel for SO long, but found it really hard to get into it. (You know when you want something so badly you almost sabotage yourself into not going for it?) So, it was a real mix of emotions to be making the book, and striving to make it as fun and cute as possible – excitement and enthusiasm alongside grappling with the self-doubt gremlins. I was absolutely determined to finish this story though, and I’ve been really blown away by the lovely words people have said about it, it means a lot!
It’s 52 pages, made with dip-pen and ink and painted with watercolour. My day job means sitting at a computer all day so time away from the screen is always good. I love the look of traditional ink and paints, but I definitely side-eyed myself a lot during the making for deciding to go with this process, as well as for my hopeless love of adding loads of detail, it took so long to finish!
BF: You have some other zines available in your store, including adorable Moonpots and of course, the first three issues Drama Proof Pigeon Club! We would love to know more about how DPPC came about!
BROUWER: I feel like there’s such a warm and supportive community around illustration and I love being a part of it. I wanted to find a way of contributing to it that could reflect that and perhaps also build something to engage with people outside of social media and the dreaded algorithm.
For me, there is also something really special about seeing work in print and engaging with it physically rather than just through a screen. So a zine to feature other people’s work seemed like a good way to do that, which led to setting up Drama Proof Pigeon Club with my partner @now.a.magpie.
It’s been really great meeting other artists through it – each issue has a loose theme and seeing all the different interpretations come in is so fun!
We keep the zines as affordable as possible, priced at just £5 each, which is just enough to cover printing, UK postage and an extra £1 from each sale which goes to all the artists involved.
We’ll soon be launching submissions for the next issue, so if anyone would like to submit some work then please keep up to date with Drama Proof Pigeon Club, here!
(You can also still get issues 2 and 3, which are available online.)
Moon Pots
BF: What kind of merchandise can we expect to see at your Thought Bubble stall?
BROUWER: I’m super excited to be launching a new comic booklet, which I’ve been wanting to put together for some time and managed to get ready just in time for Thought Bubble! It’s a spooky tale from the Small Gardener Diary series, called Japonica Transformed. In this tale the Small Gardener must prevent a great potential danger: the turning of one of their beloved plants into something monstrous. It is highly dramatic and scary, like most gardening tales.
I’ll also have the comics and zines mentioned above: Fox Flight Market Night, Moon Pots, Drama Proof Pigeon Club, and Important Notes, plus new cards, pin badges, totes and prints.
I’ll also be launching new festive critter decorations, and this year’s festive cards! I struggle not to go all out on these, I meant to keep them simple this year but somehow the cards turned out more extra than ever! (I make them for the festive season but also so that they could also be sent out other times of the year – these feature dragons with a surprise when you unfold them.)
Moon Pots
BF: Do you have any future projects coming up, and how can our readers keep up to date with all the cool stuff you’re doing?
BROUWER: There are so many projects I’d love to develop! At the moment I’ve been working on a world of tiny creatures called Tree Dwellers – the characters and plot lines are coming together and hopefully not too long before the first instalment. I’m just trying to get the right balance between prep and not letting perfectionism get the better of me, and am aiming to start drafting pages soon!
I’ve also got a sequel in mind for Fox Flight Market Night, plus there’s more I’d like to draw about the ceramics witch in Moon Pots, and the Small Gardener Diary is an ongoing series, so there’s lots brewing (and not enough hours in the day)!
You can follow my Instagram @beastlyworlds and sign up to my newsletter on my site to keep up to date and see comics in progress (and sketches and drawings made while being distracted from stories).
Small Gardener print
BF: Are there any creators you’re looking forward to meeting at Thought Bubble?
BROUWER: So many! I’m looking forward to getting to see artists whose work I love and who I’ve met previously at events like Art Hole’s illustration fairs in Cardiff, including Kamila Krol/Pigeon, 2B or not 2B, Ed Stockham, Piggy Hammer, R E Burke, Archie McKenzie, Clarice Tudor and Yuk Fun, as well as getting to meet more of the artists in Drama Proof Pigeon Club in person!
I’m also excited to hopefully meet people I’ve been following for some time (like Emma Reynolds, Amilu, B.Mure, Goblin Purwin, and Joe Sparrow) as well as new-to-me artists (all the exhibitors look amazing)!
Interview by Lydia Turner
Find out more about the work of Beatrijs Brouwer on her website here.
Beatrijs Brouwer will be at Table B30 in the Travelling Man Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
