Vicky Kimm & Jamie Courtier - author and illustrator
Vicky Kimm and Jamie Courtier are the creators of Tooki, the hero of
The Secret of the Stones, a graphic novel for Walker Books.
Jamie's mother was an artist and a sculptress, his father the chief scenic artist at Covent Garden's Opera House. He lived half his childhood in Moominland, the other half in his parents' Hampstead studio, finding space amidst easels and carvings to work on his inventions and to draw his own stories.
Jamie studied illustration first at the Central School of Art and then at Harrow. There then followed a procession of jobs - carpentry, scenery-construction for the theatre, and the creation of
Wildergorn - a creature-filled world of his own which Jamie sold worldwide in the form of five gigantic colour-in posters.
In the eighties, Jamie found himself designing and making a set of animatronic wings for Jonathan Pryce in the film
Brazil. And so began life in the film industry as a special-effects technician. Jamie was invited in 1989 to join Jim Henson's Creature Shop as animatronic designer and project supervisor. In his ultimate role as the Creature Shop's Creative Director, Jamie designed and supervised creature-effects for many film and television projects including
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, for which he won an Emmy.
Vicky has spent most of her professional life in television, starting at the BBC on
Blue Peter and moving quickly into research and directing at
Pebble Mill. She subsequently went on to present, direct and scriptwrite her own films both for the BBC and for Anglia TV. For Anglia she presented
About Anglia;
Inside and Out; and the long-running gardening series
Take a Leaf. For BBC Schools she presented
Science Zone; and in BBC2's
The Air Show, she presented, directed and flew in her own short films!
Vicky is also a singer-songwriter, performing her own songs in public with Jamie at various folk venues. She has a BA Honours Degree in English, an RHS Advanced Certificate in Horticulture, has a passion for film, literature, and poetry (both reading and writing) and is potty about gardening, though her specialist subject when she applied to go on Mastermind (working for the BBC meant she wasn’t allowed, in the end), was
Tintin.
Books
The Adventures of Tooki - The Secret of the Stones – for Walker (2013)
The Secret of the Stones is the first Tooki adventure by Vicky and Jamie.
