Let's Talk Illustrators #384: Benjamin Gottwald

Today I'm excited to share my interview with Benjamin Gottwald, creator of the wordless but hilarious Buzz! Boom! Bang!. The book might be wordless, but the process sure wasn't! Check it out by reading more below!

About the book:

This wordless picture book is meant to be read aLOUD!

Can you bang and boom,
caw and crash,
buzz and blub,
pitter-patter and pffffft?

Will you whoosh, yawn, moo or roar? It’s easy!

1. Open the book.
2. Make the sound that you see.
3. Giggle, turn the page, repeat.

Let's talk Benjamin Gottwald!

LTPB: Where did the idea for Buzz! Boom! Bang! come from?

BG: Before I had the idea, I had drawn a wordless adventure comic. Although the comic contained many soundwords, in a wordless story it’s crucial to capture facial expressions and gestures precisely—to catch the exact moment in order to tell a clear and fluid story. That’s also important in Buzz! Boom! Bang! to represent the sounds as effectively as possible. (Or rather: to represent the movement as effectively as possible, since sounds are ultimately always movement.) At that time, I also had a small side project for fun: Theillustratedmixtape. Every week, I drew a fictional album cover for a song of my choice, which led me to engage deeply with music, tones, and sounds. In the end, I’ve always been a big fan of Blexbolex. His books Seasons and People are beautiful collections, and for my master’s thesis, I also wanted to create a collection. With all these threads coming together, the idea emerged to draw a collection of sounds. At first, I included soundwords, but then I realised I didn’t need them at all. After all, small children can’t read yet—and by leaving the words out entirely, there’s no longer a “right” or “wrong” sound.

LTPB: What did you find most difficult in creating this book? What did you find most rewarding?

BG: The most challenging part was definitely managing the sheer number of drawings. A collection only truly works through quantity. The book has 160 pages, and on every single page, something new had to be invented. Of course, there could have been many more—some illustrations didn’t make it into the final book. In any case, I’m glad that my current projects are around 40–48 pages long and focus on a single theme. After all, for each picture i had to create an entirely new world. In this one book, I brought together caves, dinosaurs, washing machines, skeletons, elephants tumbling down stairs and fast snails—not exactly subjects you’d usually find all together in one picture book.

What I found most beautiful was a response I never would have expected. Someone wrote to tell me that they use the book in therapy. They work with children who have speech difficulties and said that many of them really open up when making the sounds, discovering their own language and tones. I had never considered that my book might be used in such a context, and I was deeply moved by that message.

LTPB: It looks like you do a lot of commissioned work and side projects! Can you tell me what else you do in addition to writing and illustrating children’s books?

BG: Sadly — and beautifully — I’m not doing much else at the moment. I’ve worked for a few magazines and had the chance to design posters, but lately there hasn’t been much coming in. I’m not entirely sure why, though AI certainly plays a role. It has become very difficult to get assignments in the editorial field. Some of my fellow illustrators have unfortunately already left the industry, or even the profession altogether.

The upside is that I’m not distracted from writing and drawing, and I can fully focus on creating new books. I also work with children through my books and offer workshops where we make wild noises and we draw together.

LTPB: What did you use to create the illustrations in this book? Is this your preferred medium? How does your process change from book to book?

BG: Everything always begins with a pencil drawing. That’s how I think best — I’m least distracted that way (unlike in digital work, where there are a thousand ways to avoid committing to an idea). Once the concept for an image is found and roughly sketched, I move to digital. That’s where I can experiment most freely. I love trying out lots of colors, creating variations, or realizing halfway through that I could still improve something in the composition. The iPad is perfect for that.

I also like to experiment from book to book and try to find the style that fits each project best. For Buzz! Boom! Bang! that meant using flat colors and black outlines — almost like a comic turned into a poster. And I think it had to be that way, because the pictures needed to work quickly and strikingly. In newer books, I’ve experimented more with shading and atmosphere, and in my latest project, I plan to draw the basic illustrations in pencil and then add color digitally, to get a rough natural feeling in the drawing.

I couldn’t keep drawing in the same style over and over again — I’d get bored. And if I get bored, the readers will, too.

LTPB: What are you working on now? Anything you can show us?

BG: I’ve just finished a book titled Hänky, which will be published in Germany this January. It’s about a vampire who hangs from the ceiling, with terrifying creatures lurking below — creatures he absolutely does not want to meet. Of course, in the end, he does. Because, unfortunately, he falls from the ceiling and makes such a terrible noise that they all notice him.

At the moment, I’m working on Olga and Oskar. I’m still in the script phase, but it will be published by NordSüd — and thus also by NorthSouth in the U.S. It’s about a boy and his unusual friendship with a horse, an insurmountable wall, and the idea that sometimes you’re brave precisely when you don’t feel brave at all.

LTPB: If you got the chance to write your own picture book autobiography, who (dead or alive!) would you want to illustrate it, and why?

BG: I think I would choose Saul Steinberg, because when I look at his drawings, I get the feeling that they were made by several different people. He’s so versatile and can draw in so many different ways. That fascinates me, because we, too, have many different emotions and traits within ourselves — we go through them and become different versions of ourselves in different situations and contexts.

A big thanks to Benjamin for taking time to talk to me! Buzz! Boom! Bang! published earlier this Fall from NorthSouth Books!

Special thanks to Benjamin and NorthSouth for use of these images!

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