Gavin Scott goes behind the book, MEGA: The Most Enormous Animals Ever

A fascinating celebration of the world’s most enormous animals!

Gavin Scott’s latest project MEGA: The Most Enormous Animals Ever! dives into some of the largest species that have walked our planet. Published by Nosy Crow and written by Jules Howard, this mega-book is officially on shelves as of today! Gavin chats with us about what it was like bringing this project to life, including the research that went into his illustrations and how he maintains a scientifically-accurate style while maintaining interest and engagement in young readers.

What was your research process like for illustrating MEGA? Did you collaborate with paleontologists, zoologists, or other experts to ensure accuracy?

When I was drawing the extinct animals in Mega! I had to refer to the most up to date reconstructions I could find. Some of the animals have very little fossil record evidence, so I had to look at their living relatives for a bit of help. There obviously aren’t any photographs of huge extinct Paraceratheriums running around, so I looked at photos of modern day rhinos which are their closest living relatives. Their anatomy is very similar, so that really helped. I ended up drawing a kind of long legged and long necked rhino!

It wasn’t just about the animals themselves, their habitats and behaviours had to be considered. Was it a hot climate? Would it have been dry and dusty, or cold and wet? What did the animals eat and how did they feed? What plants species would there have been? So I had to research that too.

I mainly source the reference images myself because I’ll usually have something in mind already, and an idea of the poses I want the animals to be in. Tina, the graphic designer for Mega, also gave me loads of helpful reference material.

A few of the ‘Biggest Extinct’ animals actually changed during the process of illustrating the book. One spread was nearly finished but had to be swapped at the last minute because of newer fossil evidence. I then had to illustrate a different animal with hardly any reference, which was quite challenging but really fun! I think it turned out okay.

The rough ideas then went over to the Nosy Crow team and Jules Howard, the Zoologist and author of ‘Mega’, to check over. Other specialised experts are also on hand to check things over.

Were there any animals you discovered during your research that surprised you or that you hadn’t heard of before?

Definitely. Perucetus Colossus (the biggest extinct whale) was totally new to me, as were quite a few others. I’d never heard of Megacamelus either. I think it has the funniest and most appropriate name of all the animals in Mega! I’m sure you can work out what it was!? Diprodon was a new one to me too. It’s an extinct wombat the size of a car. Wombats are pretty cute but I think I would draw the line with Diprodon! Quite a few of the animals I’d heard of but I’d never really read about, so it was all really interesting. I studied Natural History Illustration at art college and the natural world is still at the heart of everything I do.

How do you approach illustrating animals of such enormous scale while maintaining a sense of wonder for readers?

I tried to add other elements into the scenes to help give a sense of scale. For example, with Gigantopithecus (the biggest extinct ape) I decided to add in some butterflies, and have the animal looking at them, pondering them, as if the animal was slightly mesmerised. This gave a sense of size (ie. massive!) but it also hopefully shows how gentle and intelligent these animals would have been. It’s easy to think of extinct animals as being terrifying monsters and forget that they would have been looking after their young and doing the normal things that animals do. Gigantopithecus would most likely have been highly intelligent and a very gentle giant.

Follow up to the above, how do you maintain an illustration style that is both scientifically accurate and reader-friendly?

I’ve always illustrated fiction and non fiction, and my style seems to naturally sit in between the two. Anatomically the animals are pretty accurate but I like to make their eyes a little more appealing, or maybe give a hint of a smile to make them more appealing for children. I can go less or more realistic, depending on the book I’m illustrating. I generally start off with quite a realistic looking animal and then go about anthropomorphising them slightly, but not too much. I also have a background in character and soft toy design, so that also really helps to bring them alive!

A few of Gavin's previous projects focused on species and the natural world.

Was there one animal that stood out as especially challenging or exciting to illustrate? Why?

The huge Deinosuchus crocodile attacking the dinosaur on the water’s edge was really exciting to create. Crocodiles are so fast when they attack, so I wanted to try to capture that. Generally, people don’t realise that crocodiles aren’t directly related to dinosaurs and have different anatomy. Some crocodiles from the Mesozoic were much bigger than a lot of the dinosaurs at the time. When I was creating the image I kept thinking about how modern crocodiles stealthily hunt zebra and wildebeest at the waters edge today. That was what I wanted to try to recreate, but with a dinosaur instead of a zebra. Every time I look at that image in the book I feel sorry for the dinosaur! It’s difficult to convey just how big these crocs were. Hopefully I managed to do that in the illustration.

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To work with Gavin, get in touch with his agent Amy Fitzgerald here.