THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! Tying into both our Thought Bubble Month coverage and our spotlight interviews with this year’s Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch‘ creators we’re speaking today at BF with Beatrijs Brouwer aka Beastly Worlds. The artist behind such delightful titles as Shimmer Paths and Fox Flight Market Night she’ll be one of around 25 Six to Watch-ers tabling in Harrogate this weekend. I caught up with Beatrijs to chat about her attraction to the fantasy genre, her inspirations, and experimenting with the form…
Beatrijs at Thought Bubble last year (photo by Lydia Turner)
ANDY OLIVER: We interviewed you a year ago at BF but this is our official 2025 BF Six to Watch chat so let’s start by asking you to reintroduce yourself and give us some information on your wider artistic background to the Broken Frontier audience?
BEATRIJS BROUWER/BEASTLY WORLDS: Hi! I’m Beatrijs/Bea, I’m an illustrator and small press creator. I’m originally from the Netherlands and live in Bristol.
My path to drawing and writing was fairly wriggly! I studied Chinese rather than something in visual arts. I’d been drawing regularly since I was very little, but it was while on a study trip in Taiwan that I realised the impact sketchbooking can have. I’d lost my camera and didn’t have a smartphone, and that’s when keeping a sketchbook became more significant to me. Drawing helped me keep a record of places I visited, but more than that, I found that it made me appreciate the wonder of the plants, birds, and structures around me more deeply and really grounded me in the moment in a way that taking a photo didn’t. The sketchbooks became a visual diary of scenes I came across, and, perhaps most importantly, comics of conversations and small moments. (These were mostly of my roommates, classmates, and myself.)
Drawing in this way also helped me realise what I wanted to be doing more of, which was drawing characters and developing fantastical settings. (Elements of this route led to the themes, character ideas and setting of my first comic Fox Flight Market Night!)
Here’s an example of a comic from this time. It features one of my Taiwanese roommates very helpfully telling my Korean roommate and myself an alternate way of greeting people. (And my Korean roommate innocently repeating it already.)
AO: What was your entry point into comics and why is it your storytelling medium of choice?
BROUWER: I grew up reading weekly serialised Dutch comics (Donald Duck and Tina) and really enjoyed the silliness and drama of these magazines. When I wanted to make a story as a gift to surprise my sister, that comic form just felt more natural and fitting for the ridiculous tale I’d concocted (it was about a dracula worm searching for a castle of his own while up against a horde of violent rabbits).
I first found manga as a teenager, and the range and styles of stories in these comics blew me away. They were long novel series wrapped up in drawn images, where everything and anything seemed possible. I loved the way every panel and page layout choice added so much to the storytelling.
Fox Flight Market Night
When it comes to making my own work, there’s something about combining text with images that makes storytelling more fun. While brainstorming, doodling alongside scribbling notes often unlocks more ideas, so the whole process is very entwined. I also really enjoy thinking about the background elements, how the environment adds to atmosphere or hints at the wider lives of characters, how the background characters have their own things going on – or how small jokes can unfold in the back of the panel while main characters take up the foreground. It can be such a rich and layered storytelling medium, which is why I love rereading comics as well, to revisit and discover things I hadn’t spotted before.
AO: Much of your work has a fantasy element to it. What is it about that genre that appeals to you?
BROUWER: Growing up I was moving between different places and traveling around a fair amount. Books felt like friends I could bring along with me, portals through which I could climb into different worlds, and the ones that transported me the most were fantasy stories.
I think there’s a lot to be amazed by in everyday life. (For example, my Small Gardener series is based on real life small moments, seasonal changes and plant pot visitors.) But for me, when it comes to stories, adding a magical element can really highlight these everyday wonders. That ‘what if this existed’ or ‘what if that were possible’ wrapping itself into the scene and adding extra sparkle.
I also love that it can be on a vastly sliding scale as well, from epic fairytale or sci-fi world-saving sagas to slice of life with a little magical twist.
AO: Your latest comic Shimmer Paths (below) was first published digitally as part of the LDComics Online Fair and is now available in print. Can you tell us about its premise and the kind of themes you explore via its fantastical settings?
Shimmer Paths touches on companionship, dealing with new places and change, not rushing to judgements, and a little bit about life and death. The story follows the journey of a small black cat called Kibbeling, who accidentally tumbles into another world. Luckily he meets a wise older cat, Kroket, who teaches him how to navigate the shimmer paths that cats can use to wriggle their way in and out of the nine different worlds. (The cats are named after Dutch snacks by the way!)
I wanted each world to have a distinctive atmosphere. Some of them are quite bleak, or frustrating or dangerous, others more kindly and welcoming. All of them are better for having a friend by your side. The cats do get a little existential, but I hope in a gentle way that I hope is ultimately comforting.
Fox Flight Market Night
AO: Who and what do you consider to be inspirations for your approach to illustration?
BROUWER: Aah this is a tough one, it’s hard to narrow it down! Growing up pouring over illustrated books, my favourite authors and illustrators often went hand in hand. I endlessly reread the children’s books written by legendary Dutch and Swedish authors Annie M. G. Schmidt and Astrid Lindgren, so their illustrators Fiep Westendorp and Ilon Wikland left a huge impression on me, in their respective gifts for playfulness and conveying feeling.
I could look at Tove Jansson’s drawings for hours on end, her moomin world, characters and linework are pure magic. I also love Júlia Sardà’s books, there’s so much incredible detail and wild delight within the careful lines of her work.
Studio Ghibli’s films are a huge inspiration as well, with their mix of creatures, coziness, wild roiling emotions, and beautiful attention to quiet atmospheric moments. I’ve always loved drawing strange creatures and their storytelling was a huge push for me to start putting critters into settings and stories myself.
All of these (and many more) favourite storytellers make me want to throw as many details as I can into my own work to conjure up settings and atmospheres that hopefully make people feel like they’re stepping into a rich story too!
AO: Your work gets ever more confident with its command of the page the more comics you put out there. Shimmer Paths (above and below), for example, or your short comic in the Zineapalooza anthology. Are you actively looking to play with the structure of the page and experiment with your layouts, or is it more a case of becoming more assured with your visual storytelling as you progress?
BROUWER: I hugely admire comics with dynamic page structure! I make a note to myself when starting a new project along the lines of “Have fun! Be playful!! Think about creative layouts!!!” so it’s definitely an active thing I’m working on. (I have to fight the urge to get carried away putting a ton of tiny panels on every page, so I try to be mindful of giving more space and not crowding the layouts.)
For Shimmer Paths I drafted the page structures roughly onto individual small pieces of paper and laid them out patchwork quilt style on the floor. Doing this helped me see if the story’s pacing flowed, check how the page structures looked side by side, and see if any tweaks were needed to make it more dynamic and engaging.
AO: Tell us about your creative process. What mediums do you work in?
BROUWER: I love using ink and watercolour, there’s something about this medium that feels magical. You have to be so present and focused on it, and the blending of colours is so satisfying (and sometimes surprising).
When making comics I begin by developing the characters and the world they live in, with lots of notes as well as character and environment sketches. This can be over a few days or weeks, like with Shimmer Paths, or on the other end of the scale my series Tree Dwellers has been simmering away for years, I’m really hoping to get the first instalment done early next year!
I can see how digital art makes a lot of sense in many ways, especially for comics as they’re so time consuming, and I wouldn’t rule it out for future projects. I like using procreate for digital work, but it’s usually for smaller journal comics about daily life, or for my ongoing series of Colour Combo illustrations, inspired by the beautiful little book ‘A Dictionary of Color Combinations’ by Sanzo Wada (1883-1967).
‘Festival Suggestivals’ from Zineapalooza
AO: As someone who has been tabling at events for a while now what advice would you give to people just starting up on their comics self-publishing adventures? What have been some of the challenges to look out for?
BROUWER: My advice would be to jump into it! Start making things, lots of things, apply for markets and you’ll be surprised how quickly you accumulate some good gubbins for your table. Make the sort of thing you yourself would be drawn to. These could be really short comics or quick zines, it doesn’t have to be an epic tome!
For me, perfectionism and self-doubt can be huge obstacles to overcome. They’re definitely gremlins I struggled with and still regularly need to shake off, so my mantra is ‘done is better than perfect’. It’s really hard to put the fabulous vision inside your head onto paper, but whatever you put on paper will be something real and shareable and can only lead to getting better at capturing what you’re aiming for.
This sounds obvious, but I’d also say, draw what you love. I think when you’re starting it can be hard to talk about your own work, so making work around the things that you love or feel strongly about not only makes the creative process more engaging (and really shows in the work), it will also help you talk about what the work is about at markets.
Like many people creating comics and illustrations, I enjoy spending lots of quiet time making things, so it felt daunting to put myself out there, but I’ve found that markets and small press/self-publishing communities have been hugely uplifting!
Bluebell Express
AO: Looking ahead what are the next big projects you have in mind? Any teases for what we can look out for from you in 2026?
BROUWER: I’m working on some new Small Gardener comics that I’m looking forward to sharing, and seeing how I can develop them further. I’m also working on a series called Tree Dwellers which is a world I’ve had in my mind for years, set in a forest world with full of mysteries and mushrooms. It’s the longest project I’ve developed, and I’m really excited to finally be getting the time to dive into it!
There are some really exciting things on the cards for next year! I’m working on some new things for my Small Gardener series, which I’m looking forward to sharing soon.
As I mentioned I’m also hoping to get the first instalment done of a new series of comics called Tree Dwellers. It’s set in a forest full of mysteries and mushrooms and it’s the longest project I’ve developed. I’ve been loosely developing this world in the background for years so I’m really excited to finally be getting the time to dive into it!
Interview by Andy Oliver
Visit the Beastly Worlds online store here
Beastly Worlds is at Table D46 in the Redshirt Hall at Thought Bubble. Avery Hill Publishing are at Table C8 in the Comixology Hall.
Thought Bubble 2025 runs from November 1oth-16th with the convention weekend taking place on the 15th-16th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2025 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster by Ng Yin Shian
