Peter Viska’s first venture into the colourful world of illustrating didn’t go to plan. During his last year at high school in Perth, he created his own version of the satirical Mad magazine, basing his caricatures on his schoolteachers.
“I gave it to a friend to print and didn’t realise there was a hole in the middle of one of the pages. He filled that hole with a little rhyme about flirting with another man’s wife,” recalls Viska. “A few of the teachers at school were playing up and they thought I was on to them. I was almost suspended.”
Since that shaky start, Viska has created children’s pages in newspapers, developed children’s TV series such as Li’l Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers, and illustrated more than 40 books including Far Out, Brussel Sprout! and All Right, Vegemite!, which have sold more than a million copies in Australia.
At his studio in a Richmond warehouse, a small team of animators, editors and designers is bringing to life Viska’s latest animation project – Jar Dwellers SOS – a 56 episode series which screens on Channel 11.
Large cut-outs of the cast, including a purple monster and a creature holding a string of sausages, stand to attention in a corner of the studio.
“The story is based around two siblings, Sophie and David, who discover and release three amazing creatures from special science jars, handmade by famous naturalist Albert Derwent,” says Viska. “Ooble, Crunch and Barka are not ready for exile so Sophie, with the help of of Derwent’s Big Book, introduces them to her “Survival of Species” program. They learn to avoid Professor Van Riceberger, his Jar Trackers and his assistant Chang. The creatures have no plans to return home. They are out, there is no going back!
“It’s been a wonderful journey over the past six years to watch a concept in my head become a reality,” says Viska. “The main characters in the series were just initial sketches but they’ve taken on a life of their own.”
Viska discovered illustrating at 15 when he saw his first Mad. He began drawing his own caricatures for fun and hasn’t stopped. “I loved science and sport and didn’t do art,” he says. “At school I had to do an aptitude test and there was this skyscraper standing out on the chart for art and I thought that was just stupid.”
After high school, Viska joined Shell Oil as an operations clerk – but after a short time he decided to find out whether he could make a career with a sketchpad and pencil.
After a backpacking trip around Europe, he landed a job in Canberra as a newspaper cartoonist and then moved to Melbourne to draw for the Sunday Observer. There he created the Wotcha-ma-callit Club – a children’s page – and the mix of characters, stories and competitions hit a sweet spot with eight- to 12-year-olds. By the time Viska moved on, the club had 50,000 enthusiastic members.
“That page has a special spot in my heart,” he says. “I’ve met people who said they made their parents go
out to buy the paper just for the kids’ page. Rove McManus read the Wotcha-ma-callit page when he
was growing up in Perth.”
Viska then illustrated Far Out, Brussel Sprout! and discovered a passion and a flair for visualising the characters within dozens of children’s books.
“Far Out, Brussel Sprout! was a slow burner at first – then it disappeared off the shelves,” he says. The title is now on its 40th reprint and was followed by other childhood favourites such as All Right, Vegemite! and Unreal, Banana Peel!
“I see the words and I get a vision almost immediately and I try and capture that,” Viska says.
“My drawing style is fairly energetic and it tickles the imagination. And I immediately know when I’ve got
it right. I work very quickly from brain to paper
and, when I put my little V for Viska on an illustration,
I don’t go back.”
In the late 1980s, Viska was asked to design the 37-cent stamp and he created a postie on a flying stamp – rather than a magic flying carpet – being chased by an angry dog also on a flying stamp.
“It was the biggest buzz because the 37-cent stamp was the everyday stamp. Almost every letter in Australia had that image on it,” he says with a smile.
There have been more book illustrations but when Viska set up his own studio, Viskatoons, he ventured into animation, often working with the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF). Li’l Elvis Jones and the Truckstoppers is one of Viska’s favourite creations for TV so far. “I had a concept of Elvis Presley as a young kid, living in Memphis, guitar on his shoulder with a hound dog and I wrote to Graceland asking to take the idea further but they knocked me back,” says Viska.
“The ACTF was looking for a distinctly Australian series at the time and so Elvis became Li’l Elvis with red hair and he was found in a guitar case in a roadhouse in the middle of Australia. His mum is a dyed-in-the-wool Elvis fanatic and his dad is an Elvis impersonator. One of his friends plays the didgeridoo – so they play ‘didgabilly’ music together instead of rockabilly. One of my children’s friends in Romania phoned me at three o’clock one morning because they’d seen Li’l Elvis on Romanian TV and were so excited.”
Viska juggles half a dozen projects at once. As well as Jar Dwellers, he has just illustrated a series of new “chant and rhyme” books, written by former headmaster Peter Durkin, with titles such as Hang Loose, Mother Goose! and In Your Eye, Meat Pie!
“I think it’s important that Australia develops its own style of illustrating, as we’ve done with music. Look back on Australian music from the 1970s and 1980s and it’s so different … and it’s good. We need to have our own style in illustrations, too,” he says.
Viska has four adult children and two grandchildren, who are too young to appreciate his work. When he isn’t creating his next character, he enjoys time with his family and being creative in the kitchen. “Cooking at the weekend relaxes me,” he says. “I have a group of friends and every so often the men take it in turns to cook for their wives. We had a French night not long ago and I think the best reaction I’ve ever had was for my tuna tartare.
“As with my characters, I’d imagined it in my head and knew exactly what I wanted it to look like. My first idea is instantaneous and it’s usually what I go with because something magic happens at that moment.”
» Jar Dwellers SOS, Channel 11 from 8am Saturdays.
