Grow Your Own

Part of my visual theme in having stark white paper to form the sweet shop is rooted in the idea of WWII rationing: the lack of sugar and the paper rations were supplied in. The levels are bright and full of colour in contrast, being the land of pure sweetness, but similar themes like scrimping and saving or growing your own food could appear here through the illustration. I have started exploring this with the countryside themed level, leading into images of tomato plants which could be grown in a suburban garden.


I stumbled across a relevant source of information on self-sufficiency in wartime Britain through Channel Four's series SuperScrimpers: Waste Not Want Not, where wasteful families are shown an alternative lifestyle by frugal women who have been practising it for years.

"70 years ago scrimping and saving was a point of national pride, there were countless news articles and broadcasts helping Britons dig for victory and make do and mend."

One of the things mentioned was that families used to keep chickens, rabbits and pigs during wartime and after to provide food for themselves more sustainably. "If you kept one or two chickens you'd have free eggs… during the war years everybody had chickens, rabbits and pigs."