A Dream Come True

Martin Handford drew this Hollywood studio lot for the opening pages of his 1993 book, and it works as both an artwork and a set of instructions. On the left, a clapperboard and a printed checklist explain the game: find Wally, find his dog Woof, his friend Wenda, the wizard Whitebeard and the sneaky Odlaw, then hunt for a long list of small jokes hidden in the crowd. The four framed pictures on the right are previews of the film sets waiting later in the book, from a swords and sandals epic to a spaceship canteen. Everything in between is chaos: extras in green body paint, a fake castle wall propped up with timber, camera crews, a sound stage with red curtains and hundreds of people who all seem to be going somewhere else.

Handford was a British illustrator who had worked drawing crowds for magazines before an editor suggested he hide a character in one. He drew each scene by hand in pen and ink with watercolour, a process that could take him two months per spread, and he refused to use assistants. The style owes something to old crowded panoramas like Bruegel's village paintings, where dozens of tiny stories happen at once and no single figure is the point. Watch the film crew halfway up the scaffolding on the right, filming down into the crowd, and the man on the far left balanced on a ladder against a yellow wall. Whether you actually find Wally is almost beside the point once you start reading the small disasters happening in every corner.