Illustration & animation · two humans, one shed

We draw small stories that do big jobs.

Pocket Moth is Ines and Teo, a garden shed in Bristol, and an alarming number of pencils. We make picture books for publishers and short animated films that explain tricky things — rain, kidneys, money, grief — so people actually remember them.

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or peek at the work first

now bookingSpring ’27
A cheerful moth with yellow crayon wings, drawing a star with a pencil
selected work, 2023 – 2026

Pinned to the board

Some recent favourites, stuck up with the good tape. Every one of these started as a doodle on the back of an envelope (the envelopes are also pinned up, somewhere).

  • Marguerite Goes Up Picture book · Little Lantern Press · 2025 84 years old, one balloon, zero permission.
  • Where Does the Rain Go? 90-sec explainer · Thornbury Water Trust · 2024 Shown in 600 primary schools. The cloud has fans.
  • The Night Bakers Picture book · Fennel & Finch Books · 2024 Badgers who bake while you sleep. Smells included (not really).
  • How a Seed Becomes Lunch 6-part film series · Greenacre School Farms · 2025 Episode 4 is just a worm. Everyone's favourite.
  • Otto Has Too Many Hats Picture book · Bramble & Co. · 2023 Now in 9 languages. Otto still has too many hats.
  • hi!
    Your Kidneys, Explained Nicely Animated short · St Aldric’s Children’s Hospital · 2026 Made with real nephrologists and one very patient 7-year-old.
no mystery, just pencils

How a thing gets made

Books take about nine months, films about ten weeks. Either way, it goes roughly like this — and you’re in the loop at every arrow.

  1. Tea & nosy questions

    Who’s it for? What should they feel? What must they never, ever see? We drink tea until the idea stops wobbling.

    ~1 week

  2. The scribble pile

    Dozens of tiny thumbnail sketches, most of them truly awful. The good ones get a gold star and a cup of tea of their own.

    ~2 weeks

  3. Dummy or animatic

    A rough book dummy, or a scratchy animatic with Teo doing every single voice. You give notes. We nod bravely.

    ~3 weeks

  4. Ink, colour, wiggle

    Final art, inked by hand and coloured in the shed. For films, every line gets its own little boil-wiggle so it feels alive.

    ~4–12 weeks

  5. Out into the world

    Print-ready files or film masters, all the source art, and a small cake. The cake is non-negotiable.

    launch day 🎉
the shed story

About us (and the moth)

Hello! We’re Ines & Teo.

Ines draws, mostly with a 2B pencil that is now about four centimetres long and refuses to be retired. Teo animates, hums, and has strong feelings about the colour teal. We met in 2016 at a Thursday-night life drawing class, where the model fell asleep and we were the only two people who kept drawing him anyway.

A year later we rented a shed at the bottom of a friend’s garden in Bristol. On our very first evening a moth flew in, sat on the desk lamp, and stayed for three weeks. We named the studio after it. It never once invoiced anybody, which we try not to hold against it.

Since then we’ve made fourteen picture books and around forty short films, for publishers, charities, hospitals and one extremely persuasive bakery. We stay small on purpose: when you work with Pocket Moth, you talk to the two people actually holding the pencils.

— Ines & Teo x

Inesdraws, frowns, draws again

Teoanimates, hums, does voices

we read every one

Send us a postcard

Got a book, a film, or a slightly odd idea that needs drawing? Tell us about it. We reply within two working days, moth permitting.

To: Pocket Moth
The Shed, 12 Bellevue Gardens
Bristol BS8, England