Åsa Lucander

Åsa Lucander is a director and designer, working in illustration and animation both in the UK as well as Scandinavia.

Originally from Finland, she moved to London in 2001 where she was introduced to animation while studying illustration. After graduating she joined the animation studio 12foot6 where she stayed until 2014.

In 2015 she joined Aardman Animations in Bristol, where she is now based.

With multi-faceted strengths in storytelling, design and animation she loves exploring various creative styles, be it in 2d, stop motion or CGI. Åsa has a passion for hand rendered drawings and explores many different textures and mediums in all areas of her work. She loves mixing humour with melancholy and thrills in bringing characters of every shape and form to life with compelling scripts and inventive visions. She nimbly blends music, authentic dialogue, film segments, hand drawn characters and dolls in innovative ways.

Åsa has directed multiple shorts, including her award-winning film Lost Property, as well as many heart-warming commercial films for clients including Blue Peter, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Project Every- one and Childline, and a VR documentary film for BBC. Most recently she directed the music video for Coldplay’s track Daddy that has won numerous awards.

The Finlandia-nominated Stella (2023) was the first picture book by Åsa Lucander, who, in addition to being a director and illustrator at Aardman Animations, has also animated music videos for artists such as Coldplay. She created the book together with Ted Forsström. In spring 2025 her and Ted's second collaboration, Stiven, was published.

Reetta Niemensivu

Reetta Niemensivu is an illustrator, comic artist and a graphic designer who lives and works in Lahti, Finland. Reetta hasillustrated a great number of children’s books for various publishers in Finland. She is also the author of four comic albums published by Suuri Kurpitsa and she has self-published several small press publications.

She was nominated for the Finlandia Junior Prize for the children’s book Penelope and the Perilous Porridge in 2022. She has won the Comic Finlandia Award in 2019 for the album Sisaret 1918.

Photo credit: Henry Söderlund

Ted Forsström

Ted Forsström is a Finnish-Swedish media personality, author, and comedian based in Ostrobothnia. He has worked as an actor, director, and screenwriter, and is widely known as one half of the popular duo Ted & Kaj. Together with Kaj Korkea-aho, he co-wrote the Finlandia Junior-nominated YA trilogy ZOO! and currently co-hosts Ted & Kaj, the most popular Swedish-language podcast in Finland.

Forsström also creates children’s content for Svenska Yle. In 2023, he published the Finlandia-nominated children’s book Stella together with illustrator Åsa Lucander. In spring 2025, the follow-up Stiven was published. His new book The Blue Flame (Den blå flammans följe) will be published soon...

Tuutikki Tolonen

Tuutikki Tolonen is the author of several acclaimed children’s books, plays and academic articles. She teaches creative writing and has worked as an editor and reporter at Vinski, a Finnish literary magazine for children. For Monster Nanny she received the Arvid Lydecken award.  Her inspiration for the Monster Nanny trilogy sparked during a family breakfast. “My son Leo, then six, said: ‘I heard on the radio yesterday that all moms have to go on vacation and monsters will take their places,” she says.

Her other bestselling series is the Agnes-series, of which the first book "Agnes and the Garden of Dreams" was in 2021 nominated for the Arvid Lydecken Award, received an honorable mention for the Runeberg Junior Award, and won the Luku Varkaus Award. Tolonen tells that the inspiration for Agnes comes for her interest for weird and inexpicable tales, ghost stories and mysteries: "I wanted to write a book my daughter Aili, then nine, would like to read - not too long, not too scary, but very curious."

Tuutikki is nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2026.

Photo credit: Otto Virtanen