The Arrival

Shaun Tan used a combination of photography and traditional drawing to achieve the book's realistic yet surreal aesthetic. He staged scenes in his garage using a video camera, empty boxes, and real-life models to create a storyboard before rendering the final pencil illustrations.

While the narrative is not autobiographical, it is deeply rooted in the author's family history and extensive research into the immigrant experience. The visual style was specifically inspired by historical photographs from the Ellis Island archives in New York.

The endpapers feature sixty individual portraits that were inspired by archival photographs of immigrants from the Ellis Island Museum. These images serve to ground the fantastical narrative in the collective, historical reality of people who have migrated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.