Go Girl Relaunch

April was an exciting month with relaunch of the popular girls series Go Girl, published by Hardie Grant Egmont. I'm sure parents with young girls have come across one of these books in the past.

Since its launch in 2005 the series has grown into over 30 titles, written and illustrated by variety of authors and illustrators (including my favorite Sally Rippin), and the series has sold over 2million copies internationally!
I have been privileged to be the illustrator for the relaunch of 5 popular titles (those in the image) followed by three more by the end of the year! The reason for the relaunch is to reintroduce these popular books to the new generation of readers and their parents.

Illustrating for a series means total re-branding of the whole Go Girl world. New style. New look. A total make over! And like the start of Billie B Brown series (click here) it takes months of character designing and development of styles to reach the desired and suitable new "look".

The five new titles features five new characters. Here goes some of the character sketches in the initial development phase.

 

The characters started out rather short and plumpy (like the original version). Beth, the lovely editor (who also guided me through Wild Rescue covers) told me to make them more longer and taller. Also to stay away from them being too pretty, stereotypical and commercial. Somewhere between Billie B Brown and the Disney princesses. So I proceeded on and on....

 

After the character designs were finalized it was matter of refining them for the cover illustrations!

 

Then the illustrations were sent to Beth for the designer at Hardie Grant Egmont to complete the five covers! :)

 

Obviously there were changes made inside too. The originals featured simple black and white vector illustrations.

 

The new books retain that simplicity. But I got to use two colours! Purple and black :)

 

Now I am working on three more titles which will be released later this year. Hopefully these new books will be as successful as the predecessors. I have also worked on the new Go Girl website as well. Currently you will only see the welcome page where you can sign up and receive updates. I believe soon there will be games, chat rooms and many fun features for both the readers and the parents! So stay tuned!