Giraffe Attack and new Go Girl Releases!

September is an exciting month! I have three new books coming out! The first is a picture book written by Chris Gurney published by Scholastic NZ, "Giraffe Attack".
I had so much fun illustrating this book. Chris's writing is full of beautiful rhythm and rhymes. Here is a little passage from the book:

"Golly gosh!" said Dad, as the door went wham-ker-bang.

"That fierce and flustery giraffe is making things go clang!"

Jack heard the handle on the door go sneaky-creaky-clack

and raced to lock it good and tight to stop Giraffe Attack!

 

Character roughs

Above shows work process from rough to adding colour....

Like any illustrator I am inspired by everything around me. I believe I had my old house in my mind when I drew this house up for the book. I used to live in a country side in Nagano of Japan. We were surrounded by organic farms and dad built his first house here. I took above photos when I visited Japan with my sister 5 years ago.Had a funny feeling seeing other people living in our old house..

Finished illustration!

 

Also two more new titles has been released for the Go Girl series, published by Hardie Grant Egmont.

I have to have a different mindset when illustrating for series books compare to illustrating for children's picture book. I am focusing more on the characters, their emotions and how they flow from chapter to chapter. Also I tend to have much less time to complete a series book, so the whole process is more spontaneous compared to a picture book, which usually take months and months to complete. For picture books I tend to treat each picture page like an artwork on its own as well as part of a whole story.