Sparkle Creations Rubber Stamps May Preview

Gosh how time fly by. Sorry for being absent from my blog space, been rather swamped with work!

Anyway, its time for Sparke Creations Rubber Stamps' monthly preview. For those who don't know I illustrate the rubber stamps for the SCRS store and each month Sparkle (the lovely owner) releases two new stamps. And her talented design team showcase their craft skills using the new stamps!

Today SCRS is previewing Expecting Emily stamp! Sparkle is giving away a stamp to one lucky winner so follow this link to find out how! All new stamps will be available to buy on Saturday 12th May 2012.
In the mean time check out some of the beautiful cards the design team has come up with!

Amber Hight

Danielle Lounds

Naomi Gong

Now I am feeling guilty as I have missed last months' preview! I hope it's not too late to showcase Ballerina Ruby and Baseball Oliver stamps! Both available from the SCRS store!

And check out some of these cards created by the talented craft makers! It so inspiring seeing how my black and white line drawings are transformed into colourful cards!
You can check out more at SCRS Facebook page!



What's on my working board now.

 I'm working on some really fun commissions for educational materials right now. I can't share any of the illustrations for the actual books but here goes some roughs I did for the character designs.

It's based on a famous Japanese folktale, about Tengu and their magical fan. It's going to be published in the US so some western taste has been added to the story I feel. Tengu are Japaneses mystical forrest creatures with red long nose and wings, they wear outfits with specific features including geta footwear and little headpieces.

And here goes more character roughs. Beautiful girl and her wealthy father. The sneaky Badger and the Badger in his human form. The book should be published next year, I will upload more images then!
    

And here goes more sneak peeks from another educational book I just finished working on for Pearson publishers. Schools around New Zealand should have them in their bookshelves sometime next year!

This story is set in a modern classroom. I wanted to show as much diversity in the students' nationalities and features.

I think designing characters is one of my favorite stages in the illustration process. I love putting in balance and variations amongst the character designs to give them depth and individuality.

Billie B Brown: Spotty Holiday

Wooh, only a few more days to go until I leave to the big Billie B Brown Australia Tour! Getting very nervous (about my other deadlines...) and excited (about the trip!).

Before that I will be going to the Rugby World Cup Opening Game tomorrow, NZ vs Tonga. The whole country is going totally crazy with rugby fever right now, very hard to concentrate on work, especially when I can hear rugby fans singing and cheering outside my apartment every day.

I'm actually not much of a rugby girl, but having a club rugby player as a partner it's impossible not to get swamped by all the madness- looks like the whole city will leave work early tomorrow for the big opening night!!

Anyway putting that aside, a second post on Spotty Holiday today! 13th book in the Billie B Brown series! Check out the first post here! The editor at Hardie Grant Egmont asked for a "fun" and a rather "funky" grandma. So for the first lot of roughs I put her in artistic outfits and a funky hat. After seeing the first roughs the editor suggested we make her into a more young looking, fashionable and a working grandma.

We want to avoid drawing adult faces in Billie books so I had to make sure she still looked "old". 



Wish I will look as good as her when I grow old!!



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.

Lily The Littlest Angel: Winger O'Reilly and Book 2 Cast!

 

Winger O'Reilly is a new addition to Lily's cast. He first appears in the second book in the 'Lily the Littlest Angel" series written by Elizabeth Pulford.

He is such a groovy character!

The initial rough above was approved when I first designed this character.

 

When it came to working on the internal illustrations someone mentioned that he looks.. gay.

So I added facial hair and made his boots less pointy and more workman-like-boots! :D

So here goes the entire main cast for the second book, enjoying a nice pancake and tea party :)

Lily The Littlest Angel: Petal

 

Now that the books in the store I can show you more! 

Petal is a new addition to the wonderful Lily cast in the second book "Lily has a Secret" (Can you guess what the secret is?)

 

In the Manuscript the author Elizabeth Pulford described Petal as a small grey blue Kitten with big eyes. 

I love drawing animals, especially cats! :)

Lily The Littlest Angel: Tisa & Book1 cast!

 

Tisa character design first roughs

 

Looking at my new copies of "Lily The littlest Angel" books I can't help noticing that the pictures came out darker than I have intended. Sometimes the nature of the paper makes the ink appear much much darker than what I have drawn on the computer, I feel that this is very frequent in Chapter books (picture books usually use higher quality paper thus the printed images are close to what the designers see on their computer screens)

So I was a bit bummed to see that Tisa's locks look like big lumps of dark hair as all the line details were lost in the dark shadings in the final printed books (this also applies to the black cat Frumplepuss- you can only see his eyes amongst all his dark features!)

Oh well, too late to change anything now. I will have to make the illustrations much lighter from now on!

 

Tisa final character study

The last character I will be introducing in the first book "Lily get her wings" is Tisa- Lily's room mate. In the first book Tisa appears to be the perfect evil rival by being rather snobby and cold towards Lily. But I feel that she will eventually grow to be Lily's best friend :) Personally I think Tisa is like a mixture of Ron and Draco from Harry Potter.

So there you are. The entire main cast of the first book of Lily! Hope you will grow to enjoy and love them as much as I do! Check out the author, Elizabeth Pulford's page for more updates!

Lily The Littlest Angel: Mother Angel & Felicity

More sneak peeks of the cast of "Lily the Littlest Angel". See previous posts for other character designs.

Mother Angel is the wise, beautiful and the powerful Angel of Amelia's Angel Academy. I suppose she is equivalent of a principle of the school.

 She has a very tall figure and is strict and powerful yet at the same time very kind and forgiving; almost like a mother figure to all the little angels at the Academy. I wanted to portray these qualities in her design... beauty, strength and kindness.
My two initial sketches were already close to the final design, Just a tweak here and there....

 

And here she is, Mother Angel!

 

Felicity also appears in the first book. Being the beautiful senior student, she was very easy to draw. I think pretty characters are easier to draw than ugly yet lovable ones. When I was little I only used to like drawing pretty things, but as I grow older I tend to like drawing characters with a bit of ugliness real-life like flaws and imperfections! In a way it makes them relate more closer to the viewers I think!

Lily The Littlest Angel: Angel Mina & Mip Mop, Professor Glumbo & Frumplepuss

Just over a week to go until Lily the Littlest Angel books start showing up in the bookshops!

Elizabeth Pulford has created so many magical characters in these books. I am having so much fun designing and illustrating them. Below are the design sketches for the teachers at the Amelia's Angel Academy, the school Lily attends to learn how to become an angel.

 

As usual I bullet point descriptions in the manuscript before drawing up characters to make sure I'm not missing any vital information. The first sketch for Angel Mina was too old and frail looking. Even though she is one of the oldest Angels in the Academy angels are supposed to age gracefully :)

 Angel Mip Mop is one of my favorite characters. She is the messy chef of the Academy. She turned out more full figured than the initial sketch which I like!

 And here goes my favorite duo, Professor Glumbo and Frumplepuss! The names say it all about these two rather frumpy yet so lovable characters. I quite liked the hunchback in the initial sketches but in the end the professor turned out more upright and rather fashionable looking with his scarf and feather pendant :)

Lily The Littlest Angel: Lily Character Design

Just over a week to go until this new series start hitting the book stores!

So here goes another preview, a post on Lily from the new series "Lily the littlest Angel".

When I was given this project from Scholastic I was handed with both manuscript for the first two books. As I read the stories I bullet pointed characteristics of Lily mentioned in the manuscript and came up with a bunch of potential character design.

Few days later I receive comments and feedback from my lovely editor, the senior editor and the author, Elizabeth Pulford. 
After shuffling through the feedback I came up with a more refined design. Still trying to figure out how the trainer wings strap on her.

I was getting close. After making her look a slightly older we settled on the design below.

 

I then move onto refining the colour palette of Lily. The below palette was taken straight from the manuscript, "Rhubarb red hair", "green eyes" and "blue gown".

 Applying those colours to the line work and....
WALLA! Lily, we meet at last!

 

Only a slight change was made from there. Somewhere along the process from this point to drawing up the cover illustration I forgot to add the little curly hair around her ears (you can see that Lily on the covers on the previous post doesn't have the curly "sideburns" ). I actually quite liked the little curls, oh well ... what can I do now, I've already finished illustrating the third book!

 Oh yes, I also played around with different colour combinations for her hair and eyes. But the red hair green eyes combo is a winner! :)

Sparkle Creations June Release Preview: Bicycle Chloe

 

Today is the release of Bicycle Chloe! Sparkle is giving away this cute stamp to one lucky person, To find out how visit the Sparkle Creations Rubbers Stamp store and follow the instructions!

I love Chloe. She is one of my favorite characters! :) Although she only appears in the form of stamps when I draw her I'm imagine there's a whole story behind her. In my mind Chloe is a living girl, full of character!

I had so much fun colouring her up. Below is my work process! 

 

Rough

 

 

Final illustration used for the stamp.

Alice Wertz has made a beautiful card using this stamp! Loving all the details! So cute!

Card made by Alice Wertz

Sparkle Creations June Release Preview: Cherry Blossom Rin

It's time for a sneak peek at Sparkle Creations Rubber stamps June release!
I had Japanese hakama in mind when illustrating Cherry blossom Rin. Hakamas are a type of kimonos traditionally worn by men. They come in two pieces, top and bottom and the bottom is actually trousers suitable for swordmen and horse riding back in the days. Now these are worn by both sexes. But I drew Rin in a way so that people can colour her in as if she is in a kimono like Shaela has done below.

 

Shaela Odd has made a beautiful card using this stamp! 

How inspirational! Loving all the patterns!

Be sure to visit the Sparkle Creations Rubber stamp store,  Sparkle will be giving away a Cherry Blossom Rin to one lucky person! To find out how click here!

Actually I was in a funny bubbly mood when I was colouring Rin up. I remembered where I was when I was working it's original line illustration for the stamp.

A couple of months ago a bunch of my friends and I visited Great Barrier Islands for a rural getaway. Actually at that time we were constantly bombarded by dreadful news about the Christchurch and Japan disasters. Whichever way you turn TV, radio, Internet, people, everyone was talking about the two disasters that it seemed to overwhelm us, we were all craving for a peaceful getaway. Great Barrier Island was perfect, it has a small  population of 852 people, the whole island is powered by generators and solar power, no ATMs, no street light.. reminds me of my childhood.

After a sickening bumpy 4~5 hour ferry ride ( normally 3 hours) we arrived at the island wharf.

Our 20min drive to our bach (beach house) was very memorable, we only came across maybe 4 people (including the dude at a stranded little shop who kindly gave us directions) and drove past close to 100 boats and dinghies. Do people here own more than one boat each?

Our bach was a bit dated but clean and homely. The fridge and the oven was powered by gas, other than that the rest of the house ran on one solar powered panel which meant no TV, hairdryers, hair straighteners, microwave, computer/laptop etc. This meant that there was no chance for us to turn on the TV and see more sad news, no Internet and mobile access helped that too. Plus we had access to canoes, beaches, bushes and for those rainy days, lots of board games, cards and a huge 5000piece jigsaw puzzle!

The weather wasn't ideal, mixture of rain, heavy rain and spots of sunshines. One night we ran out of solar power when the sun went down. Us girls enjoyed working on the jigsaw puzzle in candle light, until my hair caught on fire! It wasn't too bad, except losing part of my fringe and those uncontrollable fluffs on top of my head. The boys didn't notice any of the power cut or my head on fire incident as they were enjoying their "man time" fishing.

Daytime was spent on the beach, walks, searching for hot springs, catching fish/seashells, cooking, eating, conserving energy and playing card games and jigsaw. :)

 Eating in the dark (candle light)

 Visiting beaches

 Admiring houses with more solar panels.. later walking past the house and seeing its lights on and kids playing games on computer and watching TV. 

 Kaimoana for the day

 Collected Mussels during the morning walk. Cleaning them to make garlic butter mussels!

 Loving these signs all over the island!

 On a long walk to find the local natural hot springs

 Sadly hot spring water has been washed away by the rain...

 cleaning out the contents of the fridge; steak, fish, ham, sausages, salad

I always take my work with me if I leave my studio for more than a day, I spent some time inking up... Cherry Blossom Rin!

 Cherry blossom Rin rough

 Me working at the bach table. 

 

Close up

 Final image used for the stamp!