I’m currently looking through my recent work in preparation for overhauling my illustration portfolio, which badly needs to be updated. Here are some exploratory pencil roughs and sketches for a project I did last year for an online game targeted for very young children.
These first four pages is me throwing out ideas to come up with game characters very small kids can relate to. I start all of my work by sketching with a 2B mechanical pencil and scanning the page in. I write notes to myself and pick out bits and bobs which I think can be developed further and add color in Photoshop.
I liked these monsters but they didn’t make it past the project pitch (RIP). No worries, they will be revised and recycled for other projects (personal) as they’re eco-friendly like that.
When I’m pressed for time, I skip the pencil drawings and sketch/doodle direct on the computer using my graphics tablet. It’s faster that way.
Made some very rough sketches of game backgrounds, too.
I really love seeing other illustrators’ pencil roughs and sketches, sometimes even more so than the finished image. It’s interesting to see the transition from sketch to final. Unfortunately, I can’t show you the final product just yet as the project’s still in production. But I’ve seen the characters move around and jump as they’ve been animated by the team I handed my files off to, and it’s mind-bogglingly cute (I’m just a tad bit biased)! The final characters look nothing like the initial sketches you see here, most of which were for the project pitch. Can’t wait to show you the rest of it when it’s done :)
When I saw the week’s Illustration Friday prompt, this scenario immediately came to mind and I just had to draw up a quick doodle. It’s based from a compilation of hilarious and supposedly true Filipino beauty pageant answers I read years ago. English is widely spoken in the Philippines, but with over 150 local dialects (and accents), it still gets misheard, mispronounced, and misinterpreted quite often :D
Check out some other hilarious, laugh-out-loud beauty pageant answers here! (note: some of it is written in a mix of English and Filipino)
Let’s get this out of the way: I am a crazy cat lady.
Some of you might have noticed a brown tabby cat in my recent Wordless Wednesdays. That’s Tiger, just one of two cats I have. The Illustration Friday drawing prompt for last week was WHISKERS, and while I missed the deadline (hihi- didn’t have time to blog then), I thought it would be a good time to introduce you to my cats as they will be showing up a lot in my work (they already have, actually).
This is SUSHI (7 months old). A few months ago, my family and I moved to a new house. Sushi lived in that house; a stray born on the construction site. She never left because the construction workers kept feeding her their leftovers. They named her Maria with a Filipino accent (pronounced “Mar-ya”) and I would see “Maria” hanging around the workers and trying to play with the tape measure when they were measuring stuff. When we moved in and the construction workers left, Maria stayed behind and I changed her name to Sushi (well, it was Susie for a few weeks before I remembered I wanted to name her Sushi). I was happy to finally have a cat I can call my own :D Sushi is very affectionate– she likes to sit on laps and will sit there until you push her off, but she also likes to scratch and bite if you pet her for too long.
Then there’s TIGER (6 months old). I got Tiger from a friend a month after I adopted Sushi. I came home one day with a new cat, then sneaked her in upstairs to my room (like a 7-year old!) so my cat-hating family (my dad, especially) won’t throw both of us out into the street….. Now my family doesn’t hate cats anymore, and in fact they’ve taken a liking to Tiger in particular as she is super sweet and extremely well-behaved. She’s not a lap cat like Sushi is, but you can pet her as much as you want and she’ll neither bite nor scratch no matter how annoyed she gets. Hahaha.
Apparently, I was already a crazy cat lady even at 3 years old.
Before Sushi and Tiger came along, I’ve already made a number of doodles and sketches (see my Tumblr sketch blog) featuring cats:
Oh yes, I already had a cat name picked out before I even knew I was going to get a cat.
I love cats– they’re so entertaining and amusing and I like how, unlike dogs, they only do things because they want to, and not because another person expects them to. They have a mind of their own and don’t care what others think. Cats probably appeal to me because I’m like that, too (also, I like sleeping). When I grow up, I want to be a cat. All they do is eat, sleep, play, poop, and sleep some more. Sounds good to me!
It’s been 3 months since I’ve been an cat owner (cat slave? I clean their litter box and flush down their poop and spend my money on cat food and vet expenses) and more and more, cats have found their way into my sketches, doodles, Instagram photos, and even finished work.
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2013 goal: Aiming for a more organic, sketchy appeal in my work, whenever possible.
Some illustration advice I received recently which I’m passing on to illustrators, designers, and other creatives who happen to be reading: “If you want to do _____, have _____ in your portfolio.” Makes sense. Personal work also leads to paid work, so here’s to more doodles and drawings of cats (cat haters be warned!), for fun and profit! :3
Do you have cats, too? I wanna see! Post a link to a picture below or share a photo of your cats on my Facebook page :) (Note: my cats are spayed, so don’t bother matching up your tomcats with mine– we’re not accepting kitty suitors :P)
It’s been a year since my Japan trip, and I still have not finished my Japan travel journal. Seeing its been a year and there have been other trips since, I am giving up on ever getting it done and just posting what I have so far. Hihi.
Osaka Castle park
My first autumn!
The onigiri as illustrated in the journal.
Assorted sushi and maki from the supermarket
My washi tape loot. See related entry about washi tape here.
Two trips in three weeks! Eagle-eyed readers (all two of them) might’ve seen my previous Wordless Wednesday entry and assumed I was traveling. Indeed, I was! I was in Seoul, South Korea last week but before I can get to that, I have yet to post a blog entry of a trip that came a couple of weeks before– Bacolod city, in the Visayan province of Negros Occidental, Philippines.
People go to Bacolod primarily for the annual MassKara festival (mass = many, cara (Spanish) = face, maskara (Tagalog) = mask), a street festival filled with colorful smiling masks and costumed street dancers. There are dozens of similar festivals in the Philippines but the MassKara festival is arguably the most colorful and happiest. Ironically, the festival started at a low point in 1980, when the price of sugar (the main export of the province of Negros Occidental) was at an all-time low worldwide. It was also during the same year when a ship carrying hundreds of Negrenses sank, and as many as 700 locals perished. To uplift the peoples’ spirits, the government decided to hold a festival of smiles, “…a declaration by the people of the city that no matter how tough and bad the times were, Bacolod City is going to pull through, survive, and in the end, triumph.” (Wiki)
With a festival philosophy like that, I chose to experience Bacolod’s MassKara over all the other Philippine festivals. I’m all for good vibes and positive thinking! I looked forward to taking photos of the extravagant costumes and street dancing.
As the date of my departure drew nearer, though, I found myself more excited about one other thing. Bacolod is a culinary destination, known for its desserts and native delicacies but above all, its CHICKEN INASAL. Now, I’m a HUGE fan of chicken– I can eat it everyday and not get tired of it. I like chicken first, seafood second, then beef and pork as a far distant third and fourth option (ie. only if there’s nothing else). My favorite fastfood restaurant is KFC for its wide variety of chicken dishes. I love chicken so much that, at the risk of oversharing, my ex’s pet name for me was Chicken. Err. Yeah.
When in Manila, I eat chicken inasal at inasal chains in the Metro but having finally tasted authentic inasal from Bacolod, I would say nothing comes close to the original.
I had chicken inasal for dinner three days straight– which wasn’t enough! I was hoping to have inasal at least twice a day for three days hihi. Inasal for three straight days was the highlight of my Bacolod trip, although the MassKara festival itself was a very close contender! :P The rest of the trip in pictures, as the festival is a visual feast no words can articulate (also, because I’m tired of typing):
Salamat, Bacolod! I’ve crossed off experiencing the MassKara festival on my imaginary bucket list, but maybe I’ll be back again some day for another three days straight of authentic Bacolod chicken inasal :D
P.S. If anyone is interested in a Bacolod chicken inasal recipe, Market Manila has what looks like a good one here. Try it, then invite me over to eat as I don’t know how to cook, kthnxbye.
Earlier this year, Flying Books, a publisher of children’s e-books on the iOS platform, matched me with Chris and Melissa Bugaj from the Night Light Stories podcast who wrote this wonderful story about a dragonfly, a buffalo, and a ferret on an adventure. They needed an illustrator to bring the story to life, and that illustrator turned out to be me! I got the assignment for Dragonfly, Dragonfly, Show Us The Way in March 2012, a few weeks before I was to leave for a 2-month working vacation in the US. The timing was inconvenient, but I wasn’t going to pass it up.
Chris and Mel sent me the story and I did some visual research on the three main characters. Being from Asia, the only character from the story I’m familiar with is the dragonfly. Ferrets are uncommon where I live (my thought bubble upon receiving a copy of the story: “What’s a ferret?” LOL) and I’m accustomed to the Asian water buffalo which looks different from the American buffalo in the story.
Some initial, exploratory sketches of the characters
After approval of some proposed character sketches, I started out by making very loose and rough thumbnails of each frame in the story. This was just for my reference so I know where elements are placed and can see at a glance if the pictures alone tell a story independent of the text.
By this time, I was already in the US. I knew I’d have sporadic and interrupted working hours. I was also juggling multiple projects… while traveling. For Dragonfly, I decided I needed to work with a style/technique that allowed me to work fast and to not rely heavily on defined line work as I was also without access to a scanner for most of my trip. I was planning on just making loose pencil sketches, taking a photo of my sketch with an iPhone, then overlaying and building up color and form digitally.
Actual working sketches. Not much to look at!
I would send off five pages of sketches at a time to Chris and Mel, and to Hana from Flying Books. They would give their comments and suggestions and I would revise my sketch if needed (i.e. a different angle, a wider shot of the scene, etc.). When the sketches were approved, I would go into Photoshop for color.
Illustration innards
Sample finished frame without the story text.
The whole project took about seven months, from the time I received the manuscript to the publication of the e-book within the Flying Books app on the App Store. Yes, the e-book is out!
On your iPad, go to the App Store and search for the Flying Books app. It’s a FREE e-book reader publishing a nice collection of illustrated children’s e-books in English, German, French, and Spanish. Download the Flying Books app and you will see Dragonfly, Dragonfly, Show Us The Way on the bookshelf. The e-book itself is available to buy for $2.99. The nice thing about the Flying Books app is that you can let it read Dragonfly (and all the other stories available on the app) out loud or you can record your voice reading the words on the page. Ideal if you’re traveling and you can’t be there physically for bedtime reading with your kids. Or your cat.
App screenshot
Thank you to Chris and Mel for writing a wonderful story that was wonderful to illustrate. This couple is super sweet and sooo adorableeee, too! Check out their e-book announcement video. Their excitement is infectious!
Thank you also to Hana from Flying Books for the guidance and to Flying Books for giving me the opportunity to illustrate for them!
An e-book I illustrated, called Dragonfly, Dragonfly, Show Us The Way, written by Chris and Melissa Bugaj and published by Flying Books, is available for purchase on the App Store. Get it now!
