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The Making of DR Bubbles & Panda - Part 2

Early in the process, we have decided to add another layer to the story.

They are:
  1. Additional animals - this can make the reading activity more fun. One this page, parents can allow their child to explore other animals that live underground
  2. Vintage  - The Volkwagon Beetle, Vespa scooter, Polaroid camera, and vintage postcards! All these give the book an evergreen theme

I tried to stay true to real Beetles and Vespas as much as possible, and for this I used SketchUp.

Fire up SketchUp, and download from the many free components from the online library.

Based on the page composition, I will try to get the best camera angle in SketchUp, and export them as JPEGS to Sketchbook Pro, where I lay the SketchUp image to trace over. I will then exaggerate the car/scooter by compressing them a bit - just to make them look slightly cartoonish and errr…cuter. This process may take a few times to get the angle right.


The the final version of the scooter in the book
© Latfy A Latif


The Volkswagen Beetle was also based on a real car, owned by one of our friends. I showed him my initial drafts and got wonderful feedbacks from him. I then took some photos of his car as reference.

For this page, I got him to open the boot so that I can get close to the page composition as much as possible.

On the left is the real Beetles. Notice the spare wheels? In the book it is not there since the pandas threw it out to get themselves in!
© Latfy A Latif



That’s a lot of research for a children’s picture book!

Part 1    |    Part 2    |    Part 3

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