Doodles

Beginning of July 2021 I started sharing to Facebook friends how to draw with just using stick figures. They loved it! So from stick figures of men/women the how-tos evolved to cats, boats, houses and many other things. From end of July I have gotten myself more than 30 things you can draw by just using simple lines. You can download them free by subscribing to my Mailing List (also free!)   Link below.  Have fun! And let me know what you think! Subcsribe to Latfy's Mailing List

Creating Children Picture Books Workshop, Universiti Putra Malaysia. July  2015. Photo courtesy Dr Noris Norowi. Have Fun Creating Your Own Picture Books Workshop, Bedok Library, Singapore - for the Asian Festival of Children's Content ( www.afcc.com.sg ). 31 May 2015. Photo courtesy of En Zamri Mohamad. For the past one year, I’ve had the privilege of sharing/giving talks to primary school students, university students, parents, fellow writers and librarians. Subject: How to create your own picture books for children With these sharing sessions, came great feedbacks. I think it would be useful to share some of what I shared during the sessions with you today. Hopefully we both can learn a thing or two, and can put them into good use :) What I would normally do is present slides on the ingredients of a children picture book (story, characters, settings, backgrounds, story arches, conflicts, scenes setups, motifs, and if the audiences are up to it - layers). I w...

One of the earliest panda sketches, dated 24 December 2014 © Latfy A Latif If I remember correctly, we started working on the DR Bubbles & Panda book somewhere around mid November 2014. Guess when did the book got published? April 2015. It was launched exactly a year after the first book was published (DR Bubbles & Anak Kucing, April 2014), during the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair. It takes a number of text developments and drawing revisions before a book gets published. Characters changed, stories changed, pages taken out, added in, scenes got swapped etc etc. But if you'll enjoy the creative process, and deep down inside you know that it will be a nice, well-written, properly-thought-out picturebook that children deserves to have. Here are some of the final illustrations that made it into the book: Look closely and you'll find some animals that normally lives in the burrow. These two pages has no text, as to allow parents an...

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

The story of DR Bubbles & Panda was inspired by real pandas. In June 2014, two pandas we loaned by the Chinese government to the Malaysian government in commemorating the two countries’ 40 years of diplomatic ties. The story was written by DR Bubbles himself, sometimes in July 2014. Character Design During the earlier discussions of the title, I started sketching the panda characters. There are two of them - a male and a female named Xing Xing and Liang Liang accordingly. (Pandas cannot live alone, they have live in pair.)  There are so many cute panda versions on the internet, so it’s quite difficult to make this one yours. Our version (for the book) has round circular heads, with big black noses. The black circles around the eyes are a must, as not to confused them with koalas. The black and white colour bands simply followed the normal colour schemes that you see on pandas. I was toying with the idea of giving the female panda a small skirt, but then I ...

Now that we have most of the characters sorted out (well, sort of), let's move on to the scenes . (The scene part should actually come after storyboarding - where we already know exactly what texts goes to which page and we can then intelligently illustrate the scene as to best fit the texts, story and flow. But sometimes I randomly pick up the scenes from the story just to practice on). Here, I'm testing out one of the scenes where Mimi asked the little fish what's her name. © Latfy Anuar Latif Imagine the illustration above on a 23 cm x 23 cm page. It's big!  So for this series I think there will more detailings on the drawings, so that children can stay longer on the page. Compared to the Anak Dinosaur series (where we have multiple actions/scenes in one page - see below), this series will have less number of total illustrations, but higher level of details. Check this out – 7 actions in one page! © Latfy Anuar Latif For the ...

For the moment, I'm pretty happy with the fish character. No it doesn't have a name yet, and won't be. The book is written in such a way that it allows the reader to give the fish a name :). I think I can now move to the three children that have roles (talking parts) in the story. There's a girl named Mimi. I assume she is around 3-4 years old, since she can talk properly, eats fried noodles, and innocently feed noodles to the fish. Then there's 'Boy', who still carries around his feeding milk bottle. So he should be just below three (even though I've seen some 6 year-old carry those). And there is Edi, who's able to pick up the small aquarium and shake it, because he thinks the fish likes it! Edi must be somewhat older to have that strength. Five years-old perhaps? Here's my initial sketches: These are new characters. The names (Mimi, Boy, Edi) were given by the author. My initial leaning was to re-use the kid characters that have...

Here are some more Anak Ikan sketches. Uh-oh, I think I just came up with another character. Unlike the previous character sketches, this new one seemed to have its eyes to pop up a bit. And probably has a more kid/child attitude. It looked like a goldfish - with big eyes and a more elaborate fins. Hmmm... maybe I should make this one a girl (most of the other characters in the series are boys come to think of it).  How do we make it a girl? Easy. Just add eyelashes!  Add a bit of colour (again, this colour is not final. I'll probably change it to something more feminine  after I get feedbacks from the kids.) And you could add some blushes on the cheek – and oh,  –pimples! (I call them sweet pimples :) Hello little fish! Part 1   |   Part 2   |    Part 3    |   Part 4

I'll be breaking this entry into a few parts, written as the illustration process progresses from start to finish. So you'll be reading this as the story unfolds - as if standing behind me watching me draw! Careful not to breathe behind my neck though ;) -------------- Moving on to our next children picturebook for DR Bubbles series: Hold your breath, - this time we're going underwater - DR bubbles & Anak Ikan! Yes, kids looove animals. The DR Bubbles & Anak Kucing was a big hit with children. DR Bubbles (he's the writer for this book) is currently finalising the story/texts with our editor, so I cannot work on the storyboarding yet. But I have the very rough text draft with me, so I can already begin with developing the characters and the scenes (background settings. Yup, settings give context to the story, and floors and walls. Otherwise our characters would be floating in space!) Here are the characters (again, this is not final. So we wo...

A lot has changed since the last time. Doodles became books, and characters became smaller (but more plump!) – that's the evolution of things! :)