Whoa, it’s been a while.
All those tiny doodles that I’ve been doing (both digitally and traditionally) for the last few years were actually preparations for the BIG thing – doing illustrations for children books series!
Well, who would have guessed.
It started with a doodle of one my best friends - DR Bubbles; and an idea that we wanted to self-publish (more like self-print) children storybooks that we can encourage friends to sponsor the printing costs, so that we can then give it to sick kids in hospitals (find out what we do here: www.facebook.com/myredbubbles).
So I started with a manuscript of maybe a 24-page children storybook (one or two sentences per page), and sent it to Iskandar aka DR Bubbles – he’s a certified translator (and clown doctor), so he’s good with the grammar etc – for proofing. That took a couple of months to get it polished (we didn't have any deadlines, so we kind of strolled through it casually).
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| DR Bubbles early sketches |
Meanwhile, I started drawing the characters and the settings. I initially drew on paper using Berol pens, scanned the artworks, and coloured them in Photoshop. After a while I moved to drawing them on Sketchbook Pro using the Wacom Cintiq (that has been sitting idle for quite sometime), and colouring them still using Photoshop (for our fourth book I’ve done all within Sketchbook Pro - faster workflow and suited my colouring style).
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| Trying to figure out texts with actions |
I printed the book on our inkjet printer and made a tiny book mock-up. Kind of a-proof-of-concept. That felt amazing - the feeling of holding a physical version of an idea :)
The idea then went to DR Bubbles good friend; and accomplished writer and literary trainer Mohd Zamri (he is now our literary agent) who then took the idea further. He proposed to Kota Buku who was going to Japan at that time. Kota Buku liked it and I send the draft for a proper mock-up so that they can take it with them to book fairs.
Zamri then approached Karangkraf, one of the biggest publishers in Malaysia. They loved the story, especially the characters (which are based on real people) and asked us to come up with series, just in time for Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair in April 2014.
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| DR Bubbles facing the crowd during the book launch |
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| Book signing. |
We managed to get three books published: two written by Iskandar, and one by me.
I just submitted the fourth book in the series to our publisher, entitled DR Bubbles dan Anak Dinosaur. Let’s hope it will be published in time for the Selangor Book Fair in September!
Now off to fifth book!