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 thought a hairband in the shape of a bow tie will suffice. And yes, let's give her eyelashes.
Here are some of the early sketches:
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| An early version of the panda. The sketch was done on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.3 © Latfy A Latif |
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| From a scene in the book. Notice the round panda heads to match DR Bubbles's :) © Latfy A Latif |
At one point (towards the end of the illustration process) I was looking at E. H. Shepard's Winnie the Pooh bear. Pooh's character has nice volume to it - the body is rounder, and has a pointer nose. But i think i’ll save it for later series :)
Storyboard
Here’s the initial storyboard:
A lot has changed. A lot.
The layout process
It’s probably easier to sum up the process like this:
Step 1
DR Bubbles send the early manuscript to the team (editors, myself)
Step 2
I started sketching the very rough storyboard on a piece of an A3 paper, and sketching the characters (the pandas, and even DR Bubbles. You’ll find that he’s rounder and shorter, and looks less real human).
Step 3
First comments from the editors (on manuscript and storyboard)
Step 4
I revise the storyboard (again, on a piece of A3 paper)
Step 5
First amendments of the manuscript by the writer
(Sometimes I will revise the A3 storyboards, sometimes I’ll just skip this process)
Step 6
By now the the editors have more or less agreed with the flow of the story, so I started illustrating the story digitally on Sketchbook Pro, and designing the layout on Adobe InDesign. Using these two applications early in the process makes it even easier as we move toward the final version, since both the illustrations and texts are already in place, within the software that will be used for final publications (Adobe InDesign. And to make life even better - our publisher uses the same software).
Step 7
I then emailed the ‘pencilled’ version (still very draft, but more detailed) of the illustration (by now the texts are already in place) for the team to have a go through. I found this to help the writer to ‘see’ the story better, and as a result - may make even more changes. This is fine, and it is quite an important part of the picturebook-making process.
Many steps later...
The editors and the writer will continue making changes to the manuscripts, and most of the time will come up with better solutions as how to compose the illustrations.
In a perfect world the illustrator will get a FINAL manuscript before he/she starts doing the full illustrations. But not in real life. You will get amendments even while illustrating the story. Sometimes you need to allow this to happen, especially if the amendments are for the betterment of the book. And to minimise pain (having to re-illustrate things twice), I would normally work on illustrating the pages that have the least possibility of being changed. But anticipate as much as you could, there will still be time when you have to re-do the illustration. But then, there are times when you have to make the executive creative decision - to re-do the illustration for the sake of making the storytelling better.
Here’s an example:
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| Original illustration, for a two-page spread © Latfy A Latif |
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| Final sketch - left page |
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| Final sketch - right page |
The single two-page spread was changed to two single pages. We thought this would make for a better storytelling and understanding.