Friday, October 23, 2009

Pinky Booh... process show and tell

I illustrated a book earlier this year which was recently published. This wonderful book and story is called Pinky Booh, written by Arjun Chatterjee, and published by Rubicon/Oxford University Press. I've posted about it a few times here so you may be familiar. I want to share some of the process of creating the characters with you.

In the above sketch, you will see one of my first passes at designing the characters of Pinky Booh and the Tooth Fairy. The final Pinky is essentially the same as the first pass-- but, in place of her flowers, she has cute little pig tails instead. Otherwise, everything the same.

In my mind and on paper, I originally envisioned The Tooth Fairy  character as more of a "free spirit" type, but a brassy, take-no-guff one. In this first pass, she's very cute with her curly, wild hair, squat stature and horn-rimmed glasses. In the end I modeled her, in stature and in spirit, on the great Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada! A great performance! And an archetype that in the end fits our Tooth Fairy perfectly.


I then inked in the first Pinky/Tooth Fairy combo to see how everything would play.



Here come the revised FINAL Pinky Booh and Tooth Fairy...



...and here is the final color illustration.
Note the rough edges-- this bleed was not visible in the final product.


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