Book WIP (Series): Khai and his big feelings

[ArtMelC]

Hi SVSers! I've been working on a picture book series proposal that will hopefully be published under a government grant. The proposal is due end August. It's my first time putting together a book proposal or working on a picture book, so

The book will be a bilingual picture book in English and Malay. So this book series will teach children aged 4-6 to recognise, name and deal with different needs and feelings.
For now the first 3 books will be about:

1. Hunger
2. Anger
3. Anxiety

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUES are always welcome

[ArtMelC]

WIP 1: Character sheet

Feedback I'm looking for:

1. Is my character recognisable as the same child in different poses?
2. Any consistency issues in body proportions/ mechanics that I missed?
3. What else can I add to make my character sheet better?

Thank you so much...super grateful for this community. Y'all keep me motivated even though I kept thinking I am not ready to do this~

[Eliana Bastidas]

@ArtMelC First of all, you got a really lovely drawing style. The issues that I can see is on the structures of the drawing.

I drew over your drawings a bit. I based everything else on pose 2, because I think that drawing was really successful, the only issue is that it seems weird and unnatural to me that the side that is carrying the bucket is the one that has the leg in the air, when it should be the leg that is carrying the weight of the pose and bucket, not sure if it makes sense but try to do that pose by yourself, with the leg that's in the same side that you are carrying the bucket in the air and the one behind in the floor, you won't be able to find balance.

Pose 1 is a little off with the width, I made a fast comparison with two lines in blue.

Pose 3 also felt kind of unnatural to me. Your torso seems to have a C shape that goes against the direction that the kid is running, but I think it makes it looks like it because of the lines you added to the t shirt, it makes looks like the tshirt is getting air blowing from behind. Also, the leg that is in front instead of just going forward, it looks like it's to one side; to make this point clear I drew a small figure in blue on how I feel the structure of your drawing. I also added a new drawing of the kid running with the help of a reference I found in google.

I think you can see these issues if you zoom out a little bit and flip the canvas. I added your illustration like that in the far right of the images.

I also recommend you to practice about construction. I'm sure there have to be videos here about it. Draw a box also has really good exercises for this.

[ArtMelC]

@Eliana-Bastidas thank you so much for taking the time to draw over. I did this after watching and working on the beans from the character pose class but I guess I needed more practice.

Really struggling with posing a stylized character like this because everything seems unnatural to me

[Eliana Bastidas]

@ArtMelC You are welcome! Actually, I was reading again the post and it's completly messy, I hope you really got what I tried to tell because I wrote it fast, and it's written too badly lol.

I know how hard it can be to apply knowledge, it's easy to watch videos and think "yeah I get it, I have listened to it before" (talking from experience here), but you won't really know you got the knowledge until you try to apply it.
I had been struggling with this a lot in my life.

What really helped me with this was reading about "learning" in general, how do we learn best, etc. It really pushes you to think about yourself and know what and doesn't work for you, at least that's been the case for me.

[ArtMelC]

@Eliana-Bastidas No, I understood your pointers, thank you! I'll be reworking the problematic poses tomorrow

[A Former User]

@ArtMelC Great work! Your rendering style is nicely-textured and overall appealing and definitely kid-friendly.

I'll answer the easier questions first, as most of the issues revolve around no. 2.

1. Yes, your character is recognisable across poses
2. This is the "but" continuation to 1. But, I'm not getting a super strong feel for the personality of your character from this character sheet alone, aside from very generic kid traits, like "likes to play" and possibly is a bit "curious". It may not be a big deal though, since a fair number of children's book I see on the market (especially the SG one ) don't seem to feature very strong or well-developed character designs and it's mostly the story that carries things through. But a well-developed character never hurts.
   I guess it's up to you to decide whether or not it's helpful for you to further develop your character through this sheet or through sketching him in more poses with different props to bring out his unique trait(s), or you could jump straight into the story and the draw the character in your story scenes to get a feel for him.
   If you haven't already taken it, I think the SVS foundational character design class was helpful for me to be more deliberate and systematic in designing my characters.

For no. 2 I've done draw-overs and a detailed critique on the picture below. My comments are marked as either technical issues (meaning there's a pretty objective technical problem) vs suggestions (which is my more subjective take that I feel would help to enhance the piece, but since it's subjective and you know your own story and character best, you can take it or leave it).

One extra thing beyond the comments in the pic above, is that you might want to try out drawing lots of simplified heads at different angles to really get comfortable with drawing your character from different perspectives. Just a circle/oval with cross hairs to mark the centreline and brow-line are enough to convey the basic angle of the face, and you'll find it much easier to draw faces in all sorts of non-standard perspectives like extreme top-down or bottom-up views. (See the Basic Heads in Diff Angles drawings in the pic)

I hope this helps and all the best with your books! Keep us updated on your work

[A Former User]

Also more shower thoughts! After I posed the question about "what are Khai's unique traits that should really be brought out" my mind started mulling subconsciously, and brought me back to the title, which I think is really appealing and I really want to see a Khai that does it justice, if that makes sense.

Khai and his BIG Feelings. What comes to mind is that Khai is a highly sensitive and highly intense kid who feels his emotions very strongly (and possibly through the book we see how he learns to manage them?). Which means that when he's angry, he's REALLY angry. He's throwing tantrums, pounding his fists on the floor, bawling his eyes out, screaming, etc etc. When he's happy and excited he's wild, he's jumping all over the place, he's running with boundless energy, he's doing really imaginative play with his toys, he's totally engrossed in a book or a fantasy world, he's laughing infectiously etc etc.

These are just a few suggestions, but my point is basically that if you are clear about what makes Khai Khai, and can really bring out the BIG-ness of his feelings in your drawings of him, then I think you'll have succeeded in creating a very strong and compelling character.

[ArtMelC]

@JQ Thank you sooo much for sharing your thoughts. I am working on the improvements and will be sharing them soon!

[ArtMelC]

1. Changed my character's hair shape so it won't be mistaken as long hair
2. Tried to construct my running poses (1 was from a reference photo. The rest are my attempts at pushing the pose to up the level of enthusiasm)
   
3. Front/back poses. I still find foreshortened hand and feet hard.
   

Tried to maintain consistent proportion throughout the poses. Not easy.

Next task for me is to work on the sitting/floor pose and showing some extreme emotions in the face.

At this point I am just "getting to know" my character and not yet drawing actual scenes from the story.

[ArtMelC]

Scribble thumbnails. Not my finest drawing but hoping to get the story across... comments and critiques welcome as always

[ArtMelC]

Goodness I'm running out of time while battling weeks of rotating illnesses in our household...so I have to start making finished samples for submission in case I don't get any more time to work on this. Here they are. Would love to rework if I have time, so feedback is always welcome. Thank you

[A Former User]

@ArtMelC Hope your family is well and all the best for your submission!

[ArtMelC]

@JQ thank you! Just sent my submission today hahaha phew. All the best to you too!

[Eliana Bastidas]

@ArtMelC I like your improvements! But there are still issues with the way the character is running. It has the arm and legs of the same side going forward.

The front paw of the lion get kind of lost and doesn't read that much.

[ArtMelC]

@Eliana-Bastidas Thank you! It is a slow gradual improvement. For sure I'll be keeping your valuable advice in mind for my next work