Martina Koala... and a Lesson on Preliminary Sketches

For my first Children's Book Illustration 2 assignment this semester, I was assigned to interview a classmate and then come up with an illustration that somehow relates to 3 bits of information that I gained from the interview. I interviewed my lovely friend Martina, and from her responses I decided to illustrate these three points:

1. If she were an animal, she would be a koala.
2. Two words that describe her are: ridiculous and dramatic.
3. If she could go back in time, she would go back to when she was 5 years old, because she loved it.


So, here is my illustration of a ridiculous/dramatic koala in kindergarten:

Lesson Learned: Even after you have chosen the final narrative and composition for your illustration, sometimes the concept development can go even further. When I was refining my original sketch for this illustration, I placed a sheet of tracing paper over the original so that I could re-draw the koala's head in a different position and make the blocks look like they are starting to tumble. As I was drawing, I accidentally shifted the tracing paper a bit to the side. With the original drawing visible underneath, this created the illusion of animation- like the koala's head was moving and the blocks were falling. This sparked the idea to create this illustration as vector art, so that later I can go back and animate it in Flash! I plan on creating simple buttons (the blocks tumbling, Martina roaring, her classmate's head turning) that will transform this into a fun, interactive illustration! 


So next time you start working on refining your sketches and other technical aspects of preliminary work, don't put your brainstorming to rest. You never know when a new idea might come up if you stay in a creative mindset throughout the entire process.