If you're happy and you know it

 This month the book I illustrated for Scholastic hit the stores here in Australia. I haven't posted anything for a while so I thought I'd share some of the art and development I did for this release.

COVER ART:

In the end the designers at Scholastic put the front cover (below) together using elements of my artwork. In the end they went against the yellow in favor of a blue sky. They also opted against the sign written in blood, wonder why?

Pretty books all in a row

This is my original idea for the cover which is basically just a reworking of one of the internal pages. Probably a good call they chose something original. Plus I left out the Koala. Poor guy.

 CHARACTER DESIGNS:

Some of my original animal poses and designs. Only one pose from the Koala ended up actually being used.

 LAYOUT:

Here is the first rough layout I put together. We quickly moved away from this as it was just too friggin' boring!

This is the final rough layout, including a few more visually interesting pages and spreads.

PAGE PROGRESSION:

These few pages show the progression from original thumbnail through to the final artwork.

The original thumbnail from the layout boards. Check out the detail!

The digital sketch. I still keep this pretty loose as I still like to experiment with things during the vector process.

Final Vector version. A few of them shifted around from the original sketch. Little fidgets! Can you guess where the text goes?

UNUSED BITS:

Here are some sketches and even some final art that didn't make the cut.

A double spread idea that didn't quite make the grade. Note how I lose interest from left to right.

An early Wallaby test that I abandoned half way. I didn't like his face that much, his nose is weird. I did manage to make use of that squiggly grass in the foreground though, so not a complete waste ;) 

This group shot was in the book for a long time, but got pulled at the last minute in favor of focusing on each animal individually. Look at dem clapping their widdle hands!

Finally here are some final internals from the finished book.

If you're still reading and want a copy you can buy it, and Alpha Monsters ;) online here or at your local book store if you live here in Aussie land :) 

Thanks for stopping by