Part 2: Sketching Phase - Fishy Design Studio

Part 2: Sketching

My Storybook Process

This part focuses on me trying to draw everything I envisioned in my head on a sketchbook and digitizing them. I went through many, many trials and errors and the painstaking manual grind of taking pictures, importing, cleaning them up in Photoshop, etc.

Every. Single. One. Rinse and repeat tediously... but later I learned my lesson.

2021 | MAY

After getting inspired and encouraged from people around me, I started sketching non-stop.

...basically went HAM all through May.

Sketches

(Already an improvement lol)

pencil sketch collage

Image of a pencil sketch on a sketchbook of a Lion and a Bunny under a tree

2021 | May

I was quite stubborn

Despite knowing that life would be easier with a tablet, I wanted to draw everything pencil-to-paper to preserve that authentic “sketch” look, resulting in a needlessly longer production time. I also had to be extremely sure before erasing anything because I was not confident I could easily redo any of them. Oh how I took Ctrl-Z for granted...

Image of handwritten alphabet letters in blue pen

Everything to do with quotes and titles shall be in my own handwriting.

I would handwrite sentences over and over again until they looked nice when imported into digital format.

I even attempted creating my handwriting into a font to keep some consistencies (sanity), but eventually decided against it because it looked unnatural and overly robotic with no soul. So I continued doing the "Bart Simpsons" instead until I was happy with the end result.

First draft pencil sketch book cover of Can You Hear the Halcyons Sing?

2021 | June

1st draft cover

Sometime in June, I put together the first rough draft of the storybook with little drawings sprinkled all over. This was the unofficial book cover. The one thing that hasn't changed was how I envisioned the book cover - as you can see the composition basically stayed untouched.

Then the same friend pushed for colour, saying if I am going to publish then I have to do it, believing I can do much better beyond leaving it in black and white.

In the back of my mind I know she’s right, but at the time I really didn't think I could do it without screwing up the OG drawings, nor was I confident and experienced in digital colouring.

Drawing of a Lion drawing a star around himself

I gruelled over it for WAY too long, and ended up taking a hiatus from the drawing bit.

Albeit a break on drawing, I was still constantly thinking about how to refine the story and the writing style.

2021 | SEPTEMBER

A moment of blitz writing

First time going home in 2 years!

I had this Owl character within the story, but it was missing something for me. Somehow on the flight back home, an idea came to mind and I wrote every idea down and even had time to refine a lot of the writing and rhyming scheme...

Chapter 7 was basically written in 4.5 hours up in the air.

Next: Colouring with Photoshop