Character Development!!

First I had to sort out what animals I was putting into each book, and it wasn't easy! Africa, for example, it was very hard to narrow the animals down as there are SO many!! But some, like the meerkat and ostrich, just didn't make the cut! There were over 80 animals that I had to design and it took over 2 months!!

Here are some of the developmental sketches...Once I had the general look of the first few animals down, it became quite easy after that!

ZEBRA-this one took a few sketches to get right as I just wasn't happy! It wasn't coming out cute enough!

LIONS-I was happy with my first sketch for the Lion! Just had to change it slightly to make it male.

KOALA-This one took 3 sketches to get it right-it's head kept looking too fat!

CHEETAH-developed pretty much straight away from first sketch! Had to put it in motion in the book being that it's the fastest land mammal but I just really loved this sketch!!

Marley Development!!

So, this is my cat Marley, he was my mountain lion-he was HUGE!! Unfortunately I had to give him up when our landlord back in Cambridge caught me with him :( 

But before that, I was bored one day so turned him into a cartoon!!

Initial ideas for creating Marley...As you can see they didn't all start out as cute!!

I liked the sketch top right to start with, but then decided it looked too kitten-like and kind of bug-eyed, like E.T with cat ears!! Bottom middle sketch was showing more potential...

Further developed the sketch from last page...experimenting with eye shape and ears. Then gave him a body....

Gave him some colour and finalised him. 

Then... voilà! Marley was created!!

Marley's Underwater World

Marley's Underwater World is now up and running on a separate blog! Follow the link above to go to it!

Make over!

Bearing in mind that this is my first time producing a blog it's still in the making, and being updated and designed as I go! So now it's starting to come together, what do we think?? Loving the paw print background!!

The Marley's World DREAM...

So, what's the DREAM? What do I want to accomplish from my books? Fame? Fortune? Who doesn't!?! But to hold a proper published version of Marley's World would be an awesome start!! : )

Marley's World is educational, as well as being fun to look at! I loved learning about animals when I was younger, so I really wanted to make my books something that children would like to look at and learn some fun facts at the same time!

So, back to that DREAM!! I don't want Marley's World to just be a series of books...and there's quite a few in the series that I'm working on!! But, I want them to come in a set with a soft toy Marley cat of your own! And a big fold out map of the world with stickers or magnets of each of the animals to add to the map, there's just so much I want to do with them! And the "ULTIMATE DREAM" is for Marley's World to become an animated series for children's tv! I wonder if Disney are looking for a new, fun puddy cat character!! Marley is available! ; )