"The Mean, Multiple-Meaning Troll"

I recently had the pleasure of illustrating “The Mean, Multiple-Meaning Troll”, an educational children’s book published by Benchmark Education. Illustrating this was a lot of fun – How can you pass up the opportunity to illustrate a troll? And a mean troll at that – even better!

 

Here are a few sample spreads and spot illustrations from the book:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The original look of the troll character was a bit different:

 

I liked him better since he looked a bit more menacing – but it was decided he looked too much like Shrek, so we played it safe and changed the character design a bit.

 

Here is one of the sketches:

WIND

Totally stepping out of my comfort zone here in a style of illustration I haven't done before but that's what this blog is all about isn't it?

A dragon blowing WIND

(c) 2012 Jan Dolby

 

(c) 2012 Jan Dolby

The blue dragon is Blaze and the yellow dragon is Drew from The Dragon Who Blew Bubbles.  Blaze blows wind not fire and Drew his brother blows bubbles.

The Dragon Who Blew Bubbles is available through iPad app Farfaria.com.

My First Contribution - WIND

Hi there! My name is Danielle and I just joined the SCBWI group last week. I had the privilege of meeting Peggy via email today. Thank-you Peggy, for allowing me to post one of my images. Because the theme is 'wind', I chose this image from the app that I have been working on forever. I am showing my pencil rough and my final layered PSD file. I only wish that we were dealing with this kind of wind today, and not the chilly kind in Toronto. I very much look forward to being part of this group.

Shape-Based Character Design

After watching the vids on Once Upon A Sketch about starting with simple shapes when working on character design, I was inspired to play around with it.  These are a couple of fairly quick studies based on that technique. It was fun!

Here are the shapes I began with:

Hey Jan....

Really nice review for "Gabby":)
CM Magazine Review

Spring in the Nations Capital!

It sure doesn't feel like it outside but in the barns at the Experimental Farm Ottawa, Spring has sprung and produced a whole BUNCH of baby critters! My Daughter, 2 Granddaughters and I joined what seemed like a million other adults and children over the Easter weekend to check out bunnies, chicks, goats, piglets, Clydesdales and cows with and in calf.
For those that don't know Ottawa and the FARM that is smack dab in the middle of the City, it's 425 hectacres. Has 90 science, admin buildings, 100,000 crop plots and 2400 varieties of trees.

I so wanted to steal this little guy and take him home.

Only a few hours old, missed the birth, darn it. You can watch if you happen to be in the right place at the right time!

Ava loves piglets, so does Grandma!!!