The Sleepy Ladybird illustrated by Caroline Bailey
Children’s Illustrated Books: Character Design
One of my favourite parts of the creative process is designing characters. For example, the first thing I had to do for Oliver the Ladybird was . . . find an image of a real ladybird! It might seem obvious but, off hand, I wasn’t sure how many legs or dots it had, or whether a dot could be across two wings.
Despite good feedback, I decided my first drafts were a bit too cartoon-like. So, I went back to the drawing board and created a character that was more insect-like with long thin legs, slim arms with long pointy fingers and a much darker complexion. Pure black would have made it almost impossible to show the tiny facial expressions, so I used a blue dark grey. The antennas were great to convey the mood of the ladybird so I extended them: droopy antennas if he was sad or sleepy; straight up if attentive or angry. I added a red bow tie to match his red wings. The round belly went well with his sleepy mood and boisterous persona. Voila! Oliver the Ladybird was born.
The next stage was ‘getting to know him’. To facilitate this, I drew him from different angles, with different expressions. 
This avoids making mistakes later on, such as, for instance, having too many arms or legs, shorter antennas etc . . . Once you get busy sketching, painting & outlining, it is easy to miss something, especially clothing details.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:07 am
The mix of careful accuracy and fun in Oliver sounds wonderful! It also makes me think of all the pupils, who, whenever I give them an essay to write, ask whether they can draw a picture instead. They claim ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’ – they’re often right, of course.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:03 am
He’s adorable!
September 10th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Gisela, nice to hear from a teacher, I had no idea!
yes there is definitely a lot of fun and satisfaction in creating characters. Regarding the expressions, it is very much based on observation. I sometime use a mirror and start acting the emotions before drawing them. This is why acting experience is useful for illustrators and animators. A full-length mirror is also handy to observe how the body is positioned according to the emotions: droopy shoulders when sad, torso forward when happy and this can be refined with settled variations.
+ Thank you Caroline for your nice comment!