Character Design for Picture Books

Development sketches for SARI SISTERS

When starting up a new picture book project, I like to begin with the characters (I am a character designer, after all!)

I have a new book coming out this month on Oct 22 called SARI SISTERS, written by Anitha Rao-Robinson.

The story is about two sisters; little Ruhi who loves dancing with her gorgeous big sister, and older Kayra who is wearing a sari for the first time and is too old for dancing with her annoying baby sis.

I was immediately drawn to this manuscript because of my own relationship with my sisters, and could immediately see myself and my big sister in Ruhi and Kayra.

In my initial sketch, the sisters are much older, with Kayra being a more uptight pre-teen. I wanted to highlight that these girls are opposites.

Kayra is tall, slender, with upturned eyes, a sleek nose and neat, straight hair. She is the epitome of the Type A 'Monica Geller’ sister.

Ruhi, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. She is all roundness in her body, button nose, wild curls and large downturned eyes.

After sketching out a few concepts, I tied them down with my favorite traits. I was close, but I felt that they could be younger and their features and personalities pushed even further.

Here I settled on my final designs for the girls. (Plus a little peek at mom!)

I had intended SARI SISTERS to be my second traditionally illustrated book, and focusing on gouache and collage again. I knew I wanted to do something experimental to highlight the beauty of saris.

I thought about using actual fabric, or cutting fashion magazine clippings, or using patterned scrapbook paper.

Then I realized I had a bunch of gift bag tissue paper left over from a party, and wondered if it could potentially be manipulated to look like fabric.

And voila! My first tissue paper test. It was a gamble, but me and the team thought that it worked really well and could be worth a try for the interiors. Kayra’s design and color scheme was tweaked a bit more for the final book, but the collage work remained the same.

I’m excited to share more about my process in collage and working on the interior, but for now I hope you enjoyed this look into my character design process!

As a reminder, you can pre-order this book now!

Buy in the US

Buy in Canada