Video transcript
The Arts Unit @home Art Bites - Guided illustration of Squidge Dibley with Mick Elliott

[music playing]

MICK ELLIOTT: So one of the coolest things about being an illustrator is actually getting to come up with characters. And any character that I've designed, be it for 'Squidge Dibley' or for the Premier's Reading Challenge poster, usually goes through lots and lots of different versions where I decide what the character is going to look like. How big are their eyes going to be? How long are their arm's going to be? And when I was coming up with the character of Squidge Dibley for the 'Squidge Dibley' series, I must have drawn at least about 100 different versions of that character until I got him right.

And I decided that he was going to have these really big glasses. As you can see on the cover of the book here, he's got really, really big glasses. And I decided that his glasses were going to be the main feature of his whole face. That they were going to be ridiculously big, and also that he was going to have this crazy hair. I'm not sure if you guys can recognise there, but his hair is actually inspired by a very, very famous building in Sydney. The Sydney Opera House it is. These little arcs of his hair are actually based on the shells of the Sydney Opera House.

So in a moment, I'm actually going to show you how to draw Squidge Dibley and talk about some of the process of how I came up with the character. But I thought I actually might show you first all the different processes that occur in coming up with the cover of a book. This book, in fact, 'Squidge Dibley Destroys the Galaxy.' And what normally happens is that I draw a whole lot of different drawings of what the cover might look like for my publisher. That's the company that actually makes the books, and their job is to make the book look amazing and stand out on shelves in bookshops and libraries.

So for this adventure, Squidge was going to be going into the galaxy. So I started to just draw some really simple sketches on my iPad using, basically-- effectively, a pencil setting for the iPad to show that maybe Squidge is in the galaxy and maybe he's firing through the galaxy and looking very, very happy. Or maybe he's actually floating around in space in a little space suit with a planet behind him. Or maybe he's just sort of floating. And you can see in this drawing, he's actually seen to look a little bit more polished than in the previous drawing where it's a bit rough and I've left lots of notes around the outside to show what I might do. And from there, we start to work out, where exactly is he going to sit on the cover? How big is he going to be? You can see now where in the beginning he was quite happy, we've actually made him a little bit worried. And then we start to turn it into the final drawing. And you can see, I was still doing lots and lots of versions of it before we got it to be just right compared to how it is in the final book.

So, why don't we have a little go at drawing Squidge Dibley together? Let's do it?

So when we start drawing a character like Squidge Dibley, the most prominent feature of him is his wonderful big glasses. So we're actually going to start with those and we start with a very, very simple shape, and it does not have to be perfect. So here we go.

First thing we do is a nice big square. And you can see as I'm drawing, I'm actually fixing it up as I go. One square down. We're halfway there. Now another square. I actually don't know many people that have got square glasses, but Squidge loves his square glasses. So next, we connect them like that.

Next, we're going to give him some crazy Sydney Opera House hair, with a whole bunch of big triangles, basically, big curved triangles. So here goes. 1-- it's like a shark's fin as well, isn't it? 2, 3, 4. He's starting to come together.

Now, another line down here, which is that's one side of his face. Another line down there for the other side of his face. Semicircle for one ear. Semicircle for another ear. Little curvy nose. Gonna go over that.

Now, should he be smiling? Should he be scared? I think he should be smiling for this one. So here we go. He's pretty happy.

Next, I'm going to decide where his eye's going to be looking. Will they be over here looking at me? Will they be that way looking? I think they should be looking at you guys though. So two nice big eyes. And that's his head. So he's got a head.

Now we need to give him a body and the thing about Squidge is he has a long, stretchy body. His arms can stretch. His body can stretch. So Squidge likes to pose like this. And I think if he had his school photo taken, this is the pose he would do. So we start with another line. One big, long one like this. Another big, long one like that. He's going to be waving at you guys. So that's his arm. Again moving to the very hardest part, which is drawing hands. One thumb. And Squidge, like many animated characters, only has three fingers and a thumb.

That's just a stylistic decision. It's one of the questions I get asked the most, why does Squidge Dibley only have three fingers? The answer is, because I thought it would be fun.

Alright I'm going to give him some of his body. He's got a long body like this. And I like to draw Squidge usually with one hand sitting on his hip like that. Again, his arm's a bit wonky there. It doesn't matter.

OK, now come on hands. 1-- he's got very small fingers on this side. Doesn't matter, we can fix it up later. And there we go. He's got very, very short legs, Squidge Dibley. And very, very simple feet. Just little rectangles, really.

Now, very last feature. Most important one for Squidge is he always, always wears his stripy shirt. So we just go through and we draw some stripes. And the funny thing is the stripes are often the thing that takes the longest, because I draw them too far apart or too thick or too thin. And if I was doing this on my iPad, I would actually be doing this as a separate layer, and every single element that you see here, whether it be his glasses or his mouth or his hair, would be a separate layer. Which if you're drawing in the programme I use, which is called Procreate, or there's also things like Illustrator and Photoshop, you use different layers. And that allows you to change one thing without affecting everything else.

But there we go. As is my motto, it does not matter if things are a little bit wonky, because you can always fix it up later.

Usually likes to wear black pants, so we'll do some shading. And when you're doing your shading, it's very important to go all the one way. Don't go in lots of different directions. Try to go all the one way.

Now he's got his nice black pants on. Fix those up. And he likes to wear black shoes as well. He's a bit of a cool dude, Squidge Dibley.

And there we go. And that is how you draw Squidge Dibley.

And the way he looks there is completely different to how he first looked when I started doodling him in my notepad many, many years ago. But as you can see, he's ultimately just a whole lot of lines. His eyes are his big feature, and he does love to give you guys a little wave. And I hope you guys can have a go at drawing him as well. I would love to see your pictures of Squidge Dibley.

But come up with your own characters. Decide what their faces are going to look like. Decide if they're going to be happy, have big eyes, small eyes, crazy hair, long hair, no hair, it doesn't matter. Whatever you want your character to look like is exactly how they should look.

When I first start to try to come up with a character, I normally don't really have an idea of exactly what they're going to look like, but I actually just have an idea of how I want the reader to feel when they look at them. That's one of the great things about writing and illustrating a book is that you can use both words and pictures to convey your story and to let the readers feel a certain way about the characters and how the events in the book go.

So it's really important if you just think about how do I want people to feel when they see this drawing.

So for example, with Squidge Dibley, I just wanted him to look funny and for people to feel good when they look at him. But it really took probably between 50 and 100 different drawings of Squidge to get him to a point where I thought, yep, when a reader looks at this character, they're just going to feel good. They're just going to feel like they want to spend time with him.

But the original versions of Squidge, he had round glasses, his hair was floppier, he was much shorter. And as I started to think about the character and some of the traits that he would have, I thought, wait a minute, maybe he should have a cool little spiky haircut that looks a little bit like the Opera House. And maybe he should always wear this long striped shirt, and maybe he should have these great big square glasses that just seemed to be peering right back at the reader.

[music playing]

But it takes a while to get there. And if I look back at some of the original drawings of all of the characters in the Squidge Dibley series, and even the characters that are on the poster for the New South Wales Premier's Reading Challenge, they're very different when I began to what they ended up being in the final drawings.

[music playing]