The Waga Laga Bugs
Want to Play ALL Day
Balancing work and play is not an easy task for a Waga-Laga Bug...
Waga-Laga, Taga-Laga, Baga-Laga, Hey!
They only wanna Waga-Laga, Taga-Laga, PLAY!
They only wanna Waga-Laga, Taga-Laga, PLAY!
Written by Andi Chitty
Who could have thought drawing bugs can be so much fun. The Waga-Laga Bugs Want to Play ALL Day is one of my favourite books. I was a bit anxious when I took on this project that the backgrounds would be a lot. To draw but also to take in. So much foliage, I was afraid the characters would disappear in it.
I decided to work with more white space than in my other books. Making use of water colour blobs as silhouettes to set up my backgrounds. And it was so much fun to play around with this combination of watercolour, flowers and leaves.
Process
Character design
Bugs come in so many different shapes and colours that the possibilities for the Waga-Laga Bugs were endless. I had so much fun designing them. Andi and I decided it would be great to have an older, middle and youngest bug. With each their own personality. As a fun touch I gave the smallest bug glasses and I think it gives so much personality.
Colour sketches
Choosing the colours for a book is a lot of fun for me. I love to experiment and see if cool colours or warm colours work best. Pastel or vibrant. To choose the colours of the book I pick one sketch and create multiple rough coloured versions for this to see what our starting point with the book is. The book will have lots of variations in the pages. But since we have to start somewhere. One spread is a great start.
Finding the right cover
The cove is the most important part of the book. It's what sells the book, needs to be eye catching and clear to read. For the cover I always start with a few concepts and from there we start to finetune. In this case Andi chose option 1. But with some request.
Finding the right cover
The cove is the most important part of the book. It's what sells the book, needs to be eye catching and clear to read. For the cover I always start with a few concepts and from there we start to finetune. In this case Andi chose option 1. But we changed the composition a bit. So the title is at the top. The other bugs at the bottom are smaller. So the focus is on the Waga-Laga Bugs. We played around with different versions. In the first sketch we had them waiving, but that didn't feel playful enough. Then we had them jumping rope. But in the end we felt like the waving bugs were more inviting.
