Thank you for reading the first entry of the Blog for my Picture Book „Willie Waddles the World“! With this Blog I want to promise readers Monthly insights into the production and progress of the Book.
I hope you enjoyed reading the draft, although it is really old by now. It was actually my Bachelors Project, so I didn't really have the time to develop the book properly. I had to cut 4 pages from the initial version of the draft and I have always felt it made the book feel rushed. The rhymes also suffered from the time crunch: I originally developed the Book in german, my native language, and had to translate it in the final days before deadline. I always felt like the existing version of the book was a very limited version, a bare minimum experience. This was quickly noticed by my Professors, which asked me to keep working on the book when I graduated. I didn't.
Well, not until September of 2025. It was then when I realized that I have learned much while curating my other Private Project „Urban Duckies“ these last few years. I have gained artistic expertise that I felt could benefit the book.
I made a promise to myself that every tuesday, I would carve out at least 1 hour and 30 minutes to work an a complete version of „Willie Waddles the World“ in hopes that it would eventually be good enough to be picked up by a publisher. As you can guess progress has been really slow. I have just finished redesigning the characters right before the end of 2025.
Willie was of course first and foremost. I wanted to make the designs more fun, so I worked a lot with simplifying the shape language, making the eyes bigger, and colors more saturated. Overall the designs are less sharp which benefits the silhouette in my opinion.
Another big gripe I had with the first draft that Willie was the only personable character. He had friends and of course made new friends but they where never given a Name. Since I gave myself only 2 rhymes per encounter, in which I wanted to not only explain the most interesting features about the species of duck, willie had met, there was never any time for proper introductions. How do you make friends with someone you cant call by their name?
I would argue, you really can‘t, which is why with all the new designs there are also new names below them.
Willies friends are now Sunny and Sammy. They are big sister and little brother to each other, which is only important for me to know how they interact with each other. Sunny is Willies childhood friend. They know each other since they hatched from their eggs. All three of them grew up on the little round pond.
The Mandarin Duck is now Maverick. His design probably changed the least. His beak is rounder to match the other new designs. I was always really happy with his two page spread in the first draft, which is why I will probably just redraw it when the time comes.
The Egyptian Goose is now Nialla of the Nile. „Nialla“ as a name often stands for champion or successor, which fits given her tall, powerful appearance. I also tried to emphasize these attributes in the redesign, without giving her too much masculine features. Egyptian Geese are actually on of the few Species that don‘t have differences in their appearance based on gender, which is why that is a big focus point for her design.
Finally, King Eider doesn't get a new Name, but a Queen. „Every King needs his Queen!“ I thought. I wanted to add a better reason for Willie to feel the need to return home. I ultimately wanted to add characters that could remind him of Sunny and Sammy. Queen Eider and Nora are mirrors of them. The whole family gets a colder color palette, which will make it seem even more like Willie doesn‘t fit in.
And that is It for now. I hope you like these redesigns as much as I did making them. Although it was a lot of fun I definetly noticed that my progress is too slow. I am thinking of picking up the pace a bit so I have something to show for with the next Update.
Thank you for reading my first Progress update. If you made it this far, why not give this entry a rating? It would be much appreciated!