I am knee deep in preparation for my first attempt at Artist Alley. Work on Infinity War print is still ongoing. In this post, I'd like to cover work on stickers.
I included stickers in my product list because they are fun and I thought they would be relatively easy to produce. What would be the theme?
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| Brainstorming with thumbnails |
I started brainstorming by drawing thumbnails. The notes on the sheet above documents my train of thoughts. K Pop Demon Hunters? Too broad. Rumi only? Pretty or funny? I decided that I would not be able to draw her well enough. That's how I decided to cast Chicky as the character.
Next, what personality does Chicky assume? An office worker? A cute girl? What about a coder? With this idea in mind, a lot of expressions flowed out, capturing programming moments (influence from my day job). I thought of supplementary object as accessories to pair with an expression: laptop logo, drinks, and thought bubbles. I attempted to include memes like "Math Lady" and "assassination chain". As a classic item from computer science, I drew recursion as well. I had a lot of fun drawing these.
Once I had enough ideas, I proceeded with drawing the pencils.
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| Programming Chicky page 1. Drawing sequence: upper right, lower right, upper left, lower left. |
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| Programming Chicky page 2. Drawing sequence: upper right, lower right, upper left, lower left. |
I started easy with a generic friendly smile to get myself familiar again with Chicky. For the last image on page 2, I found "two fists in the air" not appealing, so I went for success kid. (At least what I remembered of the image anyway.)
Page 1 had water bottle, coffee cup, and a tumbler. Page 3 had the rest as well as the thought bubbles. I forgot to scan the pencils, so I can only show the inked drawing.
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| Page 3: beverage and thought bubbles. |
Inking, scanning, cleaning up, and coloring followed.
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| Page 1 color |
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| Page 2 color |
Next, it was time to arrange the expressions and accessories into sticker sheets. In my first try, I aligned the images in a grid-like fashion and it did not look attractive. I had to deliberately introduce asymmetry and chaos to get fun layouts that are somewhat attractive.
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| Code Chicky set A |
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| Code Chicky set B |
At the moment of writing, I am working on getting these sheets printed in such a way that I can get them kiss-cut later on. (I just learned the term "kiss cut" last week. Here is an explanatory article.)
Which set do you prefer? Get yours from my booth at EOY J-Culture Festival 2025 on 27 & 28 December 2025, Raffles City Convention Centre Singapore. Hope to see you there!