Nursery illustrations - Tukitaki.xyz
Collaboration, May 2021
Tools - Adobe Illustrator, pencil sketches
Tukitaki was founded as an ecommerce platform connecting local creatives in arts and crafts to buyers globally and locally within Bangladesh. It wanted to nurture the local arts and culture and bring the work of local creatives to the worldwide landscape. The Nobody’s Gallery was among some of the platform’s collaborators.
Leonika Hannan, the platform’s founder, asked me to create nursery art catering to children with South Asian orient. First of its kind, the series would have an art style inspired by South Asian block prints and would feature animals found in these regions. In Addition to the art print, we wanted to make story cards with a little relatable plot that parents can read to their children.
As always, the process started with moodboarding and researching South Asian block prints. Given that a big chunk of my childhood was spent in Ghana, there was also the additional challenge of bringing in relatable animals, a composition that contextualises a South Asian background in a way that hasn’t been done before, and telling a story that was authentically Bangladeshi in the story card.
Bangladesh’s national animal is a Royal Bengal Tiger, a ferocious, fierce and intimidating tiger. For children growing up here, I thought it could be fun to take such a tiger cub and have him growing up in a less suburban area, perhaps near Cox’s Bazar, the one beach the country has and everyone is proud of. I also wanted to incorporate cricket, a sport loved by many in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India.
Thus Aaraf the Tiger Cub came to being. While his character design was very simple to do, how to put him together with his surroundings in a way that could attract children between the ages of 3-5 was challenging. I had to try a few different things before we found a suitable composition but picking out a colour palette was fairly simple.
We wanted to test out how 1 of such art prints would sell to us and worked to complete that. Meantime, I made some conceptualisations of 3 other animals that could continue the series.
The project was well-received in terms of paid and organic engagements on social media with ads and promos. Since Tukitaki.xyz changed its business model to focus on pregnancy, baby, and toddler products, Leonika and I did not grow the series into anything further.
