So cute it makes you want to squeeze: creating illustrations for children's stories

I was responsible for developing the concept of all characters, scenery, and illustrations for the Timokids App, which offered content for children.

One of my incursions as an entrepreneur allowed me to be one of the founding partners of Timokids, an application developed for mobile devices that tells stories with daily themes focused on children’s learning. I was responsible for developing the concept of all the characters and content for the Timokids application. The characters and backgrounds were developed in 3D and initially imagined to look like rubber toys. This was my first experience creating children’s character illustrations. As such, it is an amusing app full of messages of positivity.

Besides the concept of the characters based on animals, I developed all the visual aspects of each one and the stories’ scenarios. For this, I used a plethora of software, always aiming to speed up the development process of the stories published in the app. The modeling and rigging were done using Autodesk Maya. For the textures, I used Substance Painter. The rendering was done using Arnold Render, and the compositing and finishing process of the images was completed using Adobe Photoshop.

The client

Timokids was an educational application whose goal was to teach children the "mysteries" of everyday life, using a very simple and ancient methodology adopted in the contemporary world - telling stories full of moral values - through a very interactive app.

What I did

Art Direction, Character Design, Modeling, Rigging, Compositing, Rendering, and Post-Production.

Tools I used

Adobe Photoshop / Adobe Illustrator / Pixologic ZBrush / Maxon Cinema 4D / Autodesk Maya / Arnold Render / Substance Painter

Project Outcome

Key points

I have had many professional challenges during my long career, but this was undoubtedly one of the most fascinating in every way. I have worked with many audiences and industries but never done, until that point, anything for children. The experience was remarkable.

What I learned

I learned a lot during the time I worked on the Timokids project. Especially how to understand and create content for one of the most demanding audiences in the world: children. The experience marked me deeply and helped me to better understand children’s audience empathetically.

I'm always looking for new challenges, projects and creative partnerships. Shall we talk?

Feel free to contact me. I love coffee and good conversations!

© 2024 Huoston Rodrigues – Art Direction, Interaction Design, Motion Design, and 3D