Designing an Elaborate Town of Pigs

Why do I always do this to myself?!?

Hello, good morning my fellow friends!

My book, Pig Town Party, comes out in ONE WEEK!!!

You can still preorder it here, and cash in some free goodies as well as a complimentary 1 year paid subscription to this newsletter if you forward your receipt to liantomato@gmail.com.

So what is this book about? Well, here’s the summary courtesy of the HarperCollins website:

Author-illustrator Lian Cho delivers a rib-tickling picture book about a young girl who receives a mysterious invite to a Pig Town party and follows the trail into a secret world of pigs—where epic parties, chase scenes, and a cake heist soon unfold. Hilarious twists abound!

So as you can tell, the majority of this book takes place in PIG TOWN! A town of many many pigs.

I came up with this premise because I thought a town of pigs would be really cool and it was all fun and games until I realized that…

So here we go. Here is how I designed an elaborate Pig Town…

Step 1: Look at other towns and cry

When I was a kid, I loved Shaun Tan’s books. I was particularly smitten with the Arrival.

In the Arrival, Shaun Tan weaves a heartfelt tale of the immigration experience into a breathtakingly gorgeous imagined world:

I remember looking at these as a kid and thinking “I’m going to do that one day, how hard could it be!”

In fact, when I was in high school I did a whole series of graphite drawings inspired by these:

But now we’re getting sidetracked! If you want to see more of my art from high school, I did a whole Substack post about it a while ago here.

Step 2: TADA!!! It’s not that easy!

So I started sketching.

I began with a thumbnail sketch:

Which I then attempted to refine:

And finally I realized… I am not a genius and I couldn’t just whip up a town out of thin air!

So back to drawing table it was for me. Like I usually do when I’m stuck, I started collecting reference.

At first, I was really inspired by these images of Neo-Andean architecture that I found. A lot of these are by Freddy Mamani.

Neo-Andean architecture

I really liked the fun colors but when it came time to draw the actual Pig Town, I found that this Neo-Andean style was just a little bit too futuristic and modern looking. I wanted the vibe for Pig Town to be more quaint so it was time to find reference somewhere else.

Cue my summer trips!

That summer, I visited San Francisco and Toronto and it turns out a lot of the buildings in San Francisco were the vibe the exact vibe I wanted to go for. To be quite honest with you, the entire vibe of this book that I’m aiming for this entirely just based off of a kitschy cakes I saw on Pinterest which play a critical role in this book.

So I started collecting reference of the colorful houses in San Francisco, below is some of my reference board.

Historical houses of San Francisco

I also really like how quaint some of Toronto’s streets were as well so I took some photos when I was there:

Some cute buildings from Toronto

And lastly, I looked up some aerial photos of different cities to see how they were laid out. Some of these are from Mexico, Germany, and other parts of the world.

Step 3: Oh no, I guess I have to actually draw it now

After looking at some reference, I decided to zoom out a bit:

At this point, I decided that I wanted to change the buildings on the right entirely because it just looked out of place. Scouring my mind for inspiration, I remember that when we visited San Francisco that summer, we went to the Ferry Building multiple times.

The Ferry Building

It made me realize that most towns/cities have some sort of marketplace where people can convene to visit bakeries and small grocers. I felt like these piggies needed a center to convene in their town and a two leveled marketplace where they could pick up lunch or groceries seemed like a great idea!

So I got to sketching on a new version with a big market building:

Roughed out version with market tower

Cleaned up market tower

Tighter sketch

Final sketch without pigs

Step 4: Add the pigfolk!

Once I finally figured out the layout of the town, it was time to add the piggies! To make things a little easier to follow as I sketch, I separated the town and piggies on two different layers. I made the town sketch another color and lowered the opacity so that I could focus on roughing out the pigs without getting confused by the town sketch.

Roughed out piggies

After I roughed out the piggies, I cleaned up the sketch and added their clothes and accessories. Lo and behold, below is the final sketch for this spread:

According to Procreate, this sketch took me 11 hours! PHEW!!

From there, I sent in this sketch and hoped it would get approved. It was nearly perfect but there was one note…

Step 5: Copyediting revisions…

Below is the revised version. Can you spot what was changed?

Okay, I’ll zoom in a little for you:

Before: Left, After: Right

Yup. This was the note I received:

LOL

SO funny oh my god. Pig safety is our number one priority in Pig Town after all.

After I added those helmets, I got the approval to start painting. With all my paintings, I do a quick color study first so that I’m not thinking on the fly when I’m painting.

Step 6: Color Study

Here’s the color study:

Step 7: Paint that thing!

Here are all the materials I used to paint this book:

Andddddd here it is painted! Wahoo! This is a terrible photo of the painting but I am too lazy to retake another one!

Yes, it’s all painted on one sheet, yes it’s all painted traditionally, and yes I only painted it once!

Step 8: Scan that baby!

Because I’m POOR, my scanner is small and can only scan in letter size. So I’ll show you my little trick for piecing together stuff (in case you didn’t know it already.)

First, I scan everything in sections, and make sure that it all overlaps:

The scanned sections

Then I go into Photoshop and use the Photomerge function:

Then I select all my scans:

And let Photoshop do all the work! And tada!

The scan is pieced together!

Step 9: Digital edits

Finally, I add some hand lettering digitally so if we ever do get a translation, they can change the language:

I also added some digital smell lines because I didn’t want to commit to painting it on this piece:

Step 10: That’s it! We’re done! (with this one at least)

And here is the final painting!

Here are some small moments I like from this painting:

Pig on the corner with an old fashioned map and lots of friends meeting up

I love unicycle pig and I’m the little piggy in the cart while Adam is the piggy riding the bike carrying me

The mailman (mailpig?) from the earlier page running away + piggies training for the marathon in the park. I like the tiny map of the park a lot.

Piggy picking up a box of cookies from a friend

Piggies sunbathing in the park

Rooftop garden and a piggy in a bikini

In case you haven’t realized, this book was a lot of fun to work on. I may joke about it being a nightmare, but at the end of the day, I did it to myself but I’m so so proud of what I created.

I think the art is real nice, the story is real funny, and I hope that people like it too when it comes out next week.

I’ve been knee deep in finishing the final art for my next book alongside frantically preparing a Pig Town window display for Books of Wonder. Fingers crossed I can get it all done.

As always, I can’t end a post without a reminder to preorder this book if you haven’t already! You can get a bunch of free goodies plus a year’s access to paid posts if you preorder! Pretty sweet huh?

Or order this book from any of the links below!

Thanks for sticking around fellas!

See ya soon :)