FRIED RICE SURPRISE, a picture book about food and friendship comes out next month! Since the characters are a important part of the story, I’m showing how I developed the characters. Let’s go!
There are four friends in this book. Fern (far left), Nisha, Miguel and Luisa. In the manuscript, the description was pretty basic. Take a look below.
Every day, Fern can’t wait to open her lunchbox.
[Art: Sparks and light beams emit from her lunchbox. Fern’s friends Nisha (South Asian), Miguel (Mexican) and Luisa (Persian) wait eagerly]
This is what a great author will do. It gives us illustrators information. And leaves a lot of room for exploration.
Nisha is South Asian. My daughter’s friend’s family is from Sri Lanka. We know her since kindergarten. So she popped into my head as soon as I read the manuscript.
In the book, she usually spoke first. This gave me an impression that she is the vocal one, and probably the closest friend to Fern, the main character. So I made her expressions to be bubbly and big. I also imagined her to care about how she looks. She always has her signature headband. She loves dresses but only with leggings underneath because she loves looking fab AND play hard at the playground. I thought about braiding her hair, but I didn’t think she is the uptight kind. Her hair should be flowy just like her “I talk to everyone“ personality.
Miguel was the easiest to figure out. He is Mexican. My daughter’s classmate was a perfect fit. In the book Miguel is always kind and supportive. My daughter’s friend who is Mexican was exactly like Miguel. My daughter’s friend wasn’t the loudest. But he was always polite and kind. I always admired that about him.
Miguel is basically a charicature of that friend. He was always well dressed. Always wore a button-up for any school events. His hair was always nicely combed back and short. I could tell he cared. His family cared.
Luisa is Persian. She was the hardest to figure out. In the book, she mostly spoke last. So I imagined her to be the quiet one. The reserved one.
I thought about what a reserved character might look like. I thought about the hair covering parts of her face. Maybe she likes her bangs? That’s her shield?
I thought about clothes she might wear. In the book, her clothes changes the most. At first, she is pretty covered. She wears a turtle neck. Maybe she is the newest one to the friend group. But by the end of the book, she has a t-shirt on. I wanted her to feel comfortable as the story progressed. Choice of clothing was one way to express that.
Fern is the main character. But in the manuscript there was no mention of her ethnicity. When I asked Patricia Tanumihardja, she said Fern’s parents were Chinese and Japanese.
One of the memorable moments in the book was when Fern decides to make a dish for her friends. I wanted this to be a magical trasformation. When a girl ties her hair up, to me it was go time.
So in the book, Fern’s hair is tied up at the top for the first half of the story. After her hair is tied up, she changes. She becomes more independent. She wants to try. I used the hair as a way to express her switch. Apron was another helpful tool to show her transformation. I used it kind of like a Sailor Moon transoformation. Illustrating that spread was so much fun.
While I was exploring the character designs, I also experimented on the look for this book.
Before I started working on this book I had a video chat with my art director. We already worked on The Rescues series at this point so I knew the meeting was extra important.
He told me he was drawn to this portfolio piece (to the right). It definitely had a different look to my usual portfolio pieces. I was experimenting with how characters with lines would work in a world that doesn’t have outlines. I wanted to work with more watercolor so I used that too.
People say to make art you want to be hired for. And that’s really true in this case. Because I made this portfolio piece to the right, I got to outline my characters and use watercolor for the backgrounds.
I did experiment on no outlined versions of the characters. Or loose outlines. I liked the look of some. But it was also very time consuming, especially the non-outlined ones.
I hope you enjoyed reading the making of Fried Rice Surprise characters. The book comes out on October 20th, 2026. There’s a pre-order giveaway happening right now. You will get goodies with the book!
That’s it for this month’s post. Thank you so much for reading. See you next month <3
Always love, Shiho