Building Joad's universe - the characters

Now that the character of Joad along with her characteristics were emerging, it was time to build out the other characters who would feature in the story. Here again, I looked at the key themes that I wanted to address.

With themes like peer pressure, competition, and self confidence, I felt it necessary to have a set of kids similar to Joad's age that she would compare herself against, however inadvertently. It was important to bring this out since all of us as kids have compared ourselves to others and continue to do so as adults as well. I chose three different fields - sports, dance and music that would be the likely areas that toads study.

Early drafts of Billy, Lye and Philippe against their final versions that appeared in the book

With constant comparison against her peers, Joad would need some guidance. And the people to best provide that guidance are indeed parents and teachers. Hence, I wanted to create characters for Joad's parents and teachers that were funny but also layered. Notice that Joad's dad is geeky, mom's clothes reflect her as a working mom, and the teacher who helps her is the Coach, a sports teacher who people would assume favours the athletes in the class.

Daddy & Mommy toad evolution - notice the change in clothing and body structure

With these characters in place, it was time to illustrate the rest of the story. With the concepts of the final output in my mind and no experience in publishing at all, I plunged ahead.

While it was a challenge and a drain on both time and money, the ultimate satisfaction for me was to see the story in the hands of my daughter and other kids. That it allowed me to realize a childhood dream of building my own world of characters was just an oversized bonus.