Sonia Kretschmar is a Melbourne based illustrator with a penchant for visual storytelling. She has illustrated book covers for Penguin Publishing, Harper Collins and Walker Books. Most recently, she created a series of illustrations for the ABC Radio National podcast The Fitzroy Diaries.
The serial written and narrated by Lorin Clarke tells the stories of Fitzroy’s local community, quirks and all, from the perspective of one of its members. From the little girl that reigns over the Gertrude Street playground, to the woman who moved in from Brighton with her suspicions over who has been urinating on her fence, the serial paints a playful portrait of the suburb of Fitzroy.
One of our Producers, Lara Chan-Baker attended the Audiocraft conference earlier in the year and went to a special listening session of The Fitzroy Diaries with the creators, and came back to the office raving about it! Like a beautiful twist of fate, a month later we were asked by ABC Radio National to come on board and work on the artwork for the podcast.
ABC Radio National’s Features Unit enlisted us to assist Sonia in illustrating images to coincide with each of the podcast’s eight episodes, along with a title image for their website.
After looking over the brief and listening to the series, Sonia kicked things off with a couple of rough sketches for the title image.
The ABC Radio National team came back with some feedback, and Sonia produced a revised rough sketch that combined the successful elements of the two initial sketches. Following review, the final work was created!
The reviewed rough sketch.
The final title image artwork.
The same process was applied to the episode artwork.
Episode 1 rough sketch.
Episode 1 final artwork.
Episode 2 rough sketch.
Episode 2 final artwork.
Episode 3 rough sketch.
Episode 3 final artwork.
Episode 4 rough sketch.
Episode 4 final artwork.
Episode 5 rough sketch.
Episode 5 final artwork.
Episode 6 rough sketch.
Episode 6 final artwork.
Episode 7 rough sketch.
Episode 7 final artwork.
Episode 8 rough sketch.
Episode 8 final artwork.
