How I Illustrate Children's Books
Apart from my love of cartooning, I have a great love for illustration in general. One industry I've always wanted to dip my toe into is children's books. Recently I got the amazing opportunity to work with a client on his children's book!
Disclaimer: this is my first time doing this. I wanted to see if it really is something I'd be more open to. So far I'm having a great time. I've done other illustration projects for people like ads and logos, but this is different. This is actually fun!
I'm kind of figuring things out as I go, but for anyone else needing inspiration, here's how I've been going about it so far:
1. Internalize the story
My first step was to read the story (duh). But not just read it, really internalize it so I could begin to visualize what the characters might look like and where they should be placed on each page. Also, knowing that this book is for kids from 2-5 has a great influence on how I will draw. Big, colorful and not too much detail.
2. Sketch Characters
After spending some time thinking of each character, I started sketching each one in my sketchbook. For the animals I wasn't familiar drawing, I looked up examples on Google images and came up with something I liked on my own. It's OK to look at other illustrated examples of things you want to draw, but never copy them!
3. Storyboard
I used my office's large white board to make tiles of each page and sketch out the characters and scenes. Having a large white board is awesome. No flipping pages to find what I need when I’m working on the computer. I just whip my head around and wham! There’s what I need to draw. Simple pimple.
4. Create Digital Storyboards in Illustrator CC
For this particular book, I’m using Illustrator CC to digitally finish the illustrations. The reason I’m doing this (as opposed to my normal pen and paper) is because I just bought the program. I’m using this project as a way to teach myself what it's all about. What’s neat is that you can create multiple storyboards on one page to simulate the actual book. So that’s what I did.
5. Get Sketchin'!
Each storyboard acts like a page of the book. I sketched the illustrations in a light blue pencil and later inked over with a thick black brush. I’m still in the beginning stages and the illustrations are just roughs right now. But so far so good!
I will post more updates on this project as it develops and let you know how it goes with illustrator! I've been a Photoshop girl for years, so switching over is a little out of comfort zone. :-/
