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now if you're thinking uh that sounds a
little weird yes
yes it is we don't usually do it in this
order this was highly unusual
[Music]
hello everyone welcome to art business
witness i'm ness
and i'm the children's book illustrator
in this video i'm going to walk you
through my entire process of
illustrating
this children's book it's called
pizzipota citroen or little panda
it's too unfair which is really cute
this book is very special to me because
it was actually the very first
children's book that i ever
illustrated i had sent out my portfolio
to
hundreds of publishers at that point but
since i didn't have any prior
children's book experience publishers
were really
hesitant to consider me some were even
unsure that my style would suit well for
a picture book then they couldn't really
picture it
so i decided to try smaller indie
publishers i went to local
i contacted all my local publishers and
in the end it's a very small
french canadian publisher called
dominique compagnie
that trusted me with this project the
project wasn't very well paid
but i decided to take it on anyway to
gain experience and be able to put it in
my portfolio and call myself
a published illustrator this turned out
to be a really good gamble that really
paid off because
ever since i haven't had any trouble
finding children's book work
it's while working on this book that i
came up with this process
that really works for me and i still use
to this day
so are you ready right before we get
into it if you like this sort of
illustration advice and want to see more
of it
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any of the advice alright so let's get
right into it
step 1 character designs
so first here i had to design my main
character the little panda
i did a lot of research and sketches but
in the end i was really hesitating
between these two options
so the first one is where the body and
the head were just one big
shape and i like to call that the panda
bean
i thought this was really cute i like
the design
possibilities of it i was really excited
to draw this little guy in many
different poses
stretching the limits of the bean shape
the second option on the right was more
traditional
with a cute big head and a small body
i couldn't decide so i asked around to
all my friends family
and of course the publisher for their
opinion
and while everyone really liked the
panda bean
they thought that kids could relate more
to the second design and i tend to agree
so
i ended up going with the second design
while i was gathering opinions i worked
on the other characters in the book
here we have the beautiful rainbow bird
in the book
it's based on the male himalayan monal
pheasant
quite a rare bird and these are
the other two characters the little
dancing monkey
and the king lion i also
drew this sketch to practice the
characters more to get used to them
i also made a clear color version of the
little panda to visualize
what it would look like once it's
finished as you can see
this is still this was still in the
panda bean stage i still haven't made my
final decision
all of these got approved so then i was
able to move on to the next stage
cover design now you might be thinking
right now
wait cover design step 2 isn't that
weird
yes yes it is this is not typical
at all usually we do the cover design
last but in this case
we had to do things a little bit
different it turns out that
the publisher had actually lost their
illustrator for this project at the last
minute
so i replaced the last illustrator but
they were quite late already in the
production schedule
and they really needed a cover fast so
they could start marketing the book
right away so i made some quick sketches
to show them
usually for a cover we do a lot of
sketches like this we do a lot of
different versions because the cover is
so important we really want to
find one that speaks to everyone that's
really attractive
for the viewers the art director and
editor both
really like option number four so it was
decided that we were gonna go for that
next i did a quick flat version to send
the art director just to validate the
size and placement of all the elements
with her
and this was the final version so then
we moved on to the next step which
really should have been the second step
step three thumbnails this is where i
plan out the entire book
in very quick small sketches so for
example here are the three sketches that
i did for the first
spread in the book it's more of a
composition
test than a real sketch so you can see
it's so fast
it's very very crappy drawings i do this
for every
single page of the book here is another
example
i did these four thumbnails for the
second spread in the book
finally i put all of my thumbnails
together to look at the whole book
at once i checked to see if it flows
well if the compositions are too
repetitive
if there's a good variety of close-ups
and far away shots
this is the final plantification that i
sent to my art director right here
and it was approved on the first go so
then we were able to move on to
step four interior sketches so at this
stage i just go over
the thumbnail and draw an actual sketch
on it
i place in the gutter that's the
vertical
line in the middle where the binding
will separate the spread into
seeing it visually like this really
helps me to remember not to put any
important bits in the middle
where it will get cut off i also put in
the placeholder text
now of course there was actually a book
designer on this project to do the final
text
but this is really useful to me to see
if i have enough space for the text it's
really important to
plan for the text at this stage because
you don't want to end up at the end
being like
oh crap i don't have any place for all
the text
it needs to be planned out and this is
another example
of a final sketch for the book i really
quite like this one it's one of my
favorites
on another all of these sketches i
export them as
jpegs and i use ilovepdf.com to put
together a pdf file of the whole book
this is the easiest format to view the
book so i send this pdf to the art
director to get them approved
in this case they were worried about the
vegetation behind the text
in the jungle spreads for instance in
this one i had
initially planned to make these leafy
bits behind the text
extremely pale and fading into white
background
but i agreed with the art director that
is probably best just to keep that area
clear to help with readability
so i made all of the requested changes
step number five
color tests the next stage is picking
the colors
i always pick all of my colors in
advance so that when the time comes to
make the clean version
all of those decisions are already made
it was particularly important in this
book because the colors played such a
big role
in this book each spread as a different
color palette based on a single color
so for example this was the pink spread
and this was the blue spread on some of
these pages
it was actually difficult to stick to
the palette how do i make a jungle
gray or yellow for instance it was a
really fun
challenge i completely adored working on
that book
so this is about the halfway point of
the process and
it was also about the halfway point to
the final deadline
the rendering of the final paintings
takes the longest so it's
really important that you have at the
very minimum
six weeks at this point just to do the
final paintings
now tell me would you like to illustrate
a children's book too one day
if so go down to the comments right now
and tell me what
is your dream project that you would
love to illustrate
would it be about mermaids or monsters
maybe historical figures whatever it is
go down to the comments
and let me know what is your dream
project that you would
love to illustrate for children's book
step number six
interior colors when the color tests are
over it's time to make
the final clean images with my art
technique i first start with tracing
over the shapes of my sketches
with a vector tool in photoshop then i
add in some
hand-drawn lines and details on top of
that
and finally i do the shading with
texture
brushes voila here's the final spread
here is another example this is the
yellow spread
step number seven cover again
now that's why we usually don't do the
cover first
after looking at the whole finished book
a few months later
we found that the cover really didn't
fit that well anymore so we had to tweak
it
the title had changed too from the
colors of little panda to
little panda it's too unfair so the art
director
wanted the little panda to look more
angry
to fit with the new tunnel so i did a
few different tests trying to find what
would work best the art director really
wanted to have some
red on the cover to show the angry angry
little panda and this is the final
version of the book cover that we ended
up with
we handed some little bits and buffs to
make it a bit more colorful
and the little family is all like i'm so
angry
the text here on top was done by the
book designer so it's all cute compared
to my version
the fonts and text it really isn't my
strong suit
step number eight bits and bobs now at
that point
i thought that i was all done but it
turned out i was asked to do some last
minute graphics by the book designer to
put everything together
they wanted me to draw some plans for
the credits page
and they wanted me to draw an extra
illustration of the panda and the bird
for the back cover
i was told they would put in a
background for the back cover themselves
they just wanted the characters
so i put together these two pages of
illustrations
to send over this was my very first book
so i was surprised by this stage but
as it turns out there are always some
little graphics like that to do
at the end sometimes they want an extra
spot illustration
to fill up an empty inside page
sometimes they want a little design for
the end papers etc etc
and that was it the book was done this
here is the final product
the publisher sent me five author copies
to keep for myself
and let me show you what this looks like
inside
[Music]
so
[Music]
so this was my process on petite panda
if you too would love to illustrate a
children's book
check out my free guide seven surprising
ways to find your first illustration
client this is completely free i will
leave the link in the description below
so you can download yours
it's a really helpful guide that lists a
bunch of methods that i have personally
tried and that have worked well for me
so definitely check it out i hope you
really enjoyed the video and learned
something from it
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thank you for being here for watching
i will see you in the next video bye bye
[Music]
