Childrens book illustration process | Making a picture book from start to finish

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

What is your process to create illustrations? What tools and methods do you use? :)

[@mohamedhany1093]

I use Photoshop.. first I watch some illustrations and old classic paintings on Pinterest so I got some ideas to do digital pencil sketches , then I color it in general my method is that I put solid color and upove it shads layer and light layer then outline and some details sometimes after that I add final touches like some extra shadows and lights so it reflect the background effects ..also I do values check by puting black solid layer upove all and change blending mood to saturation, to make contrast in values and I makes the elements in front of us darker than far elements .. after I finish all page maybe I do some adjustments in colors or values of layers

[@yoru3552]

I use clip studio pain pro :)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

@@yoru3552 It's becoming more popular lately!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

@@mohamedhany1093 Thanks so much for explaining your process, that's fascinating! I love that you sketch on paper :) Must give it more life than digital sketching.

[@mohamedhany1093]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess 😅 actually I was but know it's faster to do it digitally, I like Drawing on paper more but not for work

[@kaitinbucher7362]

I love this! I illustrated a book called „When a Donut goes to therapy“ - great to see another donut illustrator out there😂

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Heeey there fellow donut illustrator! High five!!

[@sharonanddonmercado7965]

your so wonderful with your video. thanks for helping me. I am 82 and overwhelmed. So thank you for your information. wishing you the best always. love, Sharon p.s. also a past high school teacher! I hope to have my children's book published by some time in sept. It is overwhelming! but it is so worthwhile for I hope my book will make everyone's life better! love, Sharon

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Glad it was helpful! Best of luck with your book, I'm sure it will be great!

[@irenebuyolo3142]

This is the most insteresting and well done video (audio, process, explanation...) I have seen in the last one year!!!!!!! Congrats!!!!!!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Wow, thanks!

[@chubbyfingerskittycat]

Hi Ness, I love that you are jumping right into the topics where as others are promoting their stuff for the first 10 Minutes. Thank you for all the practical advices. I´m working on a children´s book right now and have no clue where to start. As I´m a traditional artist (watercolor), it is interesting to see that vector watercolor looks quite good. And color requests are more simple to do, too.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Watercolor is gorgeous in picture books! Although it's more complex, and harder to do requests, it's also more luxurious!

[@mellodee6198]

Hi Vanessa! My workflow is almost the same as yours - I love when all is done with clear steps🌟I had an experience working on a children’s books without a cover art few times (it surprised me every time). Thank you for sharing the whole process of your workflow. It’s very inspiring and highly educational. All your advices are really helpful and I’m always keeping your warm words in mind when aiming for my goals!💛 Love how you interpreted all those fun puns with engaging scenes✨ Excited for new videos of yours! Hugs, Indira

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Hi Indira! What a sweet comment! I'm so happy you enjoyed the video, and thank you for making my day!!

[@arocfire8752]

This is very inspiring! I dream of one day becoming a children's book illustrator, and I love seeing how other artists do it!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Aww thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

[@Eloisa-LissyRChi]

Owesome book, great job, thanks. I will buy it for my grandbabies

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Awww that's so nice, thank you! I hope they will enjoy the book!

[@AnaPaolaGlz]

I loved seeing the whole process of your book It's so cute 😍

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you Paola, that means a lot! 💗

[@yanyan5464]

nice job, thank you for sharing your amazing work!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you for the nice comment!

[@NeoMokgabo21]

Loved your video and the process. I'm a newbie and your video was very encouraging. BTW I love your accent too😊🤗❤

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks so much, I'm glad you're enjoying the tips! 😊

[@avinash2j]

very interesting .. Thanks for sharing your process. 🥰

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for stopping by, I'm glad you found it helpful!

[@exwhyzedprint]

A fascinating overview of your process. Really enjoyed this :)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks so much!

[@TergelT]

Whenever I get feedback, I get really upset inside. Well now knowing that everyone is going through the same process, I'm kinda cooled down. Loved the video thanks, Ness.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

I know how you feel, and I used to feel very upset with feedback as well! It does help that everyone, every pros, get feedback :) But also over the years I've noticed that most times my art looks better after the feedback, so I've come to welcome it! After all the most important part is creating something great!

[@TergelT]

Well that is true, your advice is actually really helpful! Thanks again

[@artwithmycoffee]

Nice job on the book, and nice video! Thank you for sharing

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for watching!

[@ap3008]

Sunch a pretty book! I love it!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you hun!!

[@diaryofdakshaaa]

This was a really nice video!! Super insightful!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for stopping by, I'm so glad you enjoyed it :)

[@chessforfunonly1586]

Awesome work!!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you!

[@shkhan84]

WOW! Thank You so much for sharing your process. Really appreciate it. Congratulations on making such a fabulous children's book. May you have success with it :)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you so much!

[@B3gonias]

This is beautiful, looking forward to your course!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you hun, I'm so glad you enjoyed the video (and the donuts!)

[@dinosaphira99]

Love this video, I'm about to watch your thumbnail sketch video next. It's a big dream to me to become a book illustartor. You make beautiful artworks :) :)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

That's so sweet, thank you very much! Best of luck with your picture book career, you got this! Don't hesitate if you have questions :)

[@dindina9176]

Thank you so much for the insight, i currently want to start a freelance gig and your videos really help me ❤️

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

You're so welcome!

[@arthurlynx700]

You’re an angel! Thanks for this content, how I didn’t met your channel before!? Lol! Anyway, i am starting my carrer now, and i want to start with the right foot, i uses regular papers to do the sketches and then i paint in the photoshop using watercolor brushes for the painting and my style is a little bit similar to the Studio Ghibli design. Nowdays i am building my portfolio for children and teen’s books.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

That sounds like a gorgeous style! Best of luck with your career, Arthur!!

[@madonnadavidoff6112]

I used Procreate & photoshop. Did you use Adobe Fresco to create your vector images for this book? Thanks for this wonderful video about your process, Vanessa. I think, in my opinion, your channel is one of the most informative and inspiring illustrator channels in you tube. I’m also looking forward to eyeing your process in your surface design venture.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Hi again dear! 💗 Thank you for letting me know about your process!! I've heard great things about Procreate :) I actually use Photoshop for the vector too! The pen tool create vector shapes :) I show it better in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l17Yf3qdoauhg5o And thank you so so much! I'm really happy to hear you're enjoying my channel!

[@chinmayapattnaik8416]

Great awesome book Ness I really loved it and inspired a lot !!!❤❤❤

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you so much!

[@tina4195]

Thank you so much for sharing your process 🧡 One tiny question: What color mode do you use for book illustrations? They are so cute! 😍

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

I always ask the publisher just to be sure, but so far it's always been CMYK :) Every project is different though, we always have to ask.

[@autumnfespermanillustration]

Adorable book!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you!

[@ermalshtegu7951]

I really would like to redesign your studio room! 😅 Not quite reflective of your talented skills! Please add some interior colors! 😍😊 (Besides the joke, the great job you do and the big support you give us, really appreciate it! Lucky to find your channel!)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

I knoooow OMG it was a rental and I wasn't able to paint 😅 I actually bought a house since though, and you bet I'll decorate that!! 😍

[@katelynmarotzke2243]

Thanks so much for sharing!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for watching, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

[@illustratorminemutlu]

thank you dear❤

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

You're welcome 😊

[@soundman.]

love it !

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you!

[@beyondimaginations3635]

Thank you so very much! It looked like the reveal showed an image on the inside of the back of the cover, I was wondering what you would suggest for inside of front and back of the cover itself (not a page). My first book will have a two-page spread across pages 1 and 2.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

The inside covers are called "end papers" and this is often up to the publisher because they have their book designer do that part :) On this book, I didn't even do the back cover myself! I drew only the cover and interior illustrations, and the book designer took one of my illustrations to re-use on the back cover. End papers often use a repeating pattern, or are left blank. I love the ones that use a pattern! There are really fun things that can be done with end papers!

[@beyondimaginations3635]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess Thank you!

[@Youtubervideos125]

Amazing!!!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks!!

[@Youtubervideos125]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess Your welcome.

[@liaa45]

Hey Vanessa! This video was really helpful! As I'm going to be Illustrating my first Children's book, I'm working with an author who'll be self publishing, my question is, if the book is around 300+ words what will be the best size and layout format of the book? The author has given me complete creative freedom so I want to give it my best! Thankyou in advance! :)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Here are some guidelines: Board Books: 0 - 100 words. Early Picture Books: 0 - 500 words. Picture Books: 50 - 1,000 words. 1k is pushing it. At 300 this is reasonable for 24 or 32 pages. It all depends on the flow you want to create for the book. I would suggest to explore different page amount possibilities in the thumbnailing stage and show different versions to the author so you can both decide together :)

[@liaa45]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess Thankyou so much! I had thought of the similar thing! Once again, I really appreciate your advice 😊

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

@@liaa45 Anytime!

[@lauriecunningham8340]

Excellent video!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you!

[@bubbledoodle]

Thank you for sharing your process. It really helps to sort out everything in my head :)

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for watching, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@gemtv1288]

awesome

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for stopping by!

[@Victoria_Novak]

Interesting ❤️

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

I'm glad you think so hun, thanks for stopping by! :)

[@Laikina_Art]

Hi. Your channel is very inspiring and helpful! Maybe you can help me? I have prepared the text and illustrations for a children's book, which I wanted to upload as a color paperback (it turns out 40 illustrations and 40 pages of text, 80 pages in total). But I ran into a problem - for the quality of the illustrations to be good, my pdf file is very large (more than 650 MB). What should I do? Rescue, please, maybe there is some service how I can achieve high quality pictures with a minimum size of the final file? Or can I just compress the final pdf file and that's it? I would be very grateful!

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Hi dear! Congrats and writing and illustrating your book, that's very impressive! I had to laugh a bit at your question :) 650 MB isn't very large at all for 40 illustrations!! I have single illustration files that are larger than 2 GB!! Large images at high quality just are very heavy and there's little we can do about that while maintaining quality... If your book is digital for web viewing only, you could get away with reducing the page size to 72 dpi. However if it will be printed, you need to send large high quality files to the printer and those WILL be heavy! One time I sent my final illustrations to a publisher with WeTransfer and the total download size for the whole book was more than 20 GB...

[@Laikina_Art]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess the point is that when you upload a book file to amazon KDP there is exactly this limitation on the file size of the book... That's why I have this problem

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

@@Laikina_Art Ah. That is an issue :/ Publishers don't ever restrict file size, and now I'm wondering if this is why Amazon KDP books often have quality issues! You can try to optimize as much as possible by making sure all your layers are flattened by the PDF export, turn quality from maximum to high, and increase compression setting on your text only pages (as well as turn those to greyscale if there aren't already). There are probably more tips online if you Google it! I'm sure you're not the only one that ran into this issue. Compressing the file WILL very likely reduce the quality a bit, there's no helping that, but by compressing it cleverly you can make big file reductions with smaller visible changes. Good luck!

[@kendineressam2044]

How long does these processes usually take?

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

It depends on the complexity of the project and style, and how quick the artist is! 12 double-page spreads usually take me 3-4 months. This book was very simple and only single pages. No backgrounds and not even a lot of details, but the deadline was still like.. 5 months from what I recall. A generous deadline and this allowed me to take my time with ideation, create multiple thumbnails for each page, and do a lot of back and forth with the publisher. Sometimes with board books, the deadlines aren't as generous. The shortest I was offered (by a real publisher, not an author) is 1 month.

[@twixie__5651]

Hello. Thank goodness found your channel. Helpful! Can you please tell me when you do digital art for children’s illustration, how many dpi and do you use rgb/srgb or cymk? Is it rgb as a digital file then before printing it turn it to cymk? I use procreate.. just started illustrating so i am quite clueless😅thanks in advance

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

I'd recommend starting in CMYK from the beginning, it saves you the trouble of converting and having to tweak the colors to make them look good after conversion! 300 dpi works great for printing. Always double check all technical specs with your client or with your printing company before you start though!

[@monicascott9687]

Thanks for the process info. I’m working on my first picture book. Im a newbie. Do you save your images as jpg or png?

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Best of luck on your book hun! Different publishers want different file formats, so it's important to always ask! Most often I've been asked for PSD files, but sometimes TIFF or PNG too :)

[@icjacks2348]

Hi, I was wondering what is the cavas size you use for illustrating a book? A lot illustrators don’t really get into what is a good size

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

The reason they don't get into it is that there is no "right" answer. Go to the bookstore and look at the shelves: you'll see that every book is a different size! The most common format is square, but even that is not a 100% guarantee. So when you start a book, you must ask your client what the size is. They will consult with their printer and tell you what size to make the art. I published 7 books and not one of them is the same size!

[@roselleoning9151]

Is it okay to update or ask the publisher always? do they sometimes want to monitor everything or you just get to decide on every design and give them the final product?

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Every publisher is different. Some give us more freedom, some have very strict briefs. But no matter how much or how little creative freedom you're allotted, it's always best to check in with your art director often during the project, at every stage. It lets them know how things are going and gives them an opportunity to flag potential problems. I find that the less you communicate with them, the bigger the list of changes you get saddled with at the end...

[@ciudadconangel]

Hello, which paper is used for this book? And do you know which printers prints paper like this?

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Hi dear! Unfortunately, the publisher handled that so I'm not sure. It's a board book with really thick cardboard pages, so the printing is obviously not the same as normal paper books, but I don't know anything beyond that. You should find a printer that does board books and ask them directly!

[@lucy6647]

Hi Ness, do you only use photoshop? Very interesting video

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Hi Lucy :) For this book, it was all Photoshop :)

[@ashtonsquires3102]

Do you leave the outlines on your characters? I’m torn between leaving light grey or black lines and going without lines. I feel like the lines help things pop more but I’m not sure if that’s traditional or not.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

It's really a matter of personal taste, there's no right or wrong answer! I personally like lineless, but it's sometimes quite difficult to make things pop. When going lineless you must have impeccable lighting and contrast, as well as colors, otherwise things can get lost.

[@gsows4619]

Pls share ur experience on what you charge on the contract

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

This book was $10,000 USD for 12 illustrated pages, my best paid yet!

[@jaspalette]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess Do you have an agent for illustration jobs? I am a newbie, your video and comments are very helpful to me, thank you so much

[@mikachiXD]

can you share some information about how to price this kind of service? thankyouuu

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

This particular book project was $10,000 USD. The rates are highly variable depending on how many the company plans to sell. I have a video on pricing that you should check out! kzbin.info/www/bejne/qZbOk2CnpJqrfJI

[@oyd3o]

Is this a print on demand book?

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

It's not a print on demand book, this one was commissioned and printed by a professional publishing house, Sourcebooks. Their printing facility took care of the production and printed tens of thousands of these board books. They're available at most big book stores and even at Walmart!

[@mohamedhany1093]

🙏💛

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

I hope you enjoy the video!

[@mohamedhany1093]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess sure I did thank you 😊

[@asmaanimationstudio9341]

Hi I love all your illustration.I am animator and love to make animation on illustration.But the problem is I want but cannot create illustration for my animation as this process is always done by illustrator .Can you please teach me how can I also make illustration like you or if you have any website link for this course please share.love from me😍❤️keep going

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

It took me about 15 years of practice to learn how to draw like this, including 5 years of university, so unfortunately it's not something I can teach in KZbin comments! I suggest looking into some Skillshare classes, and understand that it will take years to learn. Good luck!

[@asmaanimationstudio9341]

@@ArtBusinesswithNessThanks for your replay. I am already taking classes from skill share and working in after effect but still not be able to make animation like this .Please guide me and suggest to me whose classes are best for 2d animation in skill share.

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

@@asmaanimationstudio9341 I don't know, hun. I learned animation in university so I wouldn't know. You'll have to research it yourself.

[@asmaanimationstudio9341]

@@ArtBusinesswithNess ok

[@ExoticAirKing]

Can I create a picture book for adults? (With 300 pages) Do I need to follow any rules?

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

If you're planning to publish it yourself, you don't have to follow any rules except your printer's. It might not be possible to bind a picture book with that many pages, it must depend on the type of paper used and the type of binding, so check different printers. If you want to publish this with a publisher, you have to respect their rules.

[@samirbenabdallah9462]

Peace be upon you

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

You too!

[@fabiannurse8492]

you or zweet and I love what you or doing..

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thank you so much!

[@CountingPearls]

I absolutely love love how you explain your process! I love drawing, but just doing it for fun. I have a few children stories i drew in my channel, like this kzbin.info/www/bejne/qpDIo6eAfrepbMU would love to write a book one day, just so busy with my day job now. You are an inspiration! Then you so much for sharing your experiences!! It is so helpful! Happy new year and the best for 2023 ! Carolina

[@ArtBusinesswithNess]

Thanks for stopping by, Carolina! I hope you write your book someday :) I find that with big projects that I never can find the time to start, taking baby steps is what helps me the most. If you spend even 30 minutes every Sunday to work on your story, in a few months it will be further advanced than you could have dreamed of today! Good luck!

[@CountingPearls]

Aw you’re so nice! Thank you so much for encouraging words! 💕 The best of the bests for you and your projects!