The Ins and Outs of Illustrations.

One of the benefits of self-publishing is that you are able to pick your illustrator and work alongside them throughout the process. This has been, hands down, my favorite part of the process. If you are like me, you want to jump into illustrations right after you choose your illustrator. Before this can happen, you definitely need to know what words go on which page. You will go through both the editing process and part of the layout design process before you can hunker down with the illustrator and start. Once you are done with these steps, the fun can begin!

One thing to note: each illustrator will dictate how the process will go. It is best to have this detailed in your contract. You should know how many illustrations and what size the illustrator is committing to. You also should know if they are full-page, spot illustrations, or vignettes. (If you need to catch up on the terms, go to this Picture Book Basics - Sketches and Layout). It is key to understand how long this process will take and at what stages money will be due. Ethan, my illustrator, has three disticnt stages of illustration.

Stage 1 - Story Boarding


With the invention of Zoom, storyboarding can happen over the internet. However, both Ethan's and my preference was to meet face-to-face. It did not hurt that Idaho Falls is close to Yellowstone. Whether the first brainstorm session is over the computer or side by side with a cozy cup of tea, plan on this step taking at least half a day. You will be hammering out the basics of which characters, settings, and actions belong in each illustration. I found it helpful to go through the layout design before we met. The layout designer will have your copy placed where it will go and space left for your illustrations. I already had in my mind which characters I wanted in the illustration spaces. It is also helpful to have the illustrations that attracted you to the illustrator in the first place. I was able to convey to Ethan that I liked his artwork that had minimal clothing on the animals compared to the artwork that had animals in full get-up.

Be prepared! When you put two creatives with distinct visions in the same room, there will be some outright absurd conversations, lots of laughter, and a little bit of head-butting. I had been thinking about a couple of these illustrations for close to a year and could picture them in my head. One of the things I had to give up was the idea that illustrations should be exact interpretations of the words on the paper. I had to embrace the idea that the illustrations needed to progress the story and could subtly reinforce the words on the page. At some points, it felt like I was losing my tight grip on my book. This is actually a good thing. Even though several of Ethan's ideas did not make it into the illustrations, many of the best parts of the illustrations came from his mind. Do not be too proud to accept the brilliant ideas that your illustrator comes up with. It will truly make your book all the better. While the storyboarding took place, we were able to identify where some of the copy needed to be moved over to other pages in order to create a good flow for the illustrations. I was able to pass this info back to the layout designer.

After the long storyboarding session, we followed up with two more conversations over two days. Ethan needed to clarify some ideas. I had a bit of time to mull over the ideas he brought to the table. During that week, I realized it is so much easier to show than to tell. I pulled together a document with pictures of real animals that I wanted the characters to be patterned after. I also added pictures of clothing styles for the characters. Within this document, I created a list of each page that would have illustrations. I was able to type up what I felt were non-negotiables for these illustrations and give the thumbs up for some of Ethan's great ideas. I found this hugely beneficial compared to going back and forth over text or email. Once Ethan was done with the storyboarding, he sent over a document for me to look over. This document did not have the copy, just the page numbers and sketches. You can see below what the storyboarding sketches looked like. This is the time to speak up about what you want changed. It is way less effort and time for a simple sketch to be redone. For example, I felt like Ethan was painting the rabbits in a negative light by having signs in the garden for rabbits to keep out. The scene looked more like the rabbits were just naughty interlopers than a part of the farm family. This is not what I wanted my book to convey. I had him take out the signs and other items that were contradictory to the story.

Stage 2 - Intermediates

After I sent my feedback on the storyboarding sketches, we moved to the Intermediates. I recommend printing these out. Please take your time when viewing your intermediates. This is the last time you can request any significant changes. The intermediates look more like a coloring book with distinct outlines and characters fully developed. You will be able to tell the general color palette, where the picture's boundaries will lay, and the mood of the pictures. Examples of these are below.

I did request a couple of changes. I felt like the rock that Pippin sits on in the reflection pond scenes was too high. I wanted her to be closer to the water. Ethan was able to go in and shorten the height of the rock. You are also able to add details you had not previously thought of. I noticed the bags and barrels in the first garden scene were bare. We were able to add a fun idea of labeling garden items that were meant to grow with the fruits of the Spirit.

Stage 3 - Finals

Finals are the illustrations in their final format. This is the way they will be handed back over to your layout designer. This is a great time to print out your illustrations again so you can go over them with a fine-tooth comb. Just remember, if you change your mind on anything, more than likely you will be charged extra. How much extra should be detailed in the contract you signed at the beginning.

Ethan and I had many conversations about how many ponds were on the property and which illustrations contained the koi fish pond and which illustrations contained the reflection pond. Things got a bit jumbled up, and the fish character that was in the intermediate illustrations of the girl walking with the puppies was left out of the final illustrations. Thankfully, Ethan had a quick fix that solved the issue. He was able to add a fish shadow to the pond.

Each Step Side by Side

Wrapping it all up

I let out a huge sigh of relief once we arrived at this point. All the months of thinking about writing and publishing a book became all the more real. Now that I had all the copy and illustrations together, my husband and I went through the story a couple of times. I had a fresh perspective on the copy since it had been months since I had reviewed it. This is not the time to make second guesses about your copy. However, I caught a couple of places where the wrong pronoun was used, where a word may have been used too many times in a paragraph, and a couple of places that I needed to tweak a word or two for the stories sake. You can document these and go over them with your layout designer in the next step of your author journey.

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