As I said a few weeks (or months) ago, I’m going to upload my Illustration final exam assignment here. So, I had to illustrate an Indonesian folklore. We were given the storyline and we have to make four pages of illustration, and of course the front and back cover. The four pages part is pretty tricky because the story was pretty long, so I have to figure out how to fit the whole story into four pages. But, I did it! And I’m pretty happy with the result.
Step By Step on how to illustrate a children’s book:
- Read the story (of course) a billion times if you can haha
2. Get to know the characters in your story. Do researches about the characters and environment. In my case, since my story is an Indonesian folklore, I have to do a lot of researches like Indonesian culture, their ethnic wear, their environment. Even the dragons, I designed them like Indonesian dragons (they’re like Chinese dragons but with more earthy colors).
3. I decide which age groups I’m going to target the book to. Age groups are important because it is going to determine how your art style, typeface, character, and environment design should be. Different age groups also have different word counts. Older children’s books will have more words than toddler books. The wordings will be more complex.
4. Find inspiration! I browse pinterest a lot, trying to find the most suitable art style for my book. I went for a more messy, watercolor-like art style. I’m going for more of a ‘cute’ and semi-realism style.
5. Make your character!! You have to analyze and decide how your character will be. Decide your character’s personality. Me, personally, I asked myself some questions about my character, then I wrote the answers down. The questions were like: Is my character extroverted or introverted, their worst and best habit, their strength and weakness, and all that.
6. Start with a rough storyboard. At this step, you want to think about how the layout’s going to be. You also have to start thinking about the storytelling flow.
7. After you’re sure about your layouting, turn those rough sketches into more developed sketches. Then finish them as to how you normally draw.
8. Searching for a suitable typeface was really hard for me. You have to choose a typeface suitable for your age group and your art style. I used DK Harimau for the body text, a combination of Hello Stranger and Gula for the title font.
So, here I present, the final artwork!
Lastly, I want to apologize if my English in this post is super bad :(, It was really hard to explain stuff using English and I tried so hard. I’m sorry if it was a bit stiff. I’m still learning, though! Hopefully, my English will get better 😀
Thank you and take care of yourself 🙂
canis major 