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
@@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.
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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 :) :)
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.
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: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-a-uNGglFnM8.html And thank you so so much! I'm really happy to hear you're enjoying my channel!
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.
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 :)
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!)
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.
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!
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! :)
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 :)
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 :)
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!
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...
@@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
@@Fin_Win 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!
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
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!
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?
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...
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! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sekb-qo5xF0.html
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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 RU-vid comments! I suggest looking into some Skillshare classes, and understand that it will take years to learn. Good luck!
@@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.
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!
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 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t_ertJIRv6c.html 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
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!
