✷ HOW TO MAKE A PICTURE BOOK ✷

thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this video if you want to design and build a beautiful website you can do it all in one place with squarespace hello everyone welcome back to my studio today is a very exciting day because my second picture book is now available for pre-order in my store and to celebrate i wanted to create a video which is basically almost everything i know about making a picture book i say almost because i just know i'm going to forget something so if there's something you want to know leave it in the comments i will try and answer it in a separate q a also i will be able to ask the relevant questions to my editor and my publisher anything you want to know that i don't cover today i will do a dedicated q a eventually i get a lot of questions about how to make a picture book and how do you become a published illustrator and author the process of illustrating a picture book the process of writing a picture book and i always feel like i don't have time to answer it in the way that i would want to i hadn't gone through the process a second time so i definitely didn't feel qualified because what if it was just a one-off situation but now that i've had my second picture book published i definitely feel more ready to answer those questions i'm only knowledgeable in my own experience so if you guys have a different experience self-publishing or getting your work published please leave it in the comments below i'm sure people would love to read it and it would be great to get like a lot of different perspectives this video is meant to be informative so i'm gonna cut out less than i usually would just so that it can remain something that can be used as a resource for those who are interested in doing this there will be a lot of bts footage of like painting and like photos of storyboards and rafts and what all those things are from this book and also zoom which are both published by his that could be interesting but maybe if you are used to seeing studio vlogs and you only really want that this is not that video i'm gonna try and do chapters i don't know i've seen it on other people's videos but i don't know how to do it so if it ends up not being there it's going to be in the description just so that you guys can come back if you need to and reference specific parts easily because if this is informative then i want you to be able to access the information all right let's just jump into it because we have a lot to cover and i'm going to try not to be boring but also not be too fast so much pressure the first thing we're going to talk about is the idea because it's the basis of everything it's where everything begins when you start developing an idea for a book you might be writing a rough manuscript you might be doing lots of sketches or doing concept art for me it starts with like a single image imagination's a bit tickled and i think oh that would be interesting and then i think oh but what's happening in this frame what could be have led them to this point and i'm not like oh this is a picture book but it's more like here is an interesting image but what's the story behind this when i've submitted ideas i've submitted concept drawings or my opinion rough storyboards but then my publisher was like um usually people just submit stick figures so i think that if like you're solely an author you may just write like a very rough manuscript and then do some very rough thumbnails like stick figures and stuff to kind of just illustrate the story if you're self-publishing i think it's more about experimentation and exploring the story for yourself but if you're planning on getting your book published you need to sell your idea for me it's it's always been like an image that i presented to my publisher and kind of gone through the story verbally with them and then it has ended up those two times becoming a book or two books selling the idea is the most important thing rather than being perfect it's better to sell whoever you want to be publishing this book the idea of the story so that they can imagine it for themselves [Laughter] yeah that's true this may not be true for everyone but my advice is to keep it simple and make sure that you're distilling your idea and and just getting what you need to to paper because i think it's better to get like just a kind of a little taste test it doesn't need to be perfect at this stage it just needs to sell your idea so doing something where it allows your publisher or your potential publisher to imagine what the book is going to be is better than having a solidified story finished artwork that they are not fully sold on and also i think not being ready stops people from submitting which is not great because sometimes that means you're never going to submit you're never going to be ready like i don't feel ready i never feel ready the part two of this the idea is how to get your idea in front of a publisher for me i have to say like i don't have great advice on this personally because it's like kind of like a fairy tale story which is not realistic my commissioning editor emailed me i had always wanted to illustrate picture books but she had emailed me being like ever thought about illustrating a children's book and i was like yes i want to do that please when i speak at schools and university stuff i tell them to be shameless about your hopes and dreams because you never know who can give those to you okay that's a side tangent so basically the point of the story is my way of getting in front of a publisher was not realistic because they found me which is great for me but really bad for when i want to give advice to people because i get this question a lot when i go on book tours i often ask other authors what advice they would give to someone that asked that question and a lot of them have said get a literary agent if you have a lot of book ideas a literary agent is going to have contacts with publishers and they're going to go and pitch your stories to publishers you're going to get the most success that way it's hard to just do that because i guess it costs money i assume i don't have one um but that's the advice i've been given aside from that i've heard of authors sending dummy books like bound rough but finished copies of their books to publishers and then being plucked out of the slush pile i think that's a very rare case also so i would get myself a literary agent if you're very serious about doing that the next thing is contracts and my experience with them i'm sure there's like information about it on the internet but i just wanted to go into it briefly so that you understand like the structure of the contract what they're going to be signing for and also like the way that you get paid because i think that's like a mysterious thing also so for me when i pitch my story they'll then offer you a contract you read through it you may be selling your global right you're going to be retaining your copyright of all of the artwork just make sure you're doing that you're going to be getting in advance most likely i mean some structures are different i've read that some people just do royalties and some people just do advances it really depends on the structure of the project but for me it was a an advance which was split into three payments one third of the payment when you sign one third of the payment when you're finished final artwork and one third of the payment when the book is published so that advance that you see people getting is split into three payments and then you're also getting royalties on top of that so your advance payment is more like like a record deal situation what i mean by that is that you'll get paid the advance in those three payments but then you'll only start getting the royalties after you pay off the invest after you've sold enough copies to cover that advance and then you'll get your royalties and that comes as like a statement every quarter or six months i can't really remember i get a 10 royalty on each sale of the book so that means that when someone buys it from a bookstore or online i get 10 i think you can negotiate all of those things but for me i got 10 because i was the author and the illustrator and i've read i don't know if this is true because i haven't confirmed with my publisher but i've read that the advanced payment is often worked out based on how many books they're printing which makes sense because you're not going to pay someone more than you think you can make back oh this is kind of all over the place i hope this is making sense i just want to make sure i get as much information as possible into this video oh yeah and in your contract you'll also be discussing like a rough date the final date actually comes when you finish your manuscript and everything's confirmed with the story and you start your final artwork like a and still things can change but you'll be given like a rough date of when your book will be released sometimes that's just a year if it's really far in advance like with bandits it was or sometimes that is like a month in a year and then the the final date will probably be solidified closer to the release okay next is the manuscript so this part is the part that i find most difficult because although i love storytelling i'm more of a visual storyteller whether it be like my videos or editing or painting or drawing i love that but writing i find really hard i find it really really like second nature it doesn't definitely doesn't come naturally to me although i am okay with words condensing it down is hard for me because i'm just like visually impaired you can probably already tell but i'm like blah blah blah whatever again i can't talk on behalf of people being self-published but i would assume that you're talking to your peers that are in the industry like whether it be art or writing or illustration commercial arts whatever you'll be talking to your friends and family if you're working with a publisher it's that plus your publisher and your editors and stuff like that and i found like i don't know what it's like to be self-published um but i really really really love working with the publisher because they know what they're doing when i write a book i really want the story to be there but then they go through and they say okay maybe this word is not right because the audience will be this young and they may not understand it maybe this theme needs to be softened a little bit maybe we need to change this here maybe the flow of the story is not right here it's just really nice to bounce ideas of people that are qualified to give you really great constructive criticism i'm very thankful for my editors i worked with the same two editors very closely on zoom and bandits and they like transform the story into something better i feel so open to collaboration with them because i trust them so much especially with the writing and they're just so lovely anyway we can talk about that later so you may go through just a few drafts but you may go through a lot with zoom i basically had one meeting to to edit like my rough manuscript and it was just about expanding it and then we did a couple of drafts and that was it with bandits it was a lot more laborious so it just shows how different the process could be for you for me but even just for me within the two different books bandits took a lot longer to kind of wrangle this manuscript because it was more character-driven there was more happening the themes were a little bit more mature i guess than zoom zoom was more of like a picture book that explored the solar system whereas this is exploring ideas of friendship and the environment and you know like understanding the world for yourself so next is the storyboard stage and this stage is really fun for me because it is essentially laying out the composition for the book you're starting to lay out which parts of the story sit where in the flow of the entire book this stage is super important because this is a way for me to show what's exactly in my head because i am i do imagine the entire book when i have wrapped my head around the story like i imagine visually what it looks like and so it's a chance for me to show them exactly what i'm thinking so from the get go they can start feeding back on what they like and what they don't like and what can change what we can make better rather than like getting to the final artwork stage and then being like what these storyboards can be as simple as like thumbnails but if you want you can flush them out to be like rougher sketches next is a rough stage so the rough stages where you're starting to create rough versions of the final artwork this is so that you can address feedback that came after the storyboard so you may have things like oh can we shift this over in zoom there was feedback because it was like one of my main characters was eating eggs and cereal at the same time and they were just kind of like that's really weird and i was like oh yeah that is weird so instead of doing that my character was then in the final artwork eating cereal and drawing so i basically just wanted them to be in a flurry because that's what was happening and i still achieved that but with like a tweak that made sense that's where i would be addressing that feedback and it's so that you're not changing anything in the final artwork stage that you don't need to that you could address sooner because it's a lot harder to change like a final painting or a final artwork than it is to change like a rough sketch so the rough sketch stage you're really blocking in where things are detailing um what illustrations will look like what the style will be at this point you can start thinking about where text may be laid as well and getting an idea of how much space you need so i can pop them in afterwards and make sure there's enough space for them because i really don't want to be doing that in the final artwork stage even though i do end up doing it anyway if your storyboards are very high fidelity your roughs are basically just a more fleshed out version of that if your storyboards are just thumbnails then the roughs are a very very very fleshed out version of the thumbnails experimentation this is a super super important part of the process because this is where you're going to be figuring out what a book is going to look like what the vibe is going to be what colors you're going to use what materials you're going to use and although this can happen at any point in the process i've put it here because it needs to happen before the final artwork stage which is the next stage for me i started working on experimenting with styles on how to draw people even before i solidified the manuscript and the reason i did that is because i knew that i didn't enjoy drawing people i didn't like when i drew people how it looked it wasn't simple enough for my taste but i knew that i would struggle to have a simple style which was expressive enough to convey emotion so i needed to find a style that was simplistic and flat and nice like the style that i have for everything else but with simplified features that could be expressive in different ways i started to discover things like having just a line for the nose and like having very expressive eyes which is something that i'd never done before and then i eventually found a star that i loved which was then ready to be part of the bandits universe in zoom the character i had had more like realistic shape but very very simple features like just two dots a little nose and a tiny little mouth and there was very little focus on scout who was my main character in zoom because the story wasn't about scout scout was a vehicle to move through the solar system and meet all the planets but in bandits it was more focused on what the characters were doing what they were feeling what they were learning i had to really work hard to to figure out how to convey more complex emotions because i knew that it would be more relevant to this story the cover i can't speak for everyone but my publisher likes to sort out the cover first because the cover is essentially the advertising for the book i get a lot of freedom throughout the entire book making process i've been so blessed with the people i'm working with but the cover is always the thing that we go back and forth on most because i need to approve it then the designer needs to add the text and like the copy to it and then my editors need to look at it come back to me go back and forth and then they take it to a board meeting and then go back and forth with them and it comes back to me and you know like there's more people weighing in on the cover because it's a very important part of the book it's what is facing potential readers it's what is supposed to represent the story and the characters and what the book is going to feel like needs to do all of those things in just one image so it's really really important to start early for zoom it was finished earlier on in the process but for bandits we started working on it at the beginning but it went through so many changes i basically delivered it after my final batch of artwork was couriered off so like lucky we started at the beginning because otherwise it would still be going on okay this is the best bit so once roughs are approved it's time to start the final outlook which is the most exciting part in my opinion but also a scary part both zoom and bandits were assigned three months i did do the final artwork for zoom in three months but i did extend the deadlines for bandits because it was just a lot more work in terms of backgrounds and stuff zoom was in space it was just like stars planet stars planet star's planet but this was like mountains city fields forests blah blah without spoiling too much i mean i'm gonna be showing the images so probably the most stressful part because it's like the pointy end of the project but it's definitely the most exciting because everything begins like the world that you're creating becomes real at this point i don't know if it's just because it turned out better than i expected but oh my god look so i'm excited and i'm scared because like at this stage i don't want to ruin it because i like what i've done so far but i'm really happy with video first spread down of the book so i've got like a clearer direction that i'm going in which i'm excited about oh i just hope that the line work isn't too small when you take a photo so something that you should know about the final artwork stage you deliver your artwork in batches for me that was like such a rude shock because i'd been working by myself and delivering final projects at the end of projects like and obviously you have stages in in commercial illustration where you're delivering sketches then this and then this and this but i had never had a project where i was delivering parts of the final artwork at a time i was always used to be being able to have control over the whole project in the way that i am doing everything and then going back and making sure it's exactly what i wanted consistent but in this situation you're delivering one third of the book here one third of the book here one third of the book here and so you can't really go back because it's being scanned and text is being overlaid as you're creating the next batch i'm finished and i am sending these off today this is the last batch of paintings that i'm sending for my book and that was really hard for me to grasp but super understandable because when you're working with other people on such a large project they need to be across what you're doing first of all i assume they're wanting to make sure that you're on track of course you would want to they want to be checking like the final artwork the style the quality everything if there's anything they need to feedback on at that stage they will and it just means that you can get it scanned and start to lay text over the top and see how everything's coming together because you're working with so many people there's got to be a lot of wheels turning at once you can't just deliver the final artwork and then it goes to print and then is released in like the next six months for your own sake you don't want to be doing the entire book's worth of final artwork only to be told that it's not right or that's what they're with what they were thinking or that's not what you told them you don't want to have to go back and do all of that artwork again it's better to submit little bits get feedback and adjust things along the way sometimes there would be like batches that i wasn't happy with in the end and i could redo those in a separate batch but i wouldn't be able to do that if i was delivering it all at once i have a little bit of advice also for final artwork um be honest with your publisher if you're not going to make the deadline let them know as soon as you know that was it the last batch it might have been the last batch of artwork but i was like really distressed you know what it was i was doing inktober and trying to finish my final artwork for bandits and doing something else i think i was going to america and so i was trying to prepare for all of these things and i just felt so overwhelmed like i was going to cry and randomly like my editor called me she's like just checking you're okay and i was like oh my god thank you i just like told her like i was really stressed and she's like oh that's fine we'll just move the deadline but if you're just honest with your editor or your publisher you can then come together and form a solution that works for everyone they don't want you to make subpar work just to reach a deadline i'm sure of it that's just my advice okay so next step is scanning and digital stuff this is relevant to like traditional artists because if you're a digital artist you'll already be doing digital stuff and you won't need to scan anything once i finished physical artwork a batch of it a third of the book it would be couriered off to my publisher my publisher would look at it make sure everything was all good from their end and then they would send it off to a professional scanner basically just scans things like an insane resolution and color corrects it as well which is super helpful because i find that to be the hardest part of scanning things at home and scanning sketchbook spreads and artworks and stuff like that is that like you scan it and it doesn't look the same and so you have to like tweak the curves and all the stuff and it never looks the same when these guys did it obviously it's what they do so it was great and i didn't have to worry about maybe it was really hard for them i don't know but i didn't have to worry about that because i just got this beautiful scan back and i was like wow and it was ready to like start tweaking and start compositing and stuff sometimes the scanner will ask to hold on to the artwork so that they can compare what they did in that batch and apply it to other batches so that it's all consistent because obviously when you're looking at a book especially if you're the type of illustrator that doesn't need to make digital changes or doesn't want to you need it all to be consistent for zoom it was pretty easy it was like backgrounds and foregrounds so most of the book was set in space and i did the backgrounds first i did like 16 space bleedy watercolor inky background and then i would create the planet and plop it on top and create a glow and stuff like that but with bandits it was a mixture of doing that and then also painting entire spreads i like both i like to create backgrounds and foregrounds and scan them in a different element so that i can have more control later if i want to change the composition of something or if i wanted to change the color of this one feature or if i wanted to add a drop shadow or whatever like it gives me more control but i also did do some spreads that were entire illustrations that didn't require any compositing or anything so here's an example of one that was done entirely on paper no composition changes no foreground background separation or anything like that um and then we just did digital details like stars outlines blah blah on top and here's an example of one that was completely composited so i did like the foreground of the ground separately i did the mountains all separate i did the little city was like a digital drawing on top and i did the little people which were separate also but then just placed on the frame and what this did was it allowed me so much control in an artwork that i don't think i could have achieved this look in if i did it all together there's just so much going on and it's so flat so i guess it's just about like figuring out what you want to stitch together how you can make the artwork better by doing stuff digitally oh and once i forgot to draw like my raccoon character's eye and so i had to do that digitally too because i just forgot that he had no eyes so it's a good chance to like fix any mistakes or anything that you may have missed as well okay so this is editing the final artwork after you've gone through you've made all these changes you've done the compositing you've done the outlines the stars the little bits and bobs the extra bits the computer stuff this is your final artwork now and you've submitted it to your editors and your publishers they're going to get together and give you final feedback of what they think you should change for me this is really helpful because like my editor's like oh this bit's going to be lost at the gutter or like this bit's gonna be lost in the bleed like it's not far enough in frame i had a spread that had a comic like strip on it and there was like a lot of detail that was lost because it was such small drawings within the fold of the book so that's the kind of stuff where they're like oh you just might want to shift this over this is your last chance before like it gets printed to change things okay next is the color proofing stage so this is where your publisher or you depending on if you're self-publishing but like in my in my case my publisher had gotten it professionally printed on the paper it's been printed on with the ink that it's being printed with with the settings that it's being printed with the end papers are on like a more matte paper and they're going to show you where the spot uv and the debossing details are or maybe if you have that on your cover so all of the things that you're going to need to check before it actually gets printed by the thousands and bound you need to like check at this point for me this was very lucky because actually one of my pieces of final feedback before this point was to move like all of it up to make space for text in this like city scene but i moved it up and forgot to move the detail layer so all of the all of the doors were like shifted way up not on in the right spot and we caught that in this stage so sometimes there's things that you see in print that you don't see in digital in the case of zoom it was things like there was stars sitting under text which made it more difficult to read there was like a gap in the artwork and it would have looked nice if we shifted this up so it's just about those final things like things you notice in print more than you notice in digital that need to be changed and it can also also be like saving grace in the case of like the the houses with the dolls shifted up like that would have been so embarrassing if that went to print there's gonna be hopefully minimal changes at this point because you're gonna have worked out those issues prior this is just the very last things the things that slip through the cracks that you're gonna be um shifting and then they're gonna now go to print so you gotta make sure that it's all done and if you're self-publishing i assume that's just like samples with the people that are printing your books and making sure that everything looks right and the pages are in place this was really like a relief at this point for me because we had settled on a purple book cover and a friend of mine had said that purples can come out muddy in print they're just really not vibrant so i was like okay we've chosen this purple cover what's it gonna look like and when i got the proof back i was like it's exactly what i wanted so i was like so happy it was just a great relief it can be it can be a blessing in that way too okay next is the advanced copy stage so this is awesome because although you've seen your work in print and now you know it's gonna be perfect there's nothing like seeing it bound as a final book with like the debossing and the spot uv and stuff because it looks like like what you see in bookstores it's so exciting at this point i'm like imagining children holding my book i'm looking at it being like oh my god i made a book this is crazy this is gonna be in bookstores people are gonna buy there's people i don't even know people that don't even know me are gonna be reading something and looking at something i made like that's just the craziest thing about like having a book published and it being sold in bookstores so cool okay now i want to talk about the difference between my experience is doing bandits and doing zoom just to kind of illustrate that your experience on making your own book could be completely different to mine because my experience between doing my two books it was completely different zoom was a lot faster to write the manuscript and a lot faster to edit it because it was like for a younger audience and it was shorter bandits had like more of a storyline that was was not as repetitive because you weren't just meeting okay his new planet his new planet his new planet this was like this happens and this we're in a new place here there's new emotions here oh my god our minds have been changed about something another difference i explained before was the foreground and background stuff that it took a lot more time to create the artwork for bandits because it was just more complex illustration work one huge difference was burning out for zoom i had no idea about the process so it was like a real rude shock i was putting so much pressure on myself because i was like this is the most important thing that's ever happened to me it's my childhood dream i want to do a good job and that caused me to distrust my creative compass and i just kind of fell apart at the end like after i did live in final artwork and i was happy with it i was like oh my god and i didn't know what was good i didn't know what to make i didn't know anything and i just kind of like burnt out for a few months i think something that i learned from that experience was talk to the people around you because i went to coffee with my friend freda who is an illustrator based in sydney as well and we talked for like hours about children's books because she's also very interested in it she also teaches illustration at uts i think she had discussed that she had gone through burnout too and it took her like six months to be able to get through it and i had already not been drawing for like a few a couple months and that was really stressing me out because i was like is this the end of what i love to do like am i not cut out to be an illustrator she had told me that she couldn't draw for six months when she had creative block and it kind of like released me from this fear of like oh my god i still can't draw oh my god i still feel demotivated i don't know the difference between good and bad work even though i want to draw i can't bring myself to do it her telling me that really like released me from that added stress of oh my god what's gonna happen i just decided to like let it be and relax and then everything was better afterwards so talk to the people around you don't like allow yourself to get to that point like try and talk yourself out of it because i just did not i just kind of spiraled i was like working every day on this book and i was like doing spreads again again oh my god zoom was chaotic i was like doing spreads like three times because i was so stressed that it wasn't gonna be enough because i was so not used to the whole delivering and batches process but with bandits i learned to separate more elements so that it would be less pressure being able to fix things later like knowing that things would be okay if i didn't do this right the first time knowing exactly what the process was gonna be it wasn't like a wild coaster ride where the track is being built like before your very eyes it was like oh i've been on this roller coaster before it's a bit scary but it's okay because i know i can just get off at the end i love the concept of zoom and i think it's really good for learning about the solar system but i love like the adventure story element of bandits i'm so excited for you guys to see it i made this um just a reminder the bandits is now available for pre-order by the time you're seeing this you can grab this we have single copies like this we have a gift edition which is wrapped and signed but also has stickers and a book plate we have bundles with zoom because the shipping for shipping those two together like a paperback and a hardcover is the same as shipping one book so i just wanted to give people the opportunity who missed out on zoom to get both of them together for the same cost as shipping one another way to support me is to support my sponsors so i just want to say a huge thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this video i put my store on brb mode that's not a real mode on squarespace i just put a gif that said be right back on it in preparation for this book launch and now i created all of the listings i did this like yesterday i created all the listings quickly typed out like a little blurb for the book what you're gonna get in each little bundle and just added images and it was super super easy that's all because of squarespace's awesome user interface i've always been a champion of it when i went to visit squarespace in new york and i was like those are the developers those are the people that make the back end that i love so much i was such a fan i don't think that i would be able to run my business as easily but if i didn't have squarespace i love that it's like seamless go to squarespace.com very little peach you'll get a free trial and a 10 discount on your first purchase um and if you go to furry littlepeach.com you can buy my book i probably forgot stuff when i get excited i ramble when i get excited i miss things out because i get sidetracked so if there's something you want to know that i did not cover or you want me to expand on something please comment it below if there's anything you want to ask someone in the publishing industry comment it below and i will see if i can get those answers for you from those people and if there's anything where you had a different experience or you had a similar experience you want to share your self-publishing experience or you're um working with a publisher experience please leave it below as well because i would love to read that myself and also i'm sure it would be really helpful for other people that's it i hope this video was like not too slow but also not too fast i hope this video was just right i have another video coming very soon reacting to my friend's animation of this book cover so i'm very excited and thank you in advance for anyone who supports me it really means the world especially with stuff like like my book projects because it's like my life goal so you're basically giving me the potential to do another one by like purchasing my book so i really really appreciate it and also just watching and also just like commenting and liking it's all good thank you for being here ready sorry [Music] do you

Channel: furrylittlepeach

Views: 172,480

Keywords: furrylittlepeach, furry little peach, sha'an, sha'an d'anthes, art, illustration, artist, illustrator, happy, vlog, vlogger, small youtuber, colourful, watercolour, studio vlog, girl, australian, picturebook, picture book, children's book, childrens book, kids book, kids lit, book, how to get published, how to make a kids book, commercial illustration, published author, published illustrator, author, zoom, bandits, hachette, hachette australia, how to get a publisher, publisher, process

Id: 1iJtZ_yqYTU

Length: 30min 11sec (1811 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020