In this post I will share pictures of the process of creating my debut author-illustrator picture book, 'Percy the Post Penguin' and share some insights into my process and how I created the final artwork.
The first thing when creating a picture book is to research into the topics and themes of the book, for example the South Pole, post offices and animals. Once I was confident with the themes I wanted to include, I wrote the story, which was inspired by self-confidence and incorporating this into a post-office themed book.
After this, I spent time designing the character. Percy actually started out looking quite different to how he does on the cover, and you can see below how he was a very different shape to how he turned out in the end. However, I found this shape to be restrictive with his movement and I decided to look at different ways to draw Percy.
Once I was happy with how the character looked, the next stage was to storyboard the whole story. This helps to visualise the book, and understand the pace of the story.
This was revised a few times, and once I was happy with it I created a dummy book. This is a full-size rough version of the book, meaning I can test how the story would look when published. Having the spreads full size meant I could change any compositions that look different at this size compared to when they are just small thumbnails at the storyboarding stage.
Communicating with the art director and publisher at this stage is important so that I can make any relevant changes, and they can advise me on text placement or any feedback they may have.
Once the roughs are approved, I can go into creating the artwork. For this book, all the illustrations were painted in gouache with details in pencil crayon. As my process is entirely traditional, all the work was scanned in and formatted digitally to then be sent to the art director.
The cover was created with separate illustrations, for example the background was a hand painted texture of blue, the border and character was painted separately and the title was drawn out then edited digitally to make it bold and stand out. It is important that the cover is eye catching so that if it is a small image on a website, it is easily recognisable. The border also means it is eye catching when sticking out of a bookshelf in a bookshop.
I really enjoyed creating Percy the Post Penguin and if you would like to purchase a copy, you can purchase it here on Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/percy-the-post-penguin/genevieve-aspinall/9781915235794
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