So much amazingness since I reached out to some successful Kickstarter creators for children's picture books. Within a few hours, half of the people I contacted had written me back with encouragement and advice about the process. I am including some of their responses here to pay the inspiration forward. The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth Dreamling Books says: Hey Emily, Thanks for reaching out to us. And thank you for including us in your 10 most inspiring Kickstarters for Children's Picture Books. Our goal from the beginning has been to inspire readers, so we're glad to hear it's working! Dreamling Books is definitely a more collaborative approach to publishing. We ran the Kickstarter, but if you watch our KS video you'll notice that the author (Chris Burkard) is still very much at the forefront. And all of our updates came from us, Chris and the illustrator David. It was beneficial to present the project from our company, because that ensured backers that it would be a quality product. But if you don't have a publisher onboard for your book, it's not a necessary thing to do. As far as advice, the most important thing you can do is gather email addresses before you ever launch your KS project. Use your blog to do that perhaps. But the more people you can get on a list the more likely you are to get a lot of backers right out of the gate. That will give you momentum and social shares, which will lead to more backers. But most of the hard work (harvesting emails) is done long before a project ever goes live. Also, realize that Kickstarter is a marathon, not a print. You need to be constantly updating backers, posting on social media, appearing in traditional media, etc. We'd suggest making a campaign timeline where you map out that you're going to be doing every day that your Kickstarter is live. There really are no days off. The majority of backers will come at the very beginning and at the very end. But you need to stay active during the middle portion. Good luck! Let us know how it goes! Thanks for your support of The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth. If anyone is wondering where they can get a copy, you can send them to our website: https://www.dreamlingbooks.com Thanks Emily! - The Dreamling Books team B is for Brains Hi Emily! I'd love to help any way I can. :-) My biggest piece of advice is doing as much of the work pre-Kickstarter launch as you possibly can. So many little speedbumps, the more of those you can have ironed out before launching, the better. Our biggest speed bump has been getting the printers files ready. Because we're doing it ourself, and this is the first time doing something like this, it's a slower process than I thought it'd be. This is totally something that could've been done pre-launch. The fact you've already started a blog and are gaining followers is huge. And obviously connecting yourself with printers in Asia will save you a ton of money. When I was price shopping, the printers I reached out to, printing without the middleman was going to save me thousands of dollars. And obviously that then keeps your goal amount smaller and easier to reach. When I hit the proofing phase with our printers, I'll gladly share the contact info of who we're working with. Navigating printers in Asia can be intimidating if you have never done it before. I thankfully have friends who have experience and are guiding me through it. Keep your rewards easy to ship. Shipping costs derail many a project. I am personally still nervous about this one, hoping we estimated everything accurately. For pre-ordering the book, we are working on the website still. I hope to have it up soon. The Web address will be www.bisforbrainsbook.com Best of luck with your project! It looks great! You should definitely reach out to homeschooling groups with your book. (I homeschool and we're always looking for fun interesting ways to introduce math concepts to kids). Cheers, Ellie Thank you so much, creators, for sharing this knowledge! Kickstarter is so inspiring. What do you think are the important elements for a successful children's picture book campaign?
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I've been tooling around with the idea of doing a first print run of Tessalation!, and am researching Kickstarter to see if the platform is right for my project. I thought I should put together a post that lists what my takeaway from these projects is as a potential Kickstarter-er. Is that a thing? A Kickstarter-er? To be clear, lots of children's picture books have been funded through Kickstarter and other crowd-funding programs. So when I say inspiring, I mean that I, Emily Grosvenor, would be inspired by this campaign to participate in the Kickstarter. Those are my criteria. 1. You're Doing Great, Baby This Kickstarter campaign, for the book You're Doing Great, Baby, is interesting to me because it has a book aimed at two groups -- babies and the parents. The campaign was well laid out, and the message resonates with a wide group of people. The takeaway? This baby stuff is hard and we'll get through it together. I also really love the idea of including a visual representation of the awards levels for the Kickstarter. All in all, a bang-up job doing a Kickstarter. 2. A Whale Who Dreamt He Was A SnailThe cover image drew me in immediately to this Kickstarter, but once I read through the campaign, I was most impressed by how forthcoming the creators were about their own risks and challenges. When the creators say: We got this 100%, I tend to call shenanigans! In my case, the book will be almost completed by the time I launch a campaign. That seems like a good model -- have the book's creative finished and launch to give you that extra bit of oomph to put it out in the world. You can read more about the book here. 3. GalunkerI generally hate picture books with morals or lessons or any other overt reason to exist (even though my book has a few hidden ones, too), but this campaign for a board book starring a sweet and misunderstood pit bull just blew me away. Professional and compelling all the way through. No surprise here -- one of the highest funded picture book campaigns in the platform's history. 4. Dragons in the LibraryI always tell my students that you often need only two words to tell a story. This one had me at Dragons in the Library. Dragons + Library = Easy to understand from the get go. 5. A Little Help from the ImpsThis campaign, to get an old German fairy tale resurrected, translated and re-calligraphied, doesn't have many of the bells and whistles of some other Kickstarters. But the illustrations are absolutely charming beyond measure, and the idea of having the postcards sent out by The Imps is just perfect. Big on personality, and, therefore, high on emotional attachment from prospective supporters. 6. Thunder & LightningIt's the little things that drew me to this campaign for a book about thunder & lightning -- especially the random inclusion of a little gnome in one of the drawings, the odd, atmosphere music, and the lettering, which looks oddly reminiscent of bauhaus lettering. 7. Tolliver ToadI'm not attracted to the story line of this one at all, but that frowny face on the toad is just killer. It doesn't look like anything else on the Kickstarter page, which is a welcome element when you've been scrolling through Kickstarter projects waiting to fall in love... 8. Hare
9. B is for Brains: A Zombie Apocalypse ABC This campaign, for a funny board book going through the ABCs of zombies, is the one that got me thinking that doing Kickstarter might be a great idea. This book is all concept, and a great one. But I especially like the approach the creator.used to make the video -- clearly shows that kids can get into zombies, which might be a stumbling block for some. I actually bought into this project at the level of $25, mostly just to see what the process was like. 10. The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth It's easy to fork over money to people who clearly know what they are doing. Inspiring a level of confidence in potential backers is my major takeaway from this book, stunning in all respects. Have you ever funded a Kickstarter project? Which of these would you have funded?We have a book trailer for Tessalation! Share far and wide! This trailer was put together by my amazing friend Wendy Dale of Genius Memoir Writing, based in Bolivia. Wendy's a fantastic memoir writer and teacher who is also doing screenwriting. There's not much she can't do, actually. Book trailers aren't really a new thing. But beyond actually giving you a book (which isn't done yet), and letting you leaf through it, they do a killer job of giving you the experience of experiencing the emotional journey of a picture book (or memoir, or novel, whatever your particular work is). I didn't give Wendy any direction on the book trailer she and her partner, Helger made for me because, well, I didn't have to. They're professionals and they know what they're going for. Here's more information about Wendy's business and what she can offer you. What I love most about how this book trailer turned out is:
Thank you, Wendy! I'm so thrilled with how this turned out! Did you make a book trailer for your picture book? Post to it in the comments! Also, if you love the idea of this book and enjoyed the trailer, please share.First, an educationSo you want to write a children's picture book? There's a lot of advice out there. Whether or not you choose to self-publish or present your picture book to traditional publishers though a literary agent, you'll have dozens of decisions to make to take your book from idea to the printed page. My goal in compiling this list is to share with you some of the resources I've found helpful to write, illustrate and market a children's picture book. Before you even start writingKnow what compels you If you're not already a reader of children's pictures books, think long and hard about what makes you want to write one. At this early stage, your time is best spent re-reading your favorites and truly understanding what makes you love them. I like this helpful blog post about what makes a children's picture book successful. My personal favorites are in this blog post about book covers. Learn the market Brian Klems, over at Writers Digest, has a very good breakdown about how to access the market for children's pictures books before you even put pen to paper (or fingertip to QWERTY). Educate yourself quickly about process Once you've educated yourself about the realities of the marketplace, take a few minutes and read this easy-to-digest explanation of how to write a children's book from Buzzfeed. Gotta love Buzzfeed -- so edible, so snacky! Remember best practices Now you know basically how it works, right? But don't forget all of the things you SHOULDN'T do when you set out to write such a book. This list from author Alice Kuipers is helpful in that department. Turn to the masters for advice Do you love Mem Fox? What, you don't know Mem Fox? What's wrong with you. Anyway, here's a snappy breakdown of hints for writers from Mem Fox. And now go out and buy Where is the Green Sheep? Once the book is writtenLearn how to self-edit This website by author Patrice Sherman doesn't look like much (the interface is really bare bone) but it has a lot of useful information on how to do a critique for a children's picture book. Think like an editor In a similar vein, here are the 10 questions Penguin editors ask themselves when they are looking at acquiring a book. Form a group Is the text of your book completed? You might consider starting a critique group for your children's picture book. The always knowledgable and share-worthy Jane Friedman has some excellent advice on her site about how to go about finding the right critique partner for you. Hire some help Are you having trouble finding competent readers for your picture book? Not trying to be cruel here, but most of us aren't schooled in the fine art of preparing picture books for publication. If you find the comments you are getting from your readers aren't specific enough and you need a professional opinion, you could consider hiring a freelance editor to look at the text. You could do some creative googling. Look for someone like this with a track record of successful projects. Need more help with text?E-books are a great resource on children's book publishing, especially picture books. If you're putting your book together yourself, you could read Aaron Shepard's book on how to format images for Kindle E-books. Darcy Pattison has an all-around decent book that walks you through the steps of writing a picture book, taking into account the standards of the industry, including the 32-page standard. Once the text and illustrations are done: Children's Picture Book Marketing WebsitesConsider the costs On her popular blog about the perilous world of publishing, Jane Friedman has a nice guest post about whether children's authors should be self-publishing, including a nice takedown of the costs to self-publish a children's picture book. Self-publish or perish? This guest post from Darcy Pattison, also on the Jane Friedman page, gets into the nitty gritty about why she has moved from mainstream publishing to an independent publishing model, including questions of finding illustrators and distribution. Go to the kids If school visits are something you'd like to pursue, I like the list "Tips for a Successful School Visit" on this blog about children's book promotion. Make some eye candy Darcy Pattinson also has this wonderful post about how to market a children's picture book on Pinterest. She's clearly not afraid to show what she has learned in the process, which I deeply admire. By the way, I just started a Pinterest board about tessellations, no surprise there! Get creative with marketing I like this list from Aaron Schep, who writes on his blog about how to get a children's book out into the world and in front of peoples' eyes. Fund by crowd Kickstarting a children's picture book is no simple venture. If you're interested in learning more about the process, the HuffPost goes into detail about what you should know before you dig in. I'm going to be doing a longer post on Kickstarter, but this is a good start. Have you found any useful resources for publishing children's picture books? Please share in the comments!The text is in, the pages are in layout, a friend of mine is making a trailer for the book, and I've found myself at the curious and challenging point of needing a book cover. I can't think of any part of this process that has caused me consternation or that I want more to get right. I always judge a book by it's cover, especially kids' books. A cover could be the difference between "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More" and "I Like Myself." Same author, same illustrator, same style (single character on a single-colored background, two cute little kids in rapture of childhood. But the former is engaging and the latter turns me off. Why? It's the background color. Kind of sickly magenta-mauve. Also, the cover gives no indication of the little girl's main storyline. She could be jumping with glee for any number of reasons. The book market is just that -- the place where people make choices about how to spend their time and money and what to invest in emotionally (especially with books). So making a cover is an emotional choice. The options about. Choose an image from inside the book and turn it into a cover? Make a new one? Do a close-up of an image? Have just the character and a few items on the cover? Make it busy in order to attract attention? Make is simple in order to get just a few ideas across? "There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts." -- Charles Dickens So I decided to take a look at some of my favorite recent children's picture books to see if I can notice anything important. This was no hard task. We are swimming in picture books. But I decided to pick just a few that I love that had one over-arching idea or element: A character who drives the story of the book and its images. Here's what I came up with and what I took from each book. Some Bugs by Angela Diterlizzi This one has been a real winner in our house lately, for its perfect, simple rhymes and full-color images of bugs. This cover works for me because of the googly-eyed gaze of the bugs at the reader. As in, you may think you're watching the bugs, but they are watching you, too! Extra points for the author and illustrator name looking like field notes. Cake Girl by David Lucas No one I meet seems to know about Cake Girl, but it is my all-time favorite picture book. It's about a witch who is having a party for herself for her birthday so she makes a girl out of cake to do all of the chores and to eat when she's finished. But Cake Girl is clever, teaching the witch about loneliness and happiness and how friendship can soothe the soul. The cover is perfect -- it showcases the gingerbread loveliness of the author/illustrator's style, the curiosity of the witch, the slight fear of the Cake Girl. Also, cake on the cover. Made out of a person. Perfection! Sparky ! by Jenny Offill I adore this relatively new release by Jenny Offill. it's the most simple cover I have in the lot, and it does a lot of work. The contrast between the name, Sparky!, and the wet blanket sloth is enough to illicit a snicker. It might have worked more for me if the main character, such a strong presence in the book, also had a role here; but this cover seems designed to appeal to people who love sloths. And these days, that's a lot of people! Where's my T.R.U.C.K. by Karen Beaumont This book gets a lot of action in our house, mostly because I am obsessed with its illustrator, David Catrow, and will read absolutely anything and everything his work has touched. So while I'll likely never get David Catrow, I will say that the character's face (Tommy, in the book) has exactly the expression on his face that launches the book's quest. It's a simple move, but a powerful one. Who hasn't lost something he/she has loved? The setting is clearly defined as well: At home, lots of toys, weird, weird toys at that, and missing the one toy in the world that matters. Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett This one takes place in a stark snow-covered landscape, mostly neutral tones except for the yarn. So it makes brilliant sense to have the book's title be in the same texture and colors as the little girl's sweaters and cozies. She spends most of the book covering everything around her, people, objects, pets, weird neighbors, with cozies. It's adorable. Cover perfection. Hush Little Dragon, by Boni Ashburn This one, about a mother-son dragon attack on a sleepy castle, was a hit for three straight years in our household. I love the character's expressions -- note to self: Have the character feeling a specific emotion on the cover that could entice people to follow their journey. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown I don't love this cover, but I find it compelling. I love the shades of greens and the brightness of the orange tiger. I adore the incongruence of the tiger in a top hat in a jungle setting. It makes you wonder just how this tiger is going to let loose! Yes, perhaps that's it -- all of the questions this cover poses for the reader, inviting you to turn the page. So what have I learned from this exercise? Well, I know I want Tessa on my cover, and I want her to have a specific emotion on her face, maybe that of elation. Hence: Tessalation! I need her to be in the setting where the book takes place, perhaps in the house at the beginning of the book, or maybe in one of the natural settings as the book progresses. I'd like the cover to pose a question that the story will answer. And I want something in the cover to surprise, to look like nothing else. Perhaps there is a way to capture the main feeling of the story on the cover! I was on the fence about asking my illustrator to do a cover image for me, but I think there's no question now. Back to the drawing board! What would you like to see on the cover of Tessalation!? A tessellating pattern, a close-up of Tessa, Tessa in an environment?When you receive your images from your children's picture book illustrator, you should think about hiring a graphic designer to adjust the images in Photoshop. There are several reasons for this 1. Continuity of palette. A graphic designer will ensure that the great color palette your illustrator has chosen will look consistent throughout the book. 2. Even color. Your graphic designer will ensure that the colors are bright, the lines are crisp, and that that brightness and crispness is consistent throughout the book. But didn't you love the images as they were? In their gorgeous, immediate, watercolored glory? In their sweet humanity? In the way they felt so obviously the work of a human hand? Yes. That's exactly the way I felt when I received images from my book's illustrator, Maima Widya Adiputri. But then I thought better. After all -- these images are going to be seen and touched on a screen by a large portion of this book's readers. These images are competing for attention with every other high-contract, bright-as-a-ecstasy-fueled pipe dream image out there. I have to give this book a chance in the marketplace, you know! Here's an example of what I mean, albeit one that makes me cringe. Did you ever play Candyland? It might be the worst children's game in the history of games (there's no skill involved, boring as hell). Here's an old Candyland Board. Simple. Lovely. No Purple-haired Lollipop princesses to be found. Compare this, if you will, to the new Candyland board. It's just awful. It's Ken Kesey's Candyland. It's Candyland in Technicolor. This Candyland has my kids fighting over the characters. I hate playing the new Candyland. I hide it as far back in the closet as possible. But there's a lesson in Candyland, and I"m not talking about teaching kids how to keep a card deck, count spaces and take turns. With children's books, I think the goal should always be to strike a nice balance between the charming, spare and inviting old Candyland with the new Candyland desires of the marketplace. For my book, that means: Bright(ish) colors: Yes Cartoonish characters: No Deep, resonant color palettes: Yes Technicolor throw-up: No I'm not a graphic designer, so I've hired my skilled and talented Brother-in-Law, Jeff, to do the adjusting of images. I think he's doing a bang-up job. Next, we'll be choosing the fonts and marrying texts to images. Do you hate Candyland? How do you strike a balance between Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test images and the kind of charm you're going for in your book?
I count myself over-the-moon to have found a wonderful illustrator for my book project, Tessalation! And since I really feel connected to her, despite her living in Indonesia and never having actually met her, I thought I'd do a Q & A with her about her illustration work. Q: How long have you been doing illustrations? A: I started to do illustrations for others --not only for my self doodles-- in junior high school. I joined a journalistic club and became reporter as well as illustrator. I joined a similar club in senior high school and university as well. I love journalism! Q: How did you get into drawing?A: It just happened! Hahaha. I found that drawing helps me to express my feeling. I wasn't really good in expressing my thoughts and feelings verbally, then I just realized that I've doodled here and there and felt so refreshed by doing that :) Q: Tell me where you are in your illustrating and art career. A: Learning art is like a life time journey. It is endless. Artists are influenced and influencing their art work and it shapes their work throughout their life span. I love to learn new techniques and knowing new styles. As for my career, I'm just in the beginning of it! I hope I can do my own solo exhibition and make series of comics and children books! Q: What’s your process like in creating a character? A: There are two important parts in character design: character inner personality and outer appearance. The former will determine the character's facial expression and gestures. The latter will define how the character's physical shape, the clothes their wear and so on. I usually sketch several times and do it through trial and error :) Q: What did you think about Tessalation! when I reached out to you?A: Tessalation! is a very interesting story! It is fun and convey the children's spirit and curiosity in exploring things! I used to play in my home backyard (it is a paddy field). I played with mud, bugs, flowers, frogs. That was amazing! Children's need for adventure is always amazing! I think Tessa really represents it :) Q: What was it like to create the tessellations for the book? A: Not easy but so much fun! Unlike arabesque, which are made using thumbscrew compass and ruler, tessellations are more dynamic. It's not easy at first but the more you try, the more you want to do it! Q: Where can we find more of your work?A: I have a page in an art studio called reeham.co but it's still under construction... The good news is that you can check my work in a facebook page named "Taiga Bluet" and in my personal fb page named "Maima Widya Adiputri". You can visit the albums and there you will fine a bunch of my doodles and my work. I hope you will enjoy them! Thanks, Maima, for your talent and your spirit! I'm so excited to have found you! This illustration by Maima wasn't made for me, but I sure feel like this little girl when I look at the illustrations for my book!
I am sitting at Archive in Salem with my bestie, the poet Stephanie Lenox, for our now annual goal-setting meeting. Goal-setting is literally my favorite thing to do. I ADORE goals. Goals are like birds in eggs, waiting to hatch! But I'm always careful about what I put at the top of my list because as we all know, what gets put at the bottom does not happen. Over a killer latte, with a stream of good-looking 20-somethings wafting through the door, I wrote this list of goals for Tessalation!, my children's book on tessellations. I divided my goals into three sections: Production, Budget and Marketing. Here I am with Stephanie at Archive, caffeinating and planning for world domination in 2016! PRODUCTION Goals1. Finalize the text.. I keep waffling a bit on the words in my book and I really just need to decide that it's done. 2. Coordinate with brother-in-law Jeff. I've hired him to make the images consistent in terms of saturation, palette and size and he is also helping me choose typeface and positioning for the words. 3. Explore publishing options. Whew. That's a big one. I've already begun the process, and will write about that in a later post, but for now, thank freakin' God, it's just a line item in my to-do list. BUDGET GoalsDecide how much I am actually willing to spend to get this baby out in the world. My only budget items so far are my illustrator's fees, which have been a little over $400. I need to seriously considering where my cap is here. MARKETING GoalsThis might actually take up the bulk of my time with regard to this book, since so much of the production will occur on someone else's watch. 1. Brainstorm blog posts for 8 weeks (I actually did that this morning and ended up with blog post ideas through May of 2016. Blogging! Not so hard, actually. And fun! 2. Blog for an aggregator site like Hubspot -- I've done this with other projects and seen a lot of traffic come in, so it's worth a try 3. Brainstorm and connect with organizations that would appreciate the message of my book. I've got a lot of ideas here: Mother's Groups, Women in Math, Puzzle People, you know, the whole gamut. I'll write a blog post about how to do this. 4. Find my helpers. No books are born on their own, so I'd love to find some fans that would be willing to post about the project 5. Create a How to Make a Tessellation tutorial for YouTube. My brother-in-law Jeff might be a good resource here. 6. Finalize a marketing plan. On it! 7. Decide on a platform. Where am I going to publish this? Amazon? Createspace? Lulu? Where? 8. Make a Book Trailer. Actually, my friend, the amazing Wendy Dale is already on this! 9. Launch this book! These aren't all the steps I'll need to take to get my book out into the world, but I've covered the basic categories I'll be exploring on this blog in 2016! Are you writing a children's book or do you plan to in 2016? What are your goals? Have I missed anything? Please link to your project! Last November, I finally bit the bullet and decided to hire someone to illustrate my children's picture book. In this blog post, I'm going to share with you how I did it and some of the questions I encountered in the process. The traditional model Generally, in traditional children's book publishing, the author submits the text and, unless he/she is an illustrator herself/himself, the publishers pick the illustrator. I think this is a great model for the marketplace, but it's not for me. Basically, it boils down to time and control, two issues I struggle with always. Some advantages of DIY:
Some disadvantages:
Finding an illustrator on Fiverr I've been working with several designers on Fiverr for a while now. In the past, I've had flyers made there, and book covers for other projects. These were simple projects, more cut-and-dried. They didn't require a ton of interpretation on the part of the designer, and graphics can easily be tweaked in the process. It has been fun, easy, and fast. Hiring an illustrator on Fiverr, or any other site, is completely different. I knew I wanted someone who would be able to translate the spirit of my book and develop my character, Tessa. I knew I wanted Tessa to look Asian, since she is half-Asian, so I went looking for an illustrator who would be able to illustrate a little girl, perhaps 6-7 years old, half-Asian. I was also interested in having the images illustrated in watercolor. And I needed someone who could interpret and create the tesselations, or interlocking patterns, in the book. Step 1: Go to Fiverr.com and Search for "children's book illustration" Your search result will look something like this. As you can see from the results, the quality of illustration on Fiverr is wildly disparate. Illustrators work in many media and styles, and you could easily get overwhelmed just clicking through all of the options. Step 2: Click on "High Rating" Because this is Fiverr, where designers are not vetted, you will be more successful if you work with someone who has a track record of delivering. Look for the 5-star designers by clicking on "High Rating." This should cut the number of options down and ensure you a better experience. Step 3: Edit your options Just by looking at the thumbnails of the illustrator's work you should be able to tell which illustrators you are drawn to. You've written your book, so you have the best understanding of its spirit and what you want it to feel like. Find about half a dozen illustrators who you are interested in learning more about. You can add these designers to your "favorites" by clicking on the little heart in the bottom left of the thumbnail image. Step 4: Explore each individual profile Now that you have half a dozen choices, you should go into the illustrators' pages themselves (just click on the gig image) and explore what project they have done in the past. For my book, I started looking at the work of the illustrator called "Taiga Bluet," on her Fiverr page. It wasn't long before I had quickly determined that this was my illustrator. She had a lovely lightness to her work that I felt fit well with the spirit of childhood, she worked in watercolor, and her characters had a vaguely Manga feel to them, so they looked Asian. To my great delight, her English and other communication are fantastic (she later let me know that I'd be communicating with her sister, who does her project management).. Step 5: Order a sample image To be clear, I didn't take this step, though if I hadn't lucked out so much with my illustrator (she's awesome!), it might have been a problem. Ask your chosen illustrator to do a sample of your character. Each gig can be ordered with a series of extras. You'll always want to pay for commercial use of the image, and you want to make sure you cover all of your legal bases if you're putting this in a publication. For my project, I would have ordered a single page with a single character with commercial use, which would have been about $25. Give the designer as much information as possible about the character before they start! Step 6: Work with the illustrator If you are happy with your sample, great! If not, you'll have to give the illustrator feedback on the sample. Hopefully your illustrator is fast, polite, and speaks/writes great English. If not, you might have to move on to another option. In my case, I was thrilled from the get-go with my illustrator's work, so I knew I had landed well. Step 7: Create a custom order If you're happy with the character, contact the illustrator and have them create a custom order for you. My book requires 16 illustrations, so my illustrator came up with a custom order of $25/page. We started with 8 pages so that she knew I was happy with the work before proceeding. You'll have to specify what size you want the images to be based on the trim size of your book. In my case, that was 8 x 11.5 in., or a landscape picture book. You'll also have to let your illustrator know whether they need to leave room for the text/how much room to include. This can be very difficult to change after a design has been made, so plan ahead! You'll need to create a document called Illustration Notes which has both the text of your book and any elements you absolutely want illustrated. This is very important, so take your time! Step 8: Relish the images as they come in Be sure to give your illustrator feedback on the work. For my book, it was important the illustrator be able to render the tesselations (patterns) in the book, so we worked a little more closely on developing those. I sent her images of what I expected or might work for the tesselations. Otherwise, I let her interpret the story herself. Part of the fun for me in this project was seeing what the illustrator would come up with. If you are hiring a true artist, they will add to your story with visual interpretation. Watching my illustrations come in was, no exaggerating, a highlight of my life! Step 9: Thank your illustrator I think it's good practice to tweet out or post images on Facebook when you have received your images. It always feels good to give back, and doing so can increase interest in your book before it is even out there. In my case, my FB friends were so excited by the images that they actually started pre-ordering the book! Step 10: Adjust your images This is where I am now. I have all 16 of my images and my illustrator friend Jeff Diesburg will be adjusting them for contrast, clarity and color. He will also be adding in the text for me. I could probably hire someone on Fiverr to do this, but I trust Jeff, he's family, and he's brilliant. About the Tessalation! illustrator: Illustrator Maima Widya Adiputri has been in love with drawing since before she can remember. She is a member of the illustration studio Reeham Visual Courier and is working on a comic magazine called Fairyframe. She lives in Indonesia, where she is studying watercolor and arabesque, a pattern-making technique involving arithmetic. You can see more of her work here and here. Have you hired illustrators on Fiverr.com or another site? What's been your experience?Tesselations bring order to a confusing world A tesselation is nothing more than a pattern of interlocking shapes, with no spaces in between them. They are one of life's great visual mysteries -- a way that the world orders itself, not just in a myriad of man-made creations, but also the natural world. As part of my children's book-making journey, I wanted to explore the ways some tesselations can be found in nature. So I've started putting together a learning page on tesselations where you can explore some images of tesselations, both natural and man-made. But tesselations also feel deeply personal to me. My affection for them goes a lot farther than just seeing them as something cool to look at. A history of pattern-making I made my first tesselation in a fourth grade gifted class. To be honest, it wasn't that great. It was a series of interlocking images of a seal poking its head in and out of the waves. I was trying to recreate it the other day. It looked something like this. It doesn't look like much by itself. Maybe some kind of pacifist Chinese star that wouldn't stick in anything you threw it at. But when you tesselate it out -- put the pattern next to each other in a repeated pattern, it becomes something else: A sea of seals. Ok, this might not win any tesselation awards. But! Even in this rudimentary form, you can see what kind of fun tesselations can provide. They create groups out of individuals, they allow you to see single things or objects or shapes as part of a fascinating whole, an unending series of individuality becoming a collective force. Visually, they never stop engaging. In other words, tesselations can help you feel a visual peace in a world that often provides chaos. They are calming, in the way that all patterns are calming. Tesselations in my book Tessalalation! I had several goals in writing my children's book Tessalation! For one, I wanted to capture the feeling of what it was like to first discover that thrill of interlocking patterns. The first words of my book are a testament to that: "Tiny Tessa Truman-Ling finds patterns in the strangest things!" In the first pages of my book, Tessa is at home with her mother, where she is surrounded by patterns -- in the curtains, on the tables. Her home is filled with patterns. But I also wanted to make the connection between patterns in man-made environments and patterns out in nature. So I sent Tessa outside, where she becomes enveloped in the patterns of nature and finds herself a place in those patterns. My hope is that small readers will find several entry points into the book -- through the words, yes, but also in the images, where they can look for Tessa and imagine how they might also fit as a piece in a whole. After all, isn't that what we all yearn to be? A piece of a whole, our individuality intact? If you'd like to follow along on this book's journey to publication, please sign up for my email newsletter at the top right of this page :)
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AuthorEmily Grosvenor, author of Tessalation!, a children's book about tesselations and patterns in nature. Archives
October 2022
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