Children’s Book in Progress | Step 1 : Setup!

I’ve just started working on illustrating and designing a new children’s book, eeeeeee! Now that the contract was signed, the deposit received, and I’m ready to put pencil to paper, and thought I’d share my process as it’s happening.
1) Setup : 30 minutes
Printing out copy of contract
Print out and fill out time sheet
Print out manuscript
Set up a folder on my laptop to organize files created and received along the way
2) Analyzing the story : 2 hours
Reading through the story to determine how much text will go on each page
Underline key visual imagery to be included in illustration mentioned in story
Make notes for ideas for imagery I have while reading the story
Sketch thumbnails of the layout with notes on rough concepts for each spread
3) Gathering Imagery : 30 minutes
Using Google Images to find imagery to use as reference and inspiration
4) Preparing proof for author : 1 hour
Scanned any thumbnails
Created book layout in InDesign
Inserted the text and scanned images into the layout according to my thumbnails
Described each page on digital “sticky notes” on each page
Emailed author a PDF proof of the concepts for review

Time spent so far : 3.5 hours
Materials : pen, 8 pieces of recycled printer paper, ipad, and InDesign on laptop.
Next up over the next couple weeks are more detailed sketches…

I had the pleasure of receiving a copy of “




