![]() Hello guys! It’s been long since I wrote a post here. To welcome Spring, my first fully illustrated picture book is releasing and I’m sharing the illustration process with you to celebrate! Caesar & Reagan, by Kate Nilson and Lawley Publishing arrives on March 21 and tells the adventures of a dog who loves his owner: Caesar & Reagan by Kate Nilson Today we’ll be looking at inspirations, character studies, storyboards and more, so let’s dive in! Research & InspirationThe publisher sent me the manuscript and temporary pagination, which allowed me to understand which scenes should be illustrated. We had a first meeting before the start of the project where Kate explained her vision: a dog (Caesar) who loves his owner (Reagan), a wholesome and warm story, with a bit of humour but also emotion. The characters should be expressive, especially Caesar. And the story is set in a small but modern town with colourful storefronts. With this in mind, I collected a bunch of ideas on a Pinterest board (which you can find here!) so I could have a better idea of which colours I wanted to use and character designs. Character StudiesI always design the characters before sketching the storyboard. Reagan and Caesar are based off Kate’s nephew and her dog, so I wanted to capture their vibes. Reagan is a young and energetic girl, so I wanted to go for lot of pinks, earth tones and pastel colours for her design. Caesar is a little dog who loves to play with Reagan. He’s expressive and I decided to make him white just like Kate’s nephew’s dog. StoryboardAfter getting the characters approved, I began sketching the spreads. While sketching the storyboards we noticed there was something missing. I based Caesar on Kate’s nephew’s dog, but in our story Caesar was meant to get covered in white flour. This was a problem since his fur his also white and some dialogues were based on that scene. Below you’ll see some examples of this. So we opted to make Caesar’s fur a brown colour. However, after seeing the whole storyboard put together, Kate noticed how much she loved the white Caesar, so we adjusted a few scenes and changed the flour to cocoa powder and got our white Caesar back! With the storyboard and colour palette approved, I moved on to the final illustrations. FinalsI went with digital illustration this time to challenge myself and because I’d be able to make minor changes a lot easier if needed. I also made a couple of smaller illustrations for end papers and title pages, in case the publisher wanted to add those extra details. The book turned out super nice and the hard cover makes it just perfect for children! You can find the book on the publisher’s website, but also on most online book shops! A huge thanks to Kate, Carrie and Lara for the honour of bringing this story to life! I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of the behind the scenes of illustrating Caesar & Reagan and let's embrace the first days of Spring! Stay brilliant! Inês
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