Childrens Illustrative book

Creating a childrens book has been great, i have enjoyed every part of it.

My target audience for my story is to children around Pre-School age, so roughly 3 til 6. It is easy to read, whether it is themselves learning to read or someone reading to the child.

My intentions for this book is that its one book out of a series to collect. The name i came up with is "Max goes to Pre-School" and others would be names such as Max goes to a birthday party, Max goes on an adventure, etc.

The story has five characters and they include:

• Max
• His mum
• His teacher: Miss Molly
  
• Girl (child)
• Boy (child)

The story is about the little boy Max and all the things he gets up to in a day at Pre-School. He is a terror of a child and cant sit stil. It ends with him falling asleep when the teacher reads a story to the class.

This is my full story;

"Max goes to Pre-School"

• It’s Max’s first day of Pre-School. He is very excited.
• Max’s mum says goodbye as he walks into Pre-School. “Be good now, have fun.”
• Miss Molly welcomes the children. “Good morning everyone, today we are going to have lots of fun.”
• The day begins!
There is only one problem; Max doesn’t like to sit still.
• Painting. The class sits down to paint a picture.
Oh no! Max is painting everything except for the paper.
• Building Blocks. Max’s friends join in together to build a castle.
Oh no! Max runs through and destroys it all.
• Sleeping cats. Miss Molly tells everyone about the game “Sleeping Cats.” Whoever stays still the longest, wins!”
Oh no! Max doesn’t even last a minute.
• The Sand Pit. Max’s friends play in the sand, digging and building.
Oh no! Max is flicking sand out of the pit!
• Story time. Sitting back to relax, Miss Molly reads a story to the class. Oh no…
Surprisingly, Max falls asleep! Pre-School must be very tiring…
• When you can’t stay still.
• THE END.


Below are some photos of the sketches of characters. As it is aimed at younger children i have drawn simple characters for kids to understand.














I drew a rough outline of what the chosen two page spreads contain and the placement of characters a text. Here are the photos;










Here are the painted spreads. I chose to use a different approach to the appeal of the book. I roughly water colour painted the drawings and then used felt tip to outline everything, finishing it off.































Once the drawings and painting was completed, i scanned the spreads in, cropped them all to the same size in Photoshop to take off the pencil outlines. I then made a few adjustments to them, for example altering the brightness and contrast.

From here, i placed them into a layout in InDesign which i set up to be the exact size of the spreads, leaving no bleed so they cover the whole page.
I searched and came up with a few different fonts for the text. I used a plain, easy readable font (Helvetica) for the main text and a more childs, or hand written font for subheadings.

Below are images of the final, finished spreads, one by one. The first two do not continue on directly to the following two.