21. The Start of Final Art!

Jellyfish Picture Book Process

I’m a day late with this month’s We Are Jellyfish update, but this one’s worth it, y’all! I’ve got some super fun stuff to show you today, including the finalized storyboard and my full process of drawing, painting, and editing the first final art spread!

First off, I finally wrapped up the storyboard:

I made lots of changes to get to this final storyboard:

• Rearranged some spreads to have better rhythm, variation, and value progression.

• Strengthened the opening spread

  • Darkened the background value to foreshadow the creepiness coming later on (are these jellyfish benevolent or malicious…?)

  • Redrew composition to be more different than other spreads

  • Added scuba diver swimming half off the page to introduce that character and encourage a page turn (who is that and where are they going?)

• Refined composition of pages 4-5

• Shortened all science notes and rewrote some (yay!)

• Rewrote some story text on a few pages to be tighter

• Collected the 3 diagrams I had drawn at the bottom of the storyboard to be used in the glossary/extra pages in the back of the book

Once I was happy with the storyboard, I dove right into creating the final art! I decided to start with the first full spread as a jumping-off point.

Step 1: Blow Up the Sketch