Here lays before you, my art style.
And I wonder, is it too cartoony? How could I make it more kids illustrationy? (I keep wondering to the point of anxiety)
I wanna experiment with this style a bit, and sharpen the saw before I go and make a whole portfolio of it.
If anyone has suggestions on how to make it more fitting for kids books, Ill try it out and post it here! This thread can be an log of artstyle morphing time!!
Here's my rubber ducky! I tried my best.
His name is Roman cuz he be roamin the waters constantly on the lookout. He's a mad hustler and he's all about getting dat bread.
remember warm doesn't just mean red yellow orange. You can have warm blues and warm green and warm purples.
You can also have cold reds oranges and yellows.
Color is relative.
One thing I found out from studying an artist who was insaley better than most people at expressions, is there's flow in the features of the face, there's lines of actions in the same way there is in a gesture drawing.
Omg that lady is INSANE if she thinks someone will do it for so cheap!!! Aaaaaa that makes me CRINGE
Yeah I agree the zoomed out one focuses on the isolation feeling! Zoomed in one not nearly as much
Cool idea! Here's some I know.
Squint your eyes, to see the value in your drawings. if things become blurred together, they are too close in value.
Internal Colored Lineart - coloring all lineart takes way too long, but if you only color the lineart on the inside of things (like the internal finger outlines on a hand drawing) then it can look really cool!
Shape Design - if somethings hard to shape, if you draw varying connected triangles, big medium and small ones. That can help you shape it well. Ethan Becker on Youtube has some videos about this.
I dont wanna risk going to evil and lose any jobs cuzza that, so okay!
I'll go with four cuz it also seems to have the most tension to me. And I also just thought of a way to increase it even further. 
@NessIllustration Thank you Ness! I was just watching your youtube channel earlier! Great stuff!
I can see how it looks more oriented for the tween market! Maybe I should double down on that. Even if I can just make covers for tween chapter books, that'd be really awesome.
I'll try out some more innocent themes and shorten the limbs to see how it looks!
I may be wrong on this.
But if your thinking about perspective as if it's one, two, or three point. Then you're thinking about it wrong.
I feel like people teach it so wrong when they do 1 2 3.
You could have just a box shaped centipede floating in the air. And there would be 3 vanishing points for EACH box.
There's no such thing as 1 point, 2 point, 3 point perspective imo.
This looks cool! The best part is the little crow.
I happened to be watchign the DragonFly Critique Arena last night, and Will and Lee were just ROaSTING everybody for putting compositions smack dab in the mmiddle!
I would extend the canvas, up or sideways, either would improve it!
Wow this is all such interesting stuff to hear about, thank you all!
@Ryan-Sutherland-0 said in published for the first time:
yo
Wow that's so awesome!!! Mindfulness and teaching kids emotions / self control is all the rage right now, so that's cool to see books coming out to help with it!!
It's cool that you managed to tell your own story within the story too!! Sometimes I think, how do the writers even have a job in kids illustration? Don't they just write like two paragraphs and call it good. pft. I'm sure there's more to it, but to me it seems like the illustrator carries 80% of the workload.
I recently been thinking about an episode of 3 Point Perspective where the guy were talking about style, and how a lot of students portfolios had 'clean crisp nickelodeon cartoon like' art and that's a big NO NO. Or something.
Which I get and dont get. NIckelodeon cartoons are literally for children as well.
I have a slight problem where I'm not actually super enamored or attached or whatever to typical childrens book styles. I LIKE cartoons with lineart and flats way more.
I'm not super versed in all the nuances of childrens book styles. I haven't seen dozens and dozens of styles, which is why I'm confused probably.
Can people point me in any directions of childrens books that are CLOSE to cartoon animation art? I'm sure there's gotta be tons of styles in the middle that still work well for kids books.
Or. Another question. What's a good way to find a lot of inspiration for developing a kids book style? Pinterest? Certain Instagram hashtags?
Has there been an episode about falling out of passion? Or burnout?
I can't wait to hear about this next topic!! but it just made me think of these other ones too
social media can be a pit of despair and suffering. (and most of the time it is imo)
If you only want to do it to get your ideas out there and connect with other creators.
Then just get on the platforms already and do it. Search things by newest and you'll find hundreds of undiscovered but amazingly talented artists easily.
LMAO. I'm gonna lose it if anybody illustrates the part where bongo is INSIDE THE ALLIGATOR. #VoreFetish
Woahhh your long legged yeti design is SO cool! I'd say yes that's definitely worth finishing!
So I've been looking on Art Station and found some really amazing stuff.
I came across this and wondered, could THIS style be in a kids book?
Basically, I know my current art style will NOT be accepted in kids illustration so I have to invent a new one. BUT I don't see the point in rendering art.
I like making art FAST. What important to me is just communicating your intent. So I just want to do lineart and local tone, MAYBE form shadow as well. But I don't see that often in kids books.
And when I saw this, I thought, MAYBE it could be done if the lineart is REALLY thin like it is here!!
I just wanna make a new style and be sure it'll work before I start pouring a hundred plus hours into my portfolio.
@NessIllustration Ohhh that's such a simple way to put it!! Don't have the mourning be about grandpa's death, but a pet goldfish's or something. That's smart, thank you Ness!! 