Fun concept, and your nickname is now, " Wild Bill."

@tessw When I turn it upside down and squint I am drawn first to the pink rug, then to the kid sitting on top of the sofa (his head against the light blue wall seems to be the greatest area of contrast). Then I go to the box head kid right in the middle of the composition and circle clockwise around the composition after that. Hope this helps. If you want to draw attention to one kid in particular it might be as simple as turning her/his head and gaze in a different direction from the others?

@tessw Really fun piece. I've seen my son assume each of those poses at some point. Thanks for posting!

@lee-white Thanks for your critique. You have some valid points and I'll kee them in mind.

This is my, "Independence," submission. The flag of course is a symbol for sovereignty and independence. This happens to depict a scene from my local park where the flag guards a bench that is dedicated to the memory of a local military service member. Painted using the Procreate app.

Wow, I had no idea Lee would get so involved in the portfolio review. Good to know.

@tessw Firstly, great job! I'd remove the signature for the portfolio version. Your story concept is similar to the picture book, Good Morning Superman, by Michael Dahl and Omar Lozano. There is also, Bedtime for Batman. But you could design your own kid super hero. Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes would pretend to be, "Stupendous Man." To me the strength of your concept treatment is that you can explore any superpower as it relates to a kid's world. One more thing about your portfolio piece is to clean up the grammar. Instead of 'cause, use because. And just use a period instead of an exclamation point at the end of the last sentence. You'll be showing the piece potentially to some grammar sticklers so those are my suggestions for not calling negative attention to the text. Great job again and I hope you find a way to make your story idea work.

@tombarrettillo That's right, an indie book should look indistinguishable from one produced by a traditional publisher. If possible with a little something extra that the traditional publishers won't do.

I've self published a picture book using Createspace for the paperback and KDP for the ebook. I've focused on Amazon ads which drive traffic but have been break even at best on terms of cost. The holy grail of book marketing is a Bookbub email ad since their site has a million plus subscribers. I've submitted three times and have been turned down. They prefer authors with several books published and wide distribution. Marketing kids lit is a whole different animal compared to adult genres. Book blogs are big trust builders with parents but most won't promote a self published title. It's not impossible to get a self published book into a brick & mortar retailer but you're likely to get a lot of buy backs that didn't sell because all the prime point of sale spaces are bought by large publishers. If you want a Kickstarter campaign to succeed then you need to build a following for your project well in advance of launching the campaign. Producing a book is only half the battle. Marketing a book is a steep hill to climb. However, I'm still hopeful of cracking the code though. And it starts with producing a high quality story and pro-level illustrations.

@tessw Really shaping into a strong piece. What if you painted in clouds that directed toward the boy? I'd keep the text because the art and text play off of each other. I'd ditch the gutter.