Behind scene of Everyone loves lunchtime but Zia

Everything you need to know about Zia's Illustration process

hello Everyone , I am so excited to share my ever first blog post about the behind scene for the picture book: Everyone loves lunchtime but Zia . written by Jenny Liao, Illustrated by me. What can be a better time to read this post than on its releasing day! If you haven’t read the story yet, You can check this book trailer I made to get a glimpse of its taste.

and here is where you can purchase a copy

Book trailer

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Before I start

so the first steps to start a picture book project, of course, it is to read the manuscript. This manuscript is very special in many ways. First of all it is a book about chinese culture. as a chinese, I feel extra exciting about its subject. secondly, I got a chance to draw many traditional chinese dishes. a yummy picture book! delicious to draw! I will do a lot of photo research before any project, so here I would like to share part of my photo reference , some are provided by author, some are googled online.

The look of the book

Each picture book has its unique quality. I don’t like to repeat myself, so usually I will try my best to find unique look for each book. For this particular book, I go with color pencil and digitally manipulated in PS. In the early stage, the main color theme is quite different from how it looks like now. They are more greyish and brownish

I spend many time to experiment but it does not feel right, Then as I go through my early illustration portfolio, I find some old pieces that speaks to me. Many years ago, I have participated a gallery show hosted by the Light Grey Art Lab. They invited 100 artists to create illustrated recipes. The vivid color combined with color pencil texture is really suitable to make food stand out. since ZIA has so many food illos, I decided to use the same technique.

Character design

Of course , A book is not just series of random illustrations. the character is always the most important. readers should be able to feel , to see and to touch the character, as if they are someone you have known in the real life. here I share with you all of the character sketches in the book

Storyboard

Storyboard is illustrator’s way to write with images. how the image flows, what is the pacing, how do you arrange the page turn. all of those are important elements in picture book. here I share with you some of the inner pages that has been changed later. but you get the idea how this book evolved and developed over time

Besides the line sketches , I have designed a color storyboard as well. I don’t know if readers have notice this or not. but the color theme has changed with the mood of Zia.

At first, Zia is moody and unhappy, the color for that page is GRAY

the main color at home is more soothing and soft, so if you look carefully, you will find that the main color (Yellow) at home has spreaded out to school in the last page

Also , each dishes have its own mian color theme

so be carefull with the color in picture book! it always has meanings.

About the cover

Cover is the face of a picture book, good content alone is not enough, they deserve a pretty face to attract its readers. So I experimented soooo many different versions . here you can see my process:

Last but not least

at last, I want to share my studio desk with you , it is where this book is born!

and of course, some inner page showcase:

Thanks for reading to the end, this is really a very long post. and one last bonbon to share. I have record a short video to show some original artwork and my coloring process in the photoshop. here we go:

Feel free to leave any comments about what you think about this book, your reviews and any questions you have that I didn’t cover in this post.

Cheers x

Dream