4 Illustration Phases that Indie Authors Must Know Before Hiring an Illustrator

Before starting the illustration phase, the author and the illustrator must discuss clear and fairly for both sides about the rules & agreements of this project. There are 3 important things that must be discussed;

- Price

Before discussing, the author must’ve known the price range of the illustrator's illustration services. But to make sure again, discuss it a bit further about the illustration's price and the payment method that can be used.

For TullipStudio, we manage to get the most reasonable and fair pricing for children’s book illustrations. Our illustrations service starts from USD29 only and also provides the author with book formatting and book cover.

- Project Contact

To prevent scams and other unprofessional doings, it is important for the author to discuss it with the illustrator. This project contract must be clearly understood and agreed upon between both sides to work on until the project is finished.

- Manuscripts

Another important part that needs to be discussed is the manuscript that has been finalized and ready to illustrate. The discussion needs to go per page of the manuscript that includes how the story settings will look, character's appearances, how many characters are there on every single page, and how the character’s actions and expression that will go with the dialogs or texts.

After finished discussing the project, now the details of the manuscript are ready to sketch according to the author’s instructions.

Based on TullipStudio’s experiences working as an illustrator team that specialized in Children’s Book, we always submit the authors with 2 sample sketches from one of their manuscripts. After agreeing with these 2 samples and did some revisions on them, the author needs to make the phase 1 payment for us to proceed with sketches of the whole book. While finishing the sketches, we’ll keep updates to the author and let them revise the sketches so it is according to the author’s imaginations for the story.

Now the coloring phase gets much excited because the author will get to see the visual of the characters and story settings in colors according to what the author has imagined for the children’s book.

With TullipStudio, we provide coloring according to the illustration style that the author has chosen. Firstly, the author will need to make half payment for coloring to proceed and we will color the illustrations through halfway of the book. We always assure that every single page is accepted by the author and that the illustration is based on the author’s imaginations. Then we will go to the next page and so on.

After reaching halfway through the process through the coloring phase, to continue the second half of the book author must first finish the second half payment then we’ll begin the coloring until the end of the book. Every illustrated page is always updated to the author through email and lets the author correct each page.

The last phase of illustrating for children’s books is book formatting and get the book ready to publish through any publisher that the authors have chosen. Book formatting need to include the front page and back page with ISBN on it, about the author page, and finalize illustrated pages.