Age band changes everything about the artwork
A board book for a two-year-old and a middle-grade chapter book are not the same job with a different word count. Board books need high-contrast shapes, a single clear focal point per spread, and characters readable at arm's length by someone who cannot yet read. Picture books for 4–7s can carry a subplot in the artwork that the text never mentions — often the thing that earns a reread. Middle grade needs restraint: spot art that punctuates rather than illustrates, so the reader's own picture of the story survives.
We ask for the age band before quoting because it drives the number of illustrations, the level of finish, and how much of the narrative load the pictures are carrying. Getting that wrong is the most common reason a first-draft style exploration misses.
Character consistency is the hard part
Anyone can draw an appealing character once. Drawing the same character forty times — from behind, in shadow, mid-run, at three-quarter view, aged up a year for book two — and having a child recognise them instantly every time is a different discipline. It comes from animation, where a character has to hold up across thousands of frames drawn over months.
Every children's commission starts with turnarounds, an expression sheet and a construction guide before a single spread is drawn. That package is yours: it is what lets book three still look like book one, and what lets a second illustrator join the series later without a visible seam.
Written for the page, not the screen
Spreads are planned as spreads. Gutters are respected — no face, no critical detail, nothing that matters loses itself in the binding. Page turns are used deliberately, so the reveal lands on the recto where it should. Trim is checked against your printer's template rather than assumed.
This is unglamorous and it is most of what separates a commission that goes to press cleanly from one that comes back from production twice.
