Hello Upwork clients!
As an illustrator I see a great amount of requests for proposals on creating children's book art... and honestly, 99% of them are seriously lacking in basic details. Without these you will likely be passed on by the more professional freelancers, and those few who do reply to your proposal will likely offer inappropriate rates for the job. Further, you will wind up wasting a lot of time rejecting work and clarifying what you wanted to begin with... leaving you unhappy and your project unfulfilled.
Think of the hiring process on Upwork as going to a restaurant that offers every dish on earth, and when the server asks what you would like, you simply say "food." Obviously, it would save everyone a lot of headaches if you mention things like allergies, diet restrictions, portion sizes, preferred cooking styles, preferred ingredients, being a vegetarian, price ranges, and so on.
So here is a list of things you should consider ahead of time, and ideally include in your request for proposal...
1. The basics...
How many pages? Do you need a cover? Size of the pages?
(If you are self publishing, all of that has to be known in order for you to get a cover that fits correctly. You even have to know what kind of paper you will print on.)
2. The style...
What age group are you writing for? What sort of media... ink, pencil, waterclor, crayon, digital paint, etc? What sort of look.... Disney, "Caillou", comic book, anime, realistic, etc?
(The reader's age will determine what style, colors, font size, and word choice is appropriate. Provide samples or a list of books you like... this will help you weed out freelancers who can't work in a certain style and attract those that can.)
3. Characters...
How many are there? Are they humans, animals, creatures, fish, etc?
(The more characters you have, the more unique looks have to be created AND the more crowded a drawing will be... which is obviously more difficult for your artist. This is especially true for books targeting infants/toddlers... they might differenciate characters by respective sizes and shirt colors, while older readers are able to notice more subtle details. Further, some artists may be experts at drawing people but terrible with animals.)
4. Format...
Horizontal or vertical format? Do you want art and text on the same page? Do you want borders around art? Do you want text overlayed onto the art? Will there be art on every page, or only highlighting important parts of the story?
(Simple bordered or separate page art you can insert into a document yourself, but if you want art and text combined, you will need a second freelancer with experience in book formatting, or better yet, an artist that can do it to begin with. Font style should match the art and the tone of the writing. The amount of text on each page should be balanced and leave room for artwork. The space allocated for artwork will determine how detailed/intricate the art can be as well as how scenes are laid out... the use of white space, visual focus and so on...)
5. Project milestones...
I highly recommend you provide your freelancer the text at the beginning, and assuming you hammered out all the details listed above, the first milestone should be 'schematic design'.... get the entire book laid out in quick-sketch, storyboard form. The location of text and art should be roughly planned for every page. This will help you avoid pages with too much/too little text and ensure what is written is 'worthy' of accompanying art (i.e. the page's text isn't just transitional/fluff... there is a plot point to be highlighted by art). This should be a short, fast process and be about 10% of the project cost.
The second milestone should be 'design development'... basically the revised version of the first milestone... updated text, text placement, and art layout. You should have already conveyed who your printer will be and what their requirements are regarding print areas, bleed, bar code placement and so on to your freelancer so they know how much space they have to work in. This should take twice as long as step one, and cost about 20% of the project.
The third milestone should be 'design production'... where final art is created and married with the text. This should be the bulk of the project's schedule and worth 60% of it's cost. You can break this down into further milestones if you want to monitor progress more closely... but again, if you went through the early steps of conveying exactly what you want from the start, there shouldn't be too much hand-holding required.
The fourth milestone should be 'final design'... basically the last looks and tweaks of what should be a "95%" complete job... there should be little work involved besides getting your final approval of the inside pages and possibly adjusting any cover design. Remember, the cover art's width (for full cover art) is determined by the company printing/binding you book- the spine thickness depends on number of pages and paper thickness you chose. Once you have your final product, you can release that last 10% of funding.
I hope this guide helps you and your prospective freelancer(s) realize your project with ease and efficiency. Happy writing!
Louis Eliopoulos
