Making the Art of I See I Learn

Getting Started

We worked closely with the author and the editorial and design team at Charlesbridge to create a fun, consistent world that would engage young readers. We reviewed many artist samples and styles, and after a series of presentations, we began working with animator and artist Renée Kurilla. She designed the characters and created art for the style-guide for the series. Renée works at Fablevision in Boston, and you can see more of her incredible work here.

Designing the Characters

We went through a number of rounds of sketches and discussions to get just the right look for the main group of kids for the series. Using anthropomorphized animals was an early decision, but within that constraint there were many considerations of age recognition, relative scales, and general appeal. We wanted children to be able to see themselves through these characters that come in all sizes, colors and personalities.

Thumbnails and Sketches

Bringing our designed characters into believable scenes was the next challenge. Making thumbnails is an iterative process of choosing what to show, from what point of view, and at what pace to move a story along. These stories focus on sequences that demonstrate learning or change over time in a character, focusing on one of four domains: Social, Emotional, Health & Safety, and Cognitive. We worked to support those goals in the sketch stage, before moving to final art.

Making the Art

Many of the initial designs and thumbnails were made with just blue pencil, pens and paper. For more than one artist to work on the illustrations though we needed a prescribed workflow and specific tools. Each page is a Photoshop file with many groups and layers. Each character has a layer structure similar to a traditional, animated cel. There is one layer each for line, color, shadow and highlight.

All the final art is produced using a Wacom Cintiq, and it turned out to be the perfect choice. The drawing on glass experience is superb, easy to transition to from paper, and allows us to easily work with a small team of artists. Within Photoshop we used the same color palette, brushes and file setup to keep everything synchronized. To share and store files we used Amazon's S3 service as a reliable, off-site solution.