So you’ve written a great story you’d love to turn into a children’s picture book? Great! But you can’t draw to save your life; so where do you turn for help? Try Old Mate Media.

It goes without saying that art is vital to any children’s picture book. The hint is right there in the name: a picture books needs pictures, right? But there is plenty more to think about than simply creating an image. The art needs to accentuate the text. It needs to provide plenty for the kids to look at. Faces need to provide clear and distinct emotions that a child can relate to. The images must work to establish a mood and an atmosphere. And they must make sense from image to image, offering a consistent journey.

Because it’s more than just eye candy; it’s a picture book, which means the pictures must tell the story. And it’s the variation and celebration of individual tastes and abilities in achieving this goal that we love about children’s picture books.

But as a result, getting art made for your children’s picture book is a time consuming and challenging venture. First you have to choose a style. You then need to find an artist that excites you in that style. Then you have to negotiate a rate. And then you have to slowly work through each image one-by-one. It can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not used to it, but it’s especially relevant to your book’s final quality.

In addition, if you send a stanza of a story to an artist without the right instructions, you won’t get what you expect. This is because writing a story, and writing for artists, are two different things. Communicating the picture you have in your mind to an artist in a way they can interpret takes experience. It’s a skill Old Mate Media’s founder has been honing for 20-years and consequently, he knows exactly how to translate text into the perfect image.

Here is what you can expect from Old Mate Media’s children’s book art service:

• An exceptionally low price
• A range of styles to choose from
• Advice on matching a style to your theme and expectations
• Help with the creation of image briefs for the artist
• Character development and creation guidance
• Open communication channel to facilitate revisions to images
• Fantastic cover art
• Large, high quality images that can be printed in big books without resolution issues
• Supplementary art for use in promotional material
• The opportunity to own full copyright with no royalties
• A chance to receive source files for the art
• An opportunity to own something unique

At Old Mate Media we have a platoon of excellent, quality artists across a range of styles. It’s a library of talent that is always growing, too, as we take on new jobs with different requirements. For a sample of the quality and variety we’re taking about, check out some of our already published work.

Children’s book image and artist price expectations

It’s fair to say that getting the art produced for your children’s picture book will be your largest initial expense. Unless you can draw to a print quality yourself, or plan to use photos rather than art, there really is no way around it. Each images price can vary significantly, too. And we should warn you that artists can take months to turn around a whole book worth of images. Our book A Very Strange Zoo took a year to draw because every image was hand-crafted. It looks great and incredibly unique, but as a result of wanting that level of quality, it took patience.

These are the kinds of factors that can impact the cost of getting the art done for your book. In the quoting process, we can further explain anything that does not make sense, either by email or Skype.

• The number of images required
• Style of the art (computerised, illustrated, watercolour, etc.)
• Number of characters in the image
• Is there a background or not?
• How detailed do you want the background if it exists?
• Is it a full page or half-page image?
• Dimensions – do you have a particular book size in mind?
• Do you want the source files (like a PSD file for Photoshop)
• Whether you want copyright ownership
• How many revisions were required?

To get a quote, please email us. Or book a call.

Where to next?

Important things you should know:

What does DPI mean? And why you need to know if you are creating a print book.
How do books in inches convert to pixels

Here are our other services; and remember that you can bundle a few together depending on your needs:

Writing - Step 1
Editing - Step 2
Design - Step 4
Publish - Step 5