Designing a Picture Book Character Who Survives 32 Pages

A picture book character has a harder job than almost any other illustration. They have to be recognizable on page 1 and page 14, at full-bleed size and at thumbnail size, delighted and terrified, from the front and from behind, drawn by a tired person weeks apart. Diana McDerMott, a children's book illustrator with 23 published titles who teaches From Manuscript to Printed Book on Twotap, has a design and testing routine built entirely around that problem.

The tenth sketch is better than the first

Her opening warning is about expectations rather than technique.

"Good character design is almost never the result of the first sketch. It takes iterations. The tenth sketch is almost always better than the first. If your first attempt doesn't feel quite right, that's okay, and it's a sign that you're doing something right."
Diana McDerMott, in the lesson Designing Your Main Character

The reader has to fall in love with this character quickly and stay in love through every page turn, and she is blunt that this does not happen by accident.

Start from a shape, on purpose

Her most powerful tool is also the simplest. Round shapes and curves read as friendly, approachable and safe, which is why so many beloved children's characters are built from them. Angular shapes, triangles and sharp points read as edgier, more dramatic, sometimes threatening and sometimes just energetic. Square shapes read as stable, grounded and dependable, occasionally stubborn.

Her rule is not that every character must be a circle. It is that you should know which shape language you are using and why, then build outward from it.

Five sketches that prove the design works

Before committing, she draws the character at least five ways, each testing something different:

• Neutral standing pose. Relaxed, looking at you. Establishes base proportions, silhouette and style.
• In motion. Running, jumping, reaching. Do the proportions hold up when the body is dynamic?
• A quiet moment. Sitting, thinking, looking at something small. Can the character be still and still be interesting?
• A close-up of the face. Expression, eyes, the details that make them feel alive up close.
• From behind or at a distance. What is the silhouette across a spread or in a wide establishing scene?

If the character is consistent, recognizable and expressive in all five, the design is working. If it falls apart in one, that is precisely where the design needs more thought.

Then test the emotional range

The character has to carry the whole arc of the story, so she checks that they can, with expressions described as states rather than mouth shapes: happy, meaning genuinely delighted and lit up from the inside rather than a polite smile; sad, meaning defeated, small and withdrawn rather than a frown; scared, eyes wide and body pulled in; determined, chin up and going for it anyway; confused, head tilted, trying to make sense of something. Then one more, the expression for whatever the key emotional moment of your specific manuscript is.

If any of these feels impossible to draw, that is information about the design, not about your skill. Her fixes are structural: larger eyes, more mobile features, more room for the face to move.

For reference she suggests photographing yourself pulling the expression, using a mirror, or asking whoever is nearby to act it out.

Why the heads are big

Children's book characters carry larger heads than real anatomy would give them, and she gives two reasons. Children themselves have proportionally bigger heads, so it reads as appealing to the audience. And it leaves more room on the face for expression, especially the eyes, which she calls the emotional center of almost every character.

The practical consequence: if a character feels emotionally flat, slightly enlarging the head and making the features more prominent is often the entire fix.

Two tests that catch what your eye misses

The thumbnail test. Shrink the character to around two centimetres tall and check the silhouette still reads clearly. That is the scale they will actually appear at on many spreads, so a design that only works large is not finished.

The memory test. Her final check before committing is the best one in the lesson: put the reference sheet away, wait twenty minutes, then draw the character from memory. If you can reproduce them without looking, the design is clear enough in your head to draw on demand across a whole book.

Build the reference sheet

This is the artifact that keeps page 1 and page 14 the same character. A single page holding a turnaround, front view, three-quarter, side and optionally back, plus a handful of key expressions.

If you have other characters, add them to the same sheet as a size comparison, with horizontal lines ruled across the page so head heights line up and relative scale is fixed. Then keep it somewhere usable: an open reference layer if you work digitally, or printed and propped next to you.

Supporting characters need silhouette contrast

Secondary characters get designed with the same intent plus one extra constraint: they must be visually distinct from the protagonist. Her test is direct. Reduce both to solid black silhouettes, put them side by side, and see whether you can instantly tell which is which. If not, the designs are too similar.

The variables that create that distinction before any detail exists are height, build, head shape and posture. She applies shape language as contrast too: if the protagonist is soft and round, the supporting character might be angular; if the lead is small and slight, the friend might be tall and broad.

Design can also carry the character's emotional role. A mentor might be grounded and substantial, built on stiller square shapes. A comic sidekick might be exaggerated and physically expressive. A character representing danger or uncertainty might carry sharper angles.

These do not need the full treatment. A quick character sketch plus three key expressions is usually enough to keep a supporting character consistent across the spreads they appear in.

Write down five rules for the world

Every book exists in a visual environment with rules, and her point is that you are setting those rules either deliberately or by accident. She sketches three or four key environments, roughly, just enough to establish architecture, how much detail plants carry, and the quality of light.

Even a tree decides things. A tree drawn with rounded organic shapes and a slightly wobbly line tells you the buildings will have imprecise edges and the furniture will be a little rounded, because everything belongs to the same softly imperfect world.

Then she writes five visual rules down and keeps them visible. Her examples:

• All lines are slightly loose and organic. Nothing is perfectly straight.
• Shadows are always warm, never cool or grey.
• Plants are simplified to basic shapes, with no photorealistic detail.
• Interiors feel cozy and slightly cluttered; exteriors feel open and airy.
• The main character always has one accent color no other character shares.

Your five will differ. As she puts it, the point is that you have rules, because on spread 11 you will not remember how you drew the trees on spread 2.

The cohesion check

Last step before storyboarding: put the character reference sheet beside the rough environment sketches and look at them together. Does the character belong in this world? Does the line quality match? Is the level of detail consistent? Does it feel like the same book?

If the character seems to have wandered in from a different book, this is the cheapest moment to fix it, before fourteen spreads exist.

Character design is Part 2 of Diana McDerMott's From Manuscript to Printed Book on Twotap, which runs from paginating a manuscript through storyboarding, color, rendering in Procreate, and files a printer will accept.