Apparently, it all started with a request for some character designs from HarperCollins. Since it was for the well-known Aesops fable "The Lion and The Mouse", they wanted to see some designs for a lion. And also a mouse.
The Lion starting off going two directions. One way was cute and chunky, the other way a bit more grizzled and gnarly.
Gnarliness won the day so some mouse designs soon followed, in a similar style but cuter for a bit of contrast with the lion.
Then it was time to see them together in colour so the publisher requested a rough cover image. That was when I decided on the technique I was going to use; A rough coloured-pencil drawing with a neat black pen line on top and digital colour. A lot of the colour was scans of watercolour washes and pencil hatching but it was compiled digitally. I did it this way because, apart from just loving the look of the combination of hand-drawn and digital work, it was the most efficient way to get good-looking results. It's a bit like painting traditionally but with an undo button.
After requesting a few small changes (most notably, removing the hard edge of the lions mane) the publisher was happy enough for me to illustrate the rest of the book. They sent a pdf that explained what the composition of each spread should be, so I did a rough line layout of the book and sent it back
They wanted some changes, eg. the fourth panel above, changed to this:
And some other changes but you'll have to buy twenty copies of the book HERE and compare it to the rough layout here to see what changed.
So, after a bit of back and forth, with the layouts approved, I started colouring. This is a fairly quick and simple technique, even though it involves drawing the same pose three times for each page.
After doing A LOT of rough drawings to settle on what the final image would be, on separate pages I drew: a pencil-drawn background, pencil-drawn characters and then the character drawing again with colouring pencil and finally pen. All scanned and then overlaid digitally. Then colouring time!
This picture helps explain the process but I actually paint the background first. It's just easier to see the separate drawings without it.
I made a small video that shows how each image came together...in real-time. I work pretty fast.