Here you will find some images from a rough draft of a children's book that I wrote, along with concept work for the book. The book is about a young walrus who loves wiggling, but is told repeatedly by others that she should stop. When she stops, she gets in trouble and can only get out of it by - you guessed it - wiggling.

I wrote the book as a metaphor for autism, and particularly for the self-stimulatory behavior, or "stimming," that many autistic people use in order to focus or relieve anxiety. My intention was to create a story that would appeal to everyone who read it, but would especially resonate with autistic children and their families.

I compiled the book and added text in InDesign.

The majority of the images I created for this book's rough draft are black and white pencil drawings; I created three fully-finished watercolor illustrations as examples of what the book might look like when fully completed.

Below, two examples of the black-and-white illustrations that make up the rest of the book.

Before I began drawing the illustrations, I created a rough thumbnail storyboard to plan out how each part of the story would be illustrated.

Below are some of the character concepts I came up with while figuring out the style of the book and the designs of the walrus and the various animals she meets throughout the story. 

I knew that I wanted the walrus to be very cute and roly-poly. Luckily, baby walruses are quite cute already!

I wanted the puffin character to be blustery and pompous; I envisioned him as a puffed-up little ball of feathers. He was the most fun to design!

The ermine's design was more difficult to nail down, but in the end I found a design that I felt comfortable with. I envisioned her as snappish and irritable (as well she should be, because the walrus wakes her up from a nap!).

Finally, the polar bear. I wanted her to feel imposing and intimidating, but not scary. None of these characters are villains; they just have their own ideas about what the walrus should or shouldn't do.

Here are a few rough sketches wherein I began figuring out how the characters might interact with each other and the environment.