So at this stage of the process we’d written the book, or at least the draft that would eventually become the final book when we knew we needed to come up with some illustrations that were just as cute as the words. The description above was what we had so far, a great start!

The catch was that neither of us knew we could draw anything more advanced than stick figures. So off we went to hire an illustrator to bring our dream to life. We were not quite prepared for the challenge that would be getting someone to create something that equalled our imagination.  

After a few weeks of going back and forth, these were the options we got back from the first four illustrators we reached out to.

Some of them were really cute, I was a personally a big fan of the Yogi Bear looking guy on the right. But none of them captured the essence of what we were looking for. Our character needed to be something Maria could imagine living on her desk and helping oversee the classroom.

And that’s just what we got from illustrator number five. A gentleman by the name of Arnav was able to bring our imagination to life. Even still there was a series of evolutions before our perfect Teacher’s Pet Creature was realised.

Arnav was great to work with, making the smallest changes to the character and putting up with our neurotic requests over the course of two weeks. We sent him inspiration images, and badly worded explanations until we had the character you see here. Your Teacher’s Pet Creature was born. We were really lucky to work with Arnav as we worked our way through illustrating the rest of the book. Not only was he a great illustrator, but he really understood our vision.

So, it turns out that developing a children’s book character was alot more complicated than we thought it would, but we are so happy with the results. What do you think of the final design? Do you think he’s as cute as we do?  

If we thought this was difficult it was nothing compared to working with a manufacturer to get the plush toy created. Keep an eye out for that blog post, coming soon. To make sure you don’t miss out follow us over at Facebook or Instagram.