You mentioned it being difficult to get creative wiggle room in work proposals, how important is artistic freedom on a job and how can the client allow this whilst ensuring a brief is met?

I usually don’t have a lot of creative leeway in my work. Most of the time, the publisher (be it of books, activity books or board games) comes to me with a set of specifications, the exact number of images I will have to produce as well as a style-- usually because of an illustration they liked in my book. It’s not necessarily an issue, however it explains how one can end up doing the same thing over and over again and become a bit rusty.

When Clément, Seb and I started talking about Paper Tales, however, they hadn’t settled on anything regarding the style. That’s what allowed us to discuss it together, explore some ideas that ultimately led me to something very different from what I had done before… so now people can get it touch with me for the whole “paper cut” technique. Hopefully they will also contact me for new styles entirely!

From the publisher’s point of view, I think it’s pretty simple. When they have a precise idea of what they want, they can put it in the brief. Obviously, if they are still searching for a style, they can mention it as well. There are several validation steps to check whether everything is going the right way. I usually create an illustration (or a series of illustrations) from the ground up, possibly with composition sketches so they can have a broad idea of the style they should expect. During these various steps, the publisher can validate, guide or ask for modifications on the work that’s being done, both on technical and artistic aspects. Ideally, the artist and the publisher can discuss freely, as equals. This is when it gets really interesting, because it makes the visual aspect of a project even better thanks to that back and forth.