My first children’s picture book, The Can-Do Karate Kid, came out in May of this year. Now I’m working on illustrations for the next one. I had to do some color testing for Michi, one of the main characters in the second book. In doing so, I came across some of the color tests for the first book.

It’s fun looking back at this part of my children’s picture book adventure. That’s why I decided to share with you. Here’s a peek at the colors I considered for the lead characters. The boy, Makoto, is the protagonist. The slug monster is named Laziness. And the snail monster is Procrastination in the book The Can-Do Karate Kid.

And after careful consideration, these are the colors I chose for the characters:

My main aim in choosing colors was to keep it bright and fun. I knew the backgrounds would need to be simple in order to make the eBook and the print version of the book as similar as possible. We won’t be going back and changing colors now, but just for fun, what do you think? Do you have a preference for any of the other color considerations in the test above? If so, why?

-Jenifer Tull-Gauger