The creative process, as described by Gadre-Shintre:
“With over 15 years of design experience, I decided to take on this project as a personal creative experiment — blending my design expertise with the possibilities of AI. I used Adobe Firefly to create illustrations that stayed true to Neel’s hand-drawn style, using his original sketches as visual inspiration. To maintain consistency across scenes, I developed a detailed AI prompt and applied it throughout the book, refining each illustration manually in Photoshop to ensure that the main character, JJ, looked and felt the same in every scene. Each element — from the warm fall palette on the first day to the bright summer tones on the last — was art directed to mirror the rhythm of a school year. The book layout was designed in an 8”x8” square format, perfect for small hands, with MVB Grenadine as the primary typeface. Its playful, mid-century charm and clear legibility made it ideal for early readers.”
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