An illustrated children's story about home, loss, and friendship - written by my wife, with illustrations I created from hand-drawn sketches enhanced using AI. It explores how visual narrative can carry emotion for young readers.
Read the Story
Experience the full illustrated story of Sylvia Spider and her journey to find a new home.
Read Sylvia Spider ↗(opens in new window)The Story
A children's story about a tiny spider named Sylvia who loses her home and sets off with her dad to find a new one. It's a story about home, loss, and friendship.
Why This Project
My wife wrote this story and I wanted to illustrate it. I sketched illustrations for each scene - capturing the composition, the characters, and the emotional tone I was after. The drawings were decent, but unfinished.
Then I used AI to render the finished illustrations from those sketches. If you've seen Chasing Amy - AI was the tracer. I made the creative decisions about what each image should convey; AI did the rendering. Unlike handing pencils to a human inker and getting one take back, I could iterate - run the same sketch through multiple times, steer the result, reject versions that lost the feeling I was after. The creative direction lives in the sketch, but the iteration shaped the final result.
Process: From Sketch to Rendered Image
The Sketches
Each illustration started as a hand-drawn sketch - establishing character, composition, and the emotion of the scene.
The Rendered Illustrations
AI rendered the finished illustrations from those sketches - adding texture, atmosphere, and environmental detail while the original drawings stayed as the anchor.
Reflection
This project reminded me that information design can be quiet and human - not just dashboards and systems, but stories that help people feel understood.
The same ideas apply: care about the audience, simplify with intent, and leave space for the reader to find their own meaning.
Narrative can carry information. Emotion can carry meaning.