Instructor Stories: Jannie Ho
Introduction
Today, I’m excited to introduce the incredibly prolific Jannie Ho as our Adobe Illustrator instructor. Also know as Chicken Girl, Jannie has illustrated children’s books for over a decade. You can find her work in trade and educational books, magazines, toys, crafts, and digital media. Jannie (pronounced Jane-nee) received her BFA in illustration at Parsons The New School of Design in New York. After graduation, she spent time working as an in-house graphic designer at Nickelodeon, Scholastic, and an art director at TIME Magazine for Kids. She left all of that to pursue illustrating, and we’re so glad that she did!
Jannie’s Books (and Other Projects)
Jannie has illustrated for HarperCollins, Sterling, Little, Brown & Co, Viking, Scholastic, Penguin, Cartwheel Books, Walter Foster Publishing, Oxford University Press, Peaceable Kingdom Press, Nosy Crow, Running Press Kids, Creative Teaching Press, Mudpuppy, Target, Toys R Us, American Greetings, Highlights for Children, High Five Magazine, Colorbok, TIME Magazine for Kids, Old Navy, and more!
She also wrote and illustrated Bear and Chicken, published by Running Press Kids.
Her Adobe Illustrator Intensive
I like how Jannie describes the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator in the following highlight from last November’s Black Friday Bootcamp.
Jannie does 99% of her work in Adobe Illustrator. As part of the intensive, she even includes a template for thumbnails that you can save as a PDF and have a picture book dummy to share with critique partners, agents, or editors.
That alone could convert me to working in Illustrator.
But there’s more! When making vector art, you don’t have to worry about dpi (dots per inch). In Photoshop, you have to make sure you’re working with at least 300 dpi. But with vector art, you can scale the image up or down without losing any resolution. That means you don’t have to know what size your finished product will be. You can just start working and worry about size later.
I love that. I also love that Illustrator files are smaller than Photoshop files.
Jannie will walk you through the basics of making vector art in Adobe Illustrator. You don’t have to have any previous experience. You WILL need access to Illustrator. This intensive covers everything you need to illustrate your book in Adobe Illustrator: how to use the tools, character creation, customizing backgrounds, making thumbnails, and exporting files.
You can register for Jannie Ho’s intensive HERE.
Book Giveaway Details
I’m giving away one of Jannie’s books. To enter, just let me know which book you’d like to win in the comments by midnight on July 10. You don’t have to buy the intensive or be a student. If you don’t live in the States, just make sure it’s something that Book Depository carries, and you’re also welcome to enter.
Please share this post on social media for extra entries, and paste the link to wherever you shared as a reply to your original comment.
Thank you for reading!
Blog Contributors
Myrna Foster writes and edits content for Storyteller Academy and the WriteRiders Newsletter for SCBWI Nevada. She has spent a lot of time teaching and coaching children, including five years as a preschool teacher. She’s also worked as a journalist, and Highlights High Five has published six of her poems.
Arree Chung is an author/illustrator and the founder of Storyteller Academy. Arree’s Ninja! series has received starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal. Kirkus also gave a starred review to Mixed, which recently won the FCGB award.
Today Arree lives a creative life, making stories for children. Arree spends most of his time making picture books, writing middle grade novels, and sharing his love for art, design, and storytelling with kids and dreamers everywhere.