How I come up with ideas for children's books #art #drawing #characterdesign #illustration

Here's how I come up with ideas for children's books. I actually don't try to come up with ideas. I definitely don't try to chase them. I do have my radar up for funny characters or funny stories or conversations I hear people having. And I'll think of a rhyme or a word or two, something like a combination of like food or character or something like that. And they rarely come out fully formed. Let me show you. I keep this list of ideas on my Reminders app, and it's sort of never-ending. Never-ending, never-ending, never-ending, never-ending. But only 1% of those get turned into a book. For Ice Cream Robots, I was really stuck. I knew it would sort of be about, like, an ice cream scooper, sort of like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. But you gotta go deeper on stories than that. Add something personal. Then this line popped into my head: "But then one day, when I'm old and gray—" I get it, I'm old. "A cow will order one scoop and say blah blah blah blah blah." And this song gave me the idea for the beginning of the book.