Overcoming Illustration Challenges with AI: How I Finally Brought My Books to Life
For years my father encouraged me to write a children’s book. This was a result of him watching me make custom memory books with captions of my daughter’s early years. Although it had not been a previous thought of mine, I did come up with a story idea, main characters, the message — but what I didn’t have was the budget to hire an illustrator. That one missing piece delayed my dream for far too long… My daughter, who inspired the whole thing, is now practically driving.
Then, everything changed when I discovered AI-powered art tools.
What once felt like a creative brick wall suddenly became a doorway…thanks to the magic (and chaos) of AI. I could visualize my characters, bring scenes to life, and — most importantly — share my stories with young readers.
In this post, I’ll share how I used AI to overcome one of my biggest creative obstacles, and what it’s meant for my journey as an author and publisher.
Creating the Story
Why a Chimpanzee? Why Bakari?
Because of my background with animals all my life, and my education in Animal Science, using the animal kingdom to tell stories was a no brainer for me. However, influences from my own childhood and my daughter’s, drew me to the chimpanzee. I grew up with the cartoon Curious George, while my daughter used to have me read over and over—”Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" by Eileen Christelow. Ultimately, I chose to go with the Chimpanzee (which is an ape not a monkey), but those were the influences that led to the character selection and the human-like qualities of the chimpanzee.
The story came a long way, because it was originally written with a Bear, Lion and Tiger as the elders, and Lemurs as bullies along with a Gorilla and Orangutan. However, I developed the idea to have the story actually take place in Africa and for each character to have a name from an African dialect. I then decided that I should have all characters be animals whose origins are in Africa. Even the Lemurs were eliminated because they are not in the African mainland. ChatGPT was pivotal in my brainstorming, because it was a quick way to get ideas for other animals, and fast research when finding and selecting name options. When I came across the name Bakari and it’s meaning—”hopeful, one who will succeed”…it just fit! The Adventures of Bakari was born!…Sort of.
Bringing Bakari to Life: Illustrating with AI
It is amazing to discover that all you need is a prompt of a sentence or two worth of description, along with selecting your animation style from examples to produce images. And…Bing, Bang, Boom in seconds, you’ve got an illustration! It truly is that simple…yet not that simple all at the same time. It takes practice and trial-and-error.
I naively turned to ChatGPT first, thinking it could whip up illustrations like a digital Bob Ross. Spoiler: it can’t. Not yet, anyway. I was unaware of other tools at the time. However, art illustration is not necessarily ChatGPT’s strongest ability. I had trouble with it bringing back characters with a consistent look. As a result, I did research on other tools that might be able to help, which led me to OpenArt.ai. Most generative AI programs allow you to use it for free for so many credits, so I tested it out, and produced some images that I liked. So, I took the plunge and paid for a subscription since OpenArt.ai had the capability of producing “Consistent Characters". I basically used OpenArt.ai for image generation, along with Canva Pro for layout and some image editing.
Disclaimer: Generative AI is NOT perfect, even consistent characters that you produce can come back with errors and inconsistencies (For instance, 6 toes on one foot). When I created characters, AI brought back a chimpanzee with a tail even though chimpanzees don’t have tails. And me…completely smitten with how cute my little Bakari looked…didn’t realize he had a full-on monkey tail for MONTHS. That’s right — MONTHS. A whole fake tail situation that made it to print. A HUGE Oops!!…Bakari’s Brave Heart was released with a TAILED chimpanzee!! Why did this happen? Partially because I could not afford to work with a professional editor. It was not until I was considering getting a plush Bakari produced, and I had to provide illustrations from all sides that it clicked in my head…”Hey…Chimpanzees don’t have tails!!!” So, I had to pull back all files and update them with “Tail-less” images. Luckily, Canva has a “Magic Eraser” tool that can just select the tail and delete it. Ultimately, although frustrating and embarrassing, it wasn’t a time consuming activity. Thankfully, I had not purchased multiple author copies of my books at that time either. Phew!
It Can Be Done
I would love to say that all it took was a two sentence prompt to produce each page of my book…but that would not be true. Unfortunately, it is very difficult (or for me at least), to produce images with multiple consistent characters in a frame at one time. At the time of this writing, OpenArt.ai only allows two consistent characters to be used at the same time, and this feature is in its Beta testing stage. I've noticed that when using this it almost makes your two characters look more similar and their unique features get altered at least slightly. So in creating my illustrations. I actually had to create prompts for each individual character’s expression and sometimes the background separately or with one character, and then create a composite image of the characters all on one background using Canva features.
I must admit…Bakari’s Brave Heart had me wanting to tear my hair out! But…by the time I got to the second and third book…I feel like I can work around the challenges. It just takes practice and sometimes critical thinking.
I say all this to mean—YES— it can be done. You don’t need a big budget to produce a worthy project, just big vision (and maybe a little caffeine). With patience, perseverance, and a few AI-generated stumbles along the way, you can bring your story to life too.
