How to stop your illustration style looking generic & blah

Y'know when you feel like your work is neeearly there… but it's missing a lil something-something? This podcast episode is all about that. Overcoming that.

How the heck do you put more humanness into your work?

🧠 What we talk about in this one

• “Accomplished” isn’t the same as “alive”
• How generic styles can creep in without us noticing
• The danger of trying to look like “a picture book illustrator”
• Why you need to make work that freaks you out a tiny bit 🤪
• The power of real memories and emotions
• Ideas that stick: why some stories stay with us
• How character, tension, and contradiction shape good storytelling
• Letting your real obsessions lead the way 🐌
• Yessss, research in bookshops is absolutely definitely part of the job
  
  

🕰️ Timestamps

00:00 – Aaccomplished work with no heart
01:00 – “Picture book style” stereotypes and why they’re dangerous
02:00 – Generic vs personal: how to tell the difference
03:00 – Making work that stops an art director mid-scroll
04:00 – Emotion in drawings (and penguins)
05:00 – True stories - using your real life
06:00 – The Nissen Hut
07:30 – Sticky ideas
09:00 – Plots built on tiny universal moments
10:00 – A “Smile in the Mind”
11:00 – Writing craft: thesis / antithesis / synthesis
13:00 – Character dynamics and why Bernard is… Bernard 🦆
14:00 – Films to study (hello, Groundhog Day)
15:00 – How Helen learned to write
16:00 – Why sitting in a bookshop absolutely counts as work
17:00 – Picture books now vs the 90s
18:00 – Jill Calder, Libby VanderPloeg, and holding onto your voice
20:00 – Don’t perform
21:00 – Honesty wins

🔗 Stuff & People Wot We Mentioned

• A Smile in the Mind - Tania's design book recommendation by Beryl McAlhone & David Stuart
• Made to Stick (the kidney-harvesting myth book Katie mentioned!) - Chip & Dan Heath
• Groundhog Day - film
• Jill Calder: https://jillcalder.com
• Libby VanderPloeg: https://libbyvanderploeg.com
• Emily Howorth-Booth’s writing workshops that Helen loves
• Good Ship Illustration courses: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙