What baby’s Mommy or Daddy hasn’t looked feverishly for that ever-loving, missing pacifier? This book turns those ‘Oh no!’ moments into a fun one as you search and sing together for its appearance.

Prior to Covid-19, Janine crafted family success messages for a non-profit dedicated to changing lives and expectations. Paci, Oh Paci is her first children’s book, written for parents, grandparents, and families all over the world.

Front cover.

The book plays on the many names pacifiers have across a variety of cultures. For this reason, it was important that the character designs clearly show a variety of ethnicities as well.

Initial character sketches.

We started with black and white pencil sketches of all the characters first as this would influence the general style of everything else.

Once we had that down, we began sketches of the spreads. We wrote down and agreed on what the characters should be doing and what setting they should be in in each spread before drawing anything.

Spread sketches.

Along the way there were some changes to the dimensions of the final printed book, which meant some spread designs had to be adjusted as they were translated into vector illustrations. Fortunately, the designs were flexible and the changes usually only meant scooting over and enlarging some of the items and characters to fill the page horizontally.

We had fun adding textures to items and sections of the background such as carpet, grass, walls, etc. This helped break up large empty areas and add another layer of visual spice to the illustrations.

Vector illustrations (before laying in text).

The final phase of the project included laying in the text and designing dedication pages, a front cover, and a back cover.

Spreads with text laid in.