{"id":1611,"date":"2026-03-07T19:25:48","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T19:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/?p=1611"},"modified":"2026-05-14T10:36:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T10:36:45","slug":"the-macmillan-prize-for-illustration-2026-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/2026\/03\/07\/the-macmillan-prize-for-illustration-2026-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Macmillan Prize for Illustration 2026 Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I am going back to illsutration as a career path whilst I was researching the sector I found this competition for an unpublished childrens book. The deadline is the 24th of April<\/strong> – right around when Easter break ends. I think this will be a fun project to undertake over Easter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.panmacmillan.com\/mac-prize-entry-page<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Information from the website<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Initial Idea – <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have never attempted to write a childrens book before so I began the ideation process by thinking of what I liked as a child and what would have appealed to me. This led me to an idea of a book revolving around a china doll or a book about a child that doesn’t like conventional toys <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A little notebook I used to quickly jot down initial ideas and musings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primary Research <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand how I should present the book and the style of writing. So I went to Waterstones and looked at picture books currently on sale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These two books I liked the most, their writing style is simple and the stories are small, focusing on only a couple characters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I next revisited the project during Easter break I still liked the china doll idea but I did not have a clear story in mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then decided to combine this project with Mermay an instagram challenge where you post a mermaid every day in May on my art instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once this occurred to me I had a lot more ideas and began making a mind map. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After the mind map I began planning the dialogue and book layout in a google document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this document I wrote down the dimension specifications, an outline of the story and the story as it will appear in the book. I also planned out what pages will be a double spread (meaning the picture will span across the two pages) or which one will be single. I also decided which pages I would fully create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I then made thumbnails of the pages in a sketchbook, I will refer back to these when making the pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I drew the pages in Adobe Photoshop and added the words in InDesign from where I saved the PDF. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began by working on the full colour pages as I knew these would take me the longest. Some natural changes came about while I was drawing such as making the skateboarding page a double spread so both characters could be on the page. I added these changes to the thumbnail plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the final book that I submitted to the competition. I am very proud of myself for finishing the project in under 2 weeks and submitting before the deadline closed. I also am very pleased with the result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Previous Post<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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As I am going back to illsutration as a career path whilst I was researching the sector I found this competition for an unpublished childrens book. The deadline is the 24th of April – right around when Easter break ends. I think this will be a fun project to undertake over Easter. https:\/\/www.panmacmillan.com\/mac-prize-entry-page Information from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-semester-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1611"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions\/2190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}