Rationale

I used gouache as it works well with bold, bright colours, and keeping the character designs simple while still having an interesting texture. The brightness and simplicity appeals to kids.

I gave (most of) the characters a colour in their palette that is similar to the colour of their name in the text, (for example Isabelle’s skirt, the stripe on Nico’s shirt) to further link the images and text and for

I wanted the bugs to be more or less life size, as if they’ve been scattered on the page, to separate them from the figures in the main illustrations, and also as

I made them paler so they wouldn't draw too much attention away from the main illustrations, and used their forms and the ant trails to point to the text and lead around the page.