I did that for another three years before I started making children's books. I'm working on concepts for Nova toys right now, which will be plastic figures and construction sets. Well, right now I'm working on a story about a fairy and a caterpillar. I got that idea from a picture on an old toy box of a fairy and a caterpillar, and I tried to imagine what sort of story was behind that picture. With Nova, the story initially came from wanting more toys, and then I borrowed heavily from the Bible.
Ideas pop up everywhere.
All of the Miss Spider books are oil paint on paper. Sometimes I personally work on the computer to do black and white sketches, and I do a lot of manipulating of the sketches on the computer. But still the Spider books are basically done by hand. In Nova's Ark, the work that I did was oil paint on paper with pencil sketches. Then I went to Iowa and supervised a group of artists who were pushing buttons on machines, and told them what I was looking for.