Little Yura Loves to Dance

Project Overview

Little Yura Loves to Dance by Garry Gekhman is a warmhearted story about a cheerful boy who wants nothing more than to connect with the people around him, and who finds in dance the bridge he didn’t know he was looking for. When school proves socially challenging and his classmates aren’t always kind, a friend’s simple suggestion opens a door — and Yura steps through it into something that is both joy and belonging. Garry Gekhman writes with a gentle emotional honesty that never overdramatises the difficulty or the solution, keeping the story grounded in the everyday reality of childhood.

The illustration challenge was making the transformation that dance brings visible on the page — not just in Yura’s movements, but in his face, his posture, and the way the people around him begin to respond, showing the shift from isolation to connection through the visual language of the body.

Role

The illustration challenge was making the transformation that dance brings visible on the page, not just in Yura’s movements, but in his face, his posture, and the way the people around him begin to respond, so the shift from isolation to connection came through the visual language of the body rather than being explained.

Full illustration across the book covered character design for Yura from young age to adult, dance movement and emotional transformation illustration, classroom and performance environment design, and print-ready file preparation.

Character Design

Before a single page is illustrated, I develop the main characters in full — defining their proportions, expressions, and personality. This is the foundation that keeps your characters recognizable and consistent across every scene, every lighting condition, and every emotional moment in the project.

Process

Every project follows this same structured path, so you always know where we are and what comes next. You review and approve at the sketch stage and the line art stage — nothing moves to color until you’re happy. By the time the final spread is rendered, there are no surprises.