Interview
Dominic Carter talks to the artist about designingfor young audiences and bringing illustrations to life
Working out of his business Character Cube, Kenneth Anderson has created character designs and illustrations for the likes of Nick Jr., Sesame Workshop and CBeebies. He tells us how his characters and stories work together, and how he captures both in a single image.
How did you get started, and what has your career been like so far?
I’ve been working as an artist since around 2005 and I’ve just realised that’s almost 20 years ago. I didn’t realise it’s been so long!
I always knew I wanted to draw for a living and to work in animation in some capacity, so I studied animation at university up in Dundee, Scotland. I was lucky enough to start working fairly quickly after graduating, but my first job was as a junior 2D artist in a local games company.
I’d never considered working within games previously, but it totally made sense. I was obsessed with character driven video games such as Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle while I was growing up!
My career so far has been quite varied. I tend to go with the flow and see what happens, giving it little nudges in certain directions from time to time. I’ve worked in video games, I worked as an animator early on in my career, I’ve been designing characters as a freelancer since 2009, and more recently I’ve been doing a lot more illustration. I like keeping it varied! But at the same time, everything I do is very character focused.
What made you want to specialise in creating character designs for children’s television?
While growing up, I was constantly drawing all sorts of weird characters. I remember in high school I wrote this stupid song, recorded it, burnt it to a CD, and then created a character as the singer for the sleeve art. I called him Jimmy Sausage; he was basically a cross between a sausage and Jimi Hendrix – Iwas going through a foodstuffs as characters phase at that point – and it was a big hit with a mate of mine. I think my current career as a character designer just evolved out of that impulse to create silly characters and bring them to life.
