Interview
Dominic Carter talks to the artist about character design, working with Disney, and communicating personality
Betsy Bauer likes to keep busy. When not working with Disney on Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, she’s teaching at the College for Creative Studies and completing work for clients such as DreamWorks, Sony and Paramount. Fortunately for us, she found time to reveal how she got into character design, and her approach to the craft.
Tell us a little about your background as an artist. How did you get started, and what has your career been like so far?
I grew up in the Midwestern US in a tiny town called Wadsworth, Ohio, so I was very removed from the entertainment industry as a kid. I didn’t know anyone who was making a living as an artist. But, I think like most animation artists from my generation, I was inspired by the 90s Disney renaissance, and learned from all of the ‘making-of’ TV specials that there were actually teams of artists who got paid to make these movies!
I’m lucky to have had supportive parents who believed in my dream, and they helped me to find a good school to launch my career. I studied computer animation at the Ringling College of Art and Design, and since graduating in 2011 have had the privilege of working with a lot of the major studios including Disney, DreamWorks, and Nickelodeon.
How has your art developed, and what has driven those changes?
When I came out of school, I think I was really focused on character design. I’m still mostly thought of as a character designer, and still feel most at home when doing character design, but I wanted to round myself out as an artist to become more comfortable designing environments and keyframe illustrations to open up career growth opportunities like art directing.
Right now, I’m thankful to be in my first leadership position on the Disney series Young Jedi Adventures, largely focusing on lighting and colour. It’s been nice to be able to stretch my creative muscles by doing a number of different things over the years.
What made you want to specialise as a character designer?
I think for many people, characters are some of the first things they start out drawing. I remember recording episodes of Pokémon on VHS and pausing the TV so I could draw the characters exactly as I saw them, and I got pretty good at mimicking style and shapes early on. Because of this, it was one of the few thi
