Meet the artist: Kenneth Anderson

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.

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 – I was 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.

I didn’t realise, however, that I could actually get away with drawing characters as a living until I discovered Stephen Silver’s work. Realising that there were artists out there whose job it was to design characters was an epiphany for me. Before this I didn’t have a specific specialism in mind, but as soon as I realised that becoming a professional character designer was a thing, it all made sense.

The children’s television role kind of happened by accident, I didn’t really pursue it at all. But I think my style suits that medium well, so those clients gravitated towards me, and before I knew it the bulk of my work was coming from that world! 

I have Dan Bays to thank for that. He was developing Bitz & Bob at the BBC at the time, and reached out to me for some character development. That became my first proper character design work for kids television and then things just snowballed from there. Thanks Dan!

There are some obvious things you can’t do with characters for younger audiences: nothing sexualised, no smoking and drinking, avoid weapons and such, although that does depend on the age of the audience. With designing for adults, pretty much anything goes I guess, within reason.

From a pure design point of view, the younger audiences will generally respond best to certain design choices; cuter, softer, more colourful characters for example, with bigger heads. They seem to be the way to go! Basically, I think the younger the audience, the more stylised you can go with your designs; almost into pure abstraction. Almost but not quite.

When it comes to the adults, as a general rule, you want to design more realistic characters, which have more natural proportions, although they can still be stylised. But this will really depend on the nature of the story that’s being told. And of course you can subvert the younger audience style and adapt it for an adult audience, usually for comedic effect. Shows such as Happy Tree Friends and South Park do this well.

But from a personal point of view, I think I’m tapping into different parts of my psyche depending on the nature of the job. If I’m designing for kids, I’m definitely channelling my inner child, remembering my childhood, the things I used to do as a kid, the things that made me happy and bringing all of that into my work. If I’m ever designing stuff for adults, and I do dabble in personal work that has darker themes and energy, then I’m tapping into the different, darker experiences from my life, and the way I draw will reflect that.

It’s fun! Chris Smith, the author, is great in that he always has a clear idea of what he imagines his characters look like. Then it’s up to me to try and represent that on the page while giving my own spin to it.

The thing I like is that an author seems mostly invested in finding the character from a story point of view, there’s something pure about that. Whereas in animation there’s often that voice saying, “Can this character be made into a mass-market toy?” So yeah, generally there are fewer restrictions or voices to please when designing a book character. There can be a bit of back and forth when trying to find the right design, but not as much as in animation. 

Also, it’s freeing not having to worry about any technical restraints when designing for a book. There’s no need to worry about if the character is animatable or how long a design will take to model rig and render, so it’s really quite refreshing in that sense.

Basically, last year I posted like five times or something. I seem to be a man of extremes. So this year I said, “Right, I’m going to post more!” I knew if I aimed to do one drawing every week or so I would forget, lose track and fail. So I went all in and committed to a drawing a day, so it’s less easy to forget.

I really wanted to draw something every day just for me and nobody else; no clients giving me any feedback or asking for changes. My drawing, my rules. It’s important to have a creative outlet outside of work, and to just draw for fun. 

Doing this, I’ve learned to let go a bit and not be a perfectionist. I know I’m not posting my best work every day. Some days I only have literally 30 seconds spare to draw something. But I realised I needed to take the pressure off myself to always be making great art. I would much rather be drawing something than nothing! It’s also a great outlet to experiment and try to synthesise new styles into my work. And I think that, just by drawing every day, I’ve started to improve my work in little ways too.

Every time I scroll through Instagram I see a character that makes me think that, from so many different artists! James Woods’ characters usually have that effect on me.

I do love some of the dragon designs from How to Train Your Dragon, especially the Bewilderbeast. I’m a fan of Nico Marlet’s work. And I love the design of Gromit from Wallace and Gromit as well. He’s so simple yet so endearing and lovable and full of life. 

Also, there is a piece of concept art out there on the web of the ghost pirate LeChuck from Monkey Island that I love. I don’t think the concept translated exactly into the video games, but it’s so cool; the shapes, the proportions, the upside down dead bird used as plumage in his pirate hat. LeChuck is the reason I draw so many pirate zombies.

Well, there have never been more opportunities to design characters for a living than you’ll find now. That said, I think it’s important to have a diverse skill set, as not all my work is pure character design. I do illustration, prop design, comics, whatever I need to do to pay the bills.

So I’d recommend building up your skill set, especially early on in your career. Be prepared for a long, hard slog, and start out by not doing your dream job. Everything is a stepping stone and will give you the experience that you can draw upon throughout the rest of your career.

Also, don’t neglect the meat and veg of character design. The turnarounds, expression sheets and all the rest of the technical stuff are important skills for you to develop as a character designer. Part of the character designer’s job is to create and design for a specific purpose with technical restraints and a production pipeline. 

Lastly, don’t give up! Don’t let hard work, turnarounds, or AI scare you out of becoming a character designer. Character design is about more than just creating something that looks pretty or cool. It’s about storytelling, it’s about putting a little piece of your soul into a drawing and bringing it to life, and touching the heart and mind of some little kid somewhere watching Saturday morning TV.