GOODSNIFF

Big Art Idiot • Art Director for YOLO & Bluey, amongst a worrying array of other things catrionadrummond.com

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CREATING BLUEY - Tales from the Art Director

Chapter 1 - How a 23 Year old gal from Brisbane ended up designing the world's most popular kids show

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Ever wondered what exactly went on behind the scenes of making Bluey? How do you make the world’s most popular children’s television show? Well for the first time, you get to read about it. From someone who was there at the very beginning. 

I was the Lead Art Director on Bluey for Season 1. At the beginning of the production with direction from show creator Joe Brumm I designed the overall style of the show, the Heeler House and its interior rooms from scratch. 

For the next few weeks I’ll be publishing a four chapter behind the scenes look at my experience on Bluey. For the fans, this will be a look behind the curtain you’ve never gotten. And for my fellow and beloved animation workers: I’ll lay bare what the expectations and realities are of working on one of those ‘dream jobs’ in animation we all aspire to. A dream that I thought I was doomed to always have pass me by as a kid studying animation in somewhere as far flung as Brisbane, Australia. 

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🌷Yolo Rainbow Trinity S3 Production Art🌷

Colour Keys from throughout the season :0)

Colour is always a blast on YOLO because as we don’t have a lot to play around with in terms of lighting, memorable colour schemes are born out of unconventional, flat and dumb fucking ideas. An island that looks like Facebook! A festival where the brief is “make it as annoying as possible”!

Personal fav was the All Night Gaming ep where there had to be a distinct difference between the same room over two time periods. So little pops of orange in the Gaming room pair with the club looking like the inside of a sticky Fanta bottle that’s been left out in da sun too long. Yay.

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🌷Yolo Rainbow Trinity S3 Production Art🌷

Backgrounds

With a small team it's all hands on deck when it comes to mopping up stuff across departments - Here's some bg paint I did from the Xmas and All Night Gaming eps.

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🌷Yolo Rainbow Trinity S3 Production Art🌷

Layouts

Being Head of Design on a pretty small team you get to stick your grubby little fingers into everything, so generally I would do bg layout keys for each ep! Here's a select few. Biased heavily to the Xmas ep because I was left unsupervised and went sill-lay

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🌷Yolo Rainbow Trinity S3 Production Art🌷

Character Design bits & bobs from throughout the season, the CGI wolf everyone hates, and some disconcerting Peleekens from the Bubblegum Park ep

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🌷Yolo Rainbow Trinity S3 Production Art🌷

Sarah & Rachel outfits from throughout the season!

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Yolo Rainbow Trinity S3

I've been keeping this one in the barrel waiting for Yolo to be dropped in Australia, but it doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon - so instead let this mark me vomiting up all the BTS production art!

Given that as Michael mentioned on insty that S3 is likely a wrap on Yolo as a whole - I also wanted to say thankyou to all the fans for all the fucking funny art and love you've given the show over the years. You are all sweet beautiful deranged angels who have the same worms in your brain as we do. Particularly for how much love there is for Lucas out there. I used to have it out for him, but seeing everyone's genuine compassion for him elevated him beyond the trope of 'fedora guy' and into this character that I would die for as much as I would those two cuh-razy broads.

Getting to bring to life S2 & S3 as head of design was an honour. Because like every other animation uni student in Australia when the Yolo animations came out on youtube 2012 they irreversibly rewired my brain and made me extremely annoying. Then this somehow ended up with me getting paid to draw these broads full time in 2021!!!

Yolo is one of those anomalies in animation I wish there was more of where the humour so is so inextricably tied to how funny each individual drawing is every scene is like a precious yummy gemstone I want to roll around in my mouth. Everyone say thankyou Cusack for capturing lightning in a bottle year after year!!

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Sketchbook sweetiez 🥯

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BOOOR HUUUUURHH HOOOOOOR

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Ha Ha Hello. Got to hop on with the bg crew in the depths of Mr. Frog montage madness to polish up these beauties! Thanks to Greg Bartlett our bg lead for steering the ship so expertly!

Mr Joker - layout n' paint

Da rest - just paint!

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Parkville view, piles of gravel, shit round the back of the peanut factory (of which there are multiple in Brunswick?¿), that sort of thing 🌱

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Da beige ah house we live in 🍦

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Pottering around Melbs earlier in the year when the weather was nicer 🍃

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#MakeaTerribleComicDay2025 💛

Taking time off and working on the personal project type beat.

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Precious Son I made at Pink Ember Studio

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CREATING BLUEY - Tales from the Art Director

Chapter 4 - It's (gotta be) Done! Beyond Bluey

The final chapter. Beyond Bluey and the power of Animation

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Thankyou all so much for following along. The outpouring of support and care for the artists behind the art has been really heartening throughout this whole process. Not to be cringe but I honestly think this medium captures the human spirit better than any other form of expression, so I know whatever the future brings for us we’ll be able to weather it for that reason alone. 🕊️

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CREATING BLUEY - Tales from the Art Director

Chapter 3 - Blood, sweat, meat and potatoes - What's it REALLY like creating an animated show?

This chapter we'll be getting into the giddy highs and stressful lows as I try to offer a balanced retrospective on the pressures of a job in Animation

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