How we built Bluey’s world: tales from original series art director, Catriona Drummond

Bluey is one of the best kids TV shows ever made – fact. Part of its overall brilliance is its utterly charming and beautiful scenery, which was designed and established by lead art director on series one (and some of series two), Catriona Drummond. Set in Brisbane, Australia, where Catriona is from, the artist brought not only her creative talents but her intrinsic understanding of the city’s landscape to the show. Here, we republish an excerpt of her Substack series Creating Bluey: Tales from the Art Director, in particular the article laying bare her process of designing the show’s backgrounds – from gathering visual reference material of Brisbane, to stylising its architecture, colour and light, while building the shape language and proportions for the Heelers’ world, and creating a “style bible” for the show’s visual universe. Read the rest of the series on Catriona’s Substack, Goodsniff, here.

When I was approached by Joe Brumm, the creator of Bluey, to be its lead art director in 2017, it wasn’t out of the (excuse the pun) blue. I had graduated in 2014, so was relatively fresh out of university, mostly freelancing in advertising doing 2D animation. Every job I took, I tried to inch closer to what I really wanted to do: work in visual development for animated film and television. Living in Australia, there weren’t a lot of prospects for such things. It always felt a little like I was born at the wrong place at the wrong time to do what I really dreamed of.

I had met Joe at the Melbourne International Animation Festival and had made sure to always keep in contact with him to let him know when I was available for work. As, at the time, Joe wasn’t ‘The Creator of Bluey’, but the owner of his own animation company, Studio Joho – one of the few studios in Brisbane doing 2D animation work.

Step 1: Reference Gathering

For every visual development project, the first thing I do before I even put pen to paper is gather reference. Both photographs and artistic inspiration. Ideally I’ve got a day or two to sit down and gather everything up, absorb it like a sponge, then synthesise it into the early visual exploration.

For Bluey, I already had an exhaustive library of Queenslander homes from my own collection. Joe wanted that quintessential Queenslander architecture to be the defining feature of the Heeler home. As mentioned above, and in the first chapter, overall he wanted to show off the colour and beauty of South East Queensland.

It was also a big priority, due to it being for preschool age children, that the show backgrounds be super simple. The backgrounds also needed to build off the characters that had already been locked and designed. Out of this reference gathering phase came three key ideas I wanted to implement into the style to hit all of these needs.

Graphic Representation of Space

I thought it would be a good idea not only to simplify the details of our Brisbane setting, but stylise and simplify how we portrayed ‘space’ in a more graphic, less literal way. Local Brisbane artists Katy Edwards and Debra Hood perfectly captured this idea already. The space and stylisation of their paintings are flat, stripping away camera angles and lighting to bring all the beautiful details of Queenslander architecture into full focus.

In particular I had grown up around Edwards’ paintings and they were very close to my heart. It made it feel like the way she saw Brisbane was already an indelible part of the city’s visual fabric.

Dollhouse Proportions

Going with really cute, simplified proportions was not only a no brainer due to the size and shape of Bluey’s characters, but something about miniaturised proportions is so engaging. There’s gotta be something buried deep in the human subconscious that contributes to how beguiling it is…

Brisbane Colour & Light

After travelling further afield in adulthood, but always returning to traipse around Brisbane, I can say with certainty the light there is unlike anywhere else. It paints everything golden, throwing the corrugated iron roofs of Queenslanders’ into electric blue shadow. Saturating the purple Jacaranda blooms and red Poincianas.

Local painters like Jan Jorgensen (below) succeeded in capturing that light. The crappy plein air paintings I had been doing (second row below) were… trying. If we were going to have Brisbane be the backdrop, not straying too far from the source in terms of colour and light would be key.

Step 3 – The Bluey Bible

With all this combined, we arrive at the key rules of our style bible. This is a document made for the crew with all the do’s and don’ts of the Bluey style:

No literal dog gags: Small visual nods within the world to the fact that they are dogs can be a part of Bluey, but nothing too on the nose. (below left)

Everything needs to fit the characters: Keep objects cute, simplified and chunky, with doll house proportions. (below right)

Straight ahead camera staging: The majority of Bluey camera staging is straight ahead and very flat. The ground plane needs to be level enough to have the characters act out scenes in a graphic, straight-ahead style. (below)

Flatten and simplify space: Stylise and flatten more complicated environments and perspectives to create simplified designs that focus on the essential appeal of Brisbane and the suburbs of Paddington/Red Hill. (below)

Harness ‘reverse’ two-point perspective: This one is a bit of a geeky thing, so for the non-artists, I won’t judge you if your eyes glaze over for this part. Bluey backgrounds appear to be one-point perspective. We have very flat backgrounds and almost all of our planes facing camera have flat edges, which is usually a dead giveaway indicating one-point perspective.

However, one-point tends to get a little cramped. For example, this initial sketch of the Heeler kitchen just doesn’t have enough acting space for the characters (below).

This second take (below) is exactly what we needed. It’s still flat, but far more expansive. How did we do this? The key is actually making it a two-point perspective background. Edges facing to camera stay flat, but you expand your vanishing points from opposite sides of the back wall. It’s two-point essentially functioning as one-point. Or maybe it can be described as you’re inside the two-point perspective cube you’re drawing, rather than outside of it. Whatever makes the most sense!

I don’t even know if there’s a formal name for this. It’s something we figured out while trying to problem solve, and stuck with it. This cheeky little trick means everything is still in perspective, but you have a nice wide ground plane for characters to act out scenes in a graphic, straight-ahead style.

And finally: Colour style

Colour and light in Bluey should be a simplified and slightly more vivid representation of the light in Brisbane. Do not use black line-art, instead colour line-art relative to the local object and light affecting it. Avoid neutral shadow tones. Always err towards more colourful choices with lighting. When in doubt, bump it cooler, or warmer than the local object the light/shadow is affecting.

To read more about the making of Bluey from Catriona, you can find her Substack series Creating Bluey here. The next chapter, Blood, Sweat, Meat and Potatoes, charts what happened next, after the style and designs had been set, and gets into the “highs and lows behind the scenes” of what it was really like creating the animation.