Meet our Manchester-based Character Designer Matthew Brooke! An interest in comic books at a young age led him to a career in animation! We managed to catch him for a few minutes to chat about his role and why he loves animation.

How did you get into animation?
Initially, comics like the Dandy, Beano and Sonic the Comic, got me drawing as a kid. I always loved cartoons too, Don Bluth films being favourites, then thanks to the game Final Fantasy I discovered Manga and Anime, this led me to Miyazaki and an urge to create storys.

I wanted to be a comic artist all the way until my last year in high school, when I started looking into animation more thoroughly seeing rough animation, hand drawn stuff I knew that was what I wanted to do.

How long have you worked in the animation industry?

Roughly around six years, if I can include my time at a games company. 

What's your current role and what does it involve?

I am a Character Designer. I designed Nella from Nella the Princess Knight, our new series for Nickelodeon, and a lot of the other characters on the series.

The role mainly involves drawing designs for the client to review and once approved we begin on turn-around's and model-sheets, creating the basic mouth shapes and hand positions for the Toon Boom rigs of the characters. If it is a main character, this will include pose sheets too. There is also some prop design included for the characters and I help with storyboard revisions too.

What are your biggest influences/inspirations?

Nature is always inspiring. If it comes down to artists and film-makers, there's far too many to list fully, but here are a few: Hayao Miyazaki, Akira Kurosawa, John Buscema, Milt Kahl, Mike McMahon, Massimiliano Frezzato.

What’s your favorite tool to use and why?

I really like traditional mediums: pencil, pens, watercolour.

Photoshop is great but it's still not the same experience as the tactile feeling of traditional media.

I especially like brush pens because you can get such a variation of marks with them.

What advice would you give someone considering getting into animation?

Draw a lot from life as much as possible. Study movement and acting. Consider taking online courses if possible.

What do you like most about working in animation?

I get to draw for a job! And the people in this industry are generally brilliant and very easy to get along with.

What’s been the most challenging thing about working in animation?

It's sometimes hard because of long work hours and every new drawing presents a new challenge, but that's a fun one.

Outside of animation what are you most passionate about?

Film in general and martial arts, I've studied jiu jitsu for about 8 years and karate jutsu for 2.