Maren Ostlund
She has been drawing animals for eleven years and still cannot draw a horse. She made the cub bear on an iPad, on a kitchen table, in about three weeks.
In her own words
“People assume a character like the cub takes a studio and a budget. It took an iPad, a fifteen-pound app and the corner of a kitchen table where nobody was eating.
The bit that actually takes the time is not the drawing. It is the deciding: how big the ears are, how far apart the eyes go, whether he is looking at you or past you. I redrew his ear eleven times. Then I used the first one.
If a five-year-old watches these films and goes and gets a pencil, that is the whole point of putting them online.”
What she is good at
- Character design. Working out what makes an animal look young, or kind, or wide awake — and then getting there in as few shapes as possible.
- Colour under line. Flat colour on its own layers, warmth added last. It is why the cub reads clearly at the size of a postage stamp and still holds up on a poster.
- Light. One warm key, one cool rim. Almost everything that makes the pictures in this book feel like evening is those two decisions.
- Turning drawings into models. Rebuilding a flat character in 3D so it can be lit, turned and reused without ever being redrawn.
Everything she used
Nothing on this list is professional-only, and nothing on it needs a fast computer. Four of the six are free. The other two together cost less than two hardbacks.
- Procreate iPad. The sketching and the colouring — every flat drawing of the cub in the book was made in this. One-off, about £13
- Krita Windows, Mac, Linux. The free alternative she started on, and still uses for rough thumbnails on a laptop. Free
- Blender Windows, Mac, Linux. The whole 3D cub — the modelling, the lighting and the turntable render in film three. Free
- Nomad Sculpt iPad. Sculpting the rough shape of the cub with a finger before rebuilding him properly. One-off, about £16
- Inkscape Windows, Mac, Linux. Vector versions of the cub for anything that has to be printed very large or very small. Free
- Audacity Windows, Mac, Linux. Recording and tidying up the voice-over on all three films. Free
Could your child make one?
Yes, and the starting point is not an app. It is three circles on a piece of paper: a big one for the body, a slightly smaller one for the head, two little ones for the ears. That is exactly where the cub started too.