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When I first saw Betsy Bauer drawings, I knew that she had to be in my Riquiño Art Gallery. :D
She is as brilliant with backgrounds as with character designs. They are just amazing, with a firm hand, an angular line, and colored in the perfect way to create special atmospheres.
But to become the illustrator that she is, there is a lot of job and passion behind, and her style was developed and become consolidated in a few years, as you might appreciate in this post.
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| Treehouse. 2009 |
Betsy Bauer was born the 13 of November of 1988 in a small suburb of Akron, Ohio. She grew up in a very creative family, her dad is a musician & music education professor, her mom likes to sew, her little sister writes, and her little brother is a jazz trombone player.
Betsy, a very happy and sprightly girl, at the age of 5 she watched on tv a Disney special “The making of The Lion King”, and she became smitten with the idea of working in feature animation when at the end of the show, the presenter said: “Maybe one day a little boy or girl watching this will grow up to be one of the next great industry artists!”. Since then, she couldn’t stop drawing, and taking art classes.
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| Betsy at her very first art show when she was 6. Her piece is the lady with blue pants and red shirt. :) |
When she was in elementary school, she used to draw an awful (that's what she says) lot of Pokemon, Sailor Moon, and Neopets. In fact Neopets is what really got her into digital art.
In high school, she started to get frustrated that peers kept referring to her as "just a cartoonist," so she started to do a lot of photo-realistic artwork in traditional mediums just to prove that she had the ability to do so. The art program at her high school wasn't really that great, so she spent a lot of time looking at artwork online and eventually did a summer pre-college program at the Columbus College of Art & Design.
But about halfway through school, she found out about Ringling and knew that she wanted to go there even though it was very expensive. Since she had good grades and a strong portfolio, she was thankfully awarded a good scholarship that enabled her to go!
So, after finishing Secondary School in 2007, she started studying at Ringling College of Art and Design where she got the Degree of Computer Animation in 2011. It wasn't until she got there that she really started to learn about character design, visual development, and illustration. Prior to that, she always thought that she wanted to be an animator
Here you can have a look to some of her school absolutely brilliant assignments like the process and the result for her 2009 3D short “Push Pull Exaggerated” with the Jackaloppe as the main character:
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| Click on this image to watch the video |
And this are some of the images of the process for her Thesis 3D short film at Ringling College of Art and Design, “Starfruit”, a beautiful story about a little girl, Aloki, and a very special tree. 2010 - 2011.
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| Please, click on this image and enjoy the film |
At the same time than studying, she was involved in several projects, jobs, and exhibitions, like a character design blog with some friends from Ringling.
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| Cowboys with Alternate Models of transportation |
She has also joined de Tumbrl group “Drawe Goods” where she post regularly new works with other talented artists.
In the summer of 2010 she joined Sony Pictures Animation as a Visual Development intern. She worked on a movie, but anything can’t be shown from it as it hasn’t been released yet. But we can see some of her amazing images from her internship about her creation "Harriet and his imaginary friend Harvey". :)
When finishing her studies, she illustrated a JibJab ebook, “Snow Much Fun”. Here you can see some stills from it.
Now she's living her dreams, working in Port St. Lucie, Florida as a Visual Development artist at Digital Domain's Tradition Studios on the upcoming feature film “The Legend of Tembo”, about a happy baby elephant that is captured from his home in Africa and forced to become a warrior. Everyone should see it when it is released in 2014!
And here I leave you with a few images of her personal doodles and artworks from these last years. She mostly works with Photoshop and a Cintiq, but enjoys going outdoors to sketch or paint on location.
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| Alligator doodle. 2008 |
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| Brainstorming and final design for ice cream truck DJ’s vehicle. 2008 |
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| The Baby Tree. 2008 |
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| Classy Ladies doodles. 2009 |
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| Tree House 2009 |
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| Apartment complex 2010 |
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| Birdies 2010 |
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| Hungry Plants. 2010 |
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| Little Girl Halloween. 2011 |
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| Christmas. 2011 |
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| Piece for the Bear and Bird Gallery’s “Be There Be Square” show. 2012 |
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| “Charlie and Grandpa” for Susanita’s Little Gallery’s “Charlie and the Chocolate factory” show. 2012 |
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| Old House. 2012 |
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| Harriet. 2012 (A new look her little creation from 2010) |
And that's all folks! Just to finish, this is the scoop of one of her very last artworks, for
Susanita’s Little Gallery’s
“Labyrinth” show opening in June. ;D
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| “Ludo” 2012 |
If you want to know more about her this is her Web Site:
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| Click on the image to visit her web site |
On her blog you can find about her latest news:
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| Click on the image to visit her blog |
She also has a Tumblr account:
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| Click on the image to visit her Tumblr |
