Mara Vance
Character Designer · Vancouver, Canada
Twelve years in animation, three feature films, and a sketchbook habit she describes as “non‑negotiable”.
10 pieces
Chosen by the artist for this issue
10 pieces selected by the artist. Click any image to open the gallery. All artwork © the artist, shown with permission.
“The silhouette has to survive being switched off”
Twelve years designing characters for animation, and Mara Vance still starts every job the same way — thumbnails the size of a postage stamp, drawn small enough that she cannot cheat.
Interview by Scott Harris
Mara Vance has a rule about the first hour of a job: nothing she draws in it is allowed to be bigger than a postage stamp. “If I let myself go big, I start decorating,” she says. “Small keeps me honest. Small means I’m still designing.” We spoke about the habits underneath twelve years of character work — and about the test she puts every design through before anybody else sees it.
Where does a character actually start for you?
A sentence, usually. Somebody says ‘she runs the harbour and everyone owes her money’ and that’s the whole brief I need to begin. I write it at the top of the page and then I thumbnail underneath it for about an hour. Tiny shapes, no features, no costume detail — just proportion and stance. Forty or fifty of them. Most are useless, which is the point: the useless ones are how you find the edges of the idea.
You talk about the ‘switch-off’ test. What is it?
I fill the design in solid black, shrink it to about two centimetres, and look at it with the monitor brightness down. If I can still tell who it is, who they are to each other, and roughly what they want — the design works. If I need the face, or the colour, or the little brass buttons I spent an hour on, then I haven’t designed a character yet. I’ve drawn a nice picture of one.
How much research goes in before the first sketch?
Less than people expect, and then a lot more afterwards. I want the first hour to be uncontaminated — whatever comes out of my head, however clichéd. Then I go and find out how a harbourmaster in 1890 actually dressed, and I come back and murder half my thumbnails. Research after the first pass tells you which of your instincts were lazy. Research before it just tells you what everyone else already drew.
What do you do when a design isn’t working?
I change the silhouette, not the details. Nine times in ten, when a design is flat, the fix is structural: the shapes are all the same size, or the rhythm is even, or the head-to-shoulder relationship is doing nothing. Adding a hat won’t save it. I go back to the postage stamps and try three genuinely different shapes rather than three versions of the same one.
If the design only reads once it’s rendered, it isn’t a design yet. It’s a painting of a problem.
Mara VanceYour sketchbooks are famously messy. Deliberate?
Completely. A tidy sketchbook is a sketchbook you’re performing in. The moment I catch myself leaving a nice margin, I know I’ve started drawing for an audience, and the work gets worse immediately — safer poses, tidier line, no risk. So I draw over things. I write in the corners. I keep the bad ones on the page next to the good ones, because six months later I usually can’t tell which was which.
What’s the most common mistake you see in portfolios?
Ten characters that are all the same person in different outfits. Same height, same shoulder line, same likeable face. It reads as one drawing repeated, and art directors are hiring for range. I’d rather see five characters that clearly come from the same world but could never be confused with one another at a distance. Put them side by side at thumbnail size. If they line up like a fence, start again.
How has working in animation changed the way you draw?
It made me think about a character as something that has to be re-drawn a thousand times by people who are not me. That kills a lot of cleverness. Every asymmetric flourish is a cost somebody else pays for two years. So now I ask, of every element: is this carrying meaning, or is it just carrying my ego? The designs got simpler and, honestly, much better.
What would you tell someone two years in and stuck?
Draw the thing you avoid. For me it was hands, then it was old men, then it was environments. There is always a shape of thing you quietly steer around, and your work has a hole in it exactly that shape. Spend a month there. It is miserable and it is the fastest improvement you will ever get. And keep the bad pages — they’re the only honest record you have of moving.
The toolkit
- SoftwarePhotoshop for design, Procreate for thumbnails, Blender for rough blocking
- HardwareWacom Cintiq 16 and an iPad Pro that never leaves the bag
- BrushesThree. All variations of the same chalk brush
- SketchbookA5 hardback, roughly one a month, numbered on the spine
- ReferenceA tagged drive of costume photography, plus the museum on Tuesdays
Three things Mara would tell a beginner
- Thumbnail smaller than feels sensible — it stops you decorating.
- Fix silhouettes, not details. Details never rescue a flat shape.
- Keep the bad pages. They are the only honest record of your progress.
- Draw the thing you avoid — your work has a hole exactly that shape.
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