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

Catriona walks us through the creation of the beloved cartoon’s scenery and backgrounds, from its dollhouse proportions and subtle doggy details, to its distinctly Brisbanite atmosphere.

Share

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.

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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.

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

We finally ended up back in each other’s orbits in 2017 working on a few different projects at Ludo Studio, a Brisbane production company that had started producing some 2D shows. All the while bubbling away in the background was this little show called Bluey that Ludo and Joe were trying to get funding for. Somewhere amongst all this, Joe sent me the pilot he’d made, asking whether I’d be interested in hopping on board as art director. Against all odds, I would be getting to do what I’d always dreamed of. And at 23, as far as I know, I was about to become Australia’s youngest lead art director for an animated show.

Joe kicked off the project with a singular and solidified vision for the show’s art direction. He wanted Bluey’s visuals to be beautiful, and show off our hometown of Brisbane, which we both cared so much about. To be honest it was an easy brief, because every other day in Brisbane the weather was so unbelievably good, the everyday scenery so breathtaking, you never wanted to leave. For locals, it was the little secret we kept to ourselves: that Brisbane was the best city in the world. But in starting work on Bluey, we were really about to blow the lid on that.

The initial design phases of Bluey involved tapping into this beauty, as well as employing many fundamental animation design principles. Here, I’ve put together a step-by-step process of how it was done. 

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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.

Above

Catriona Drummond: visual reference gathering for Bluey

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.

Above
Left

Copyright © Katy Edwards

Right

Copyright © Debra Hood

Above

Copyright © Debra Hood

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.

What ultimately all these ideas stacked up to in my head was a style that was extremely appealing.

Appeal is such an intangible element to visual art, I could try and harp on in some pseudo-scientific way about what I personally think creates that deep satisfaction when viewing something ‘visually appealing’. I think there’s a whole weird matrix of things firing off in our monkey brains to illicit it. But I’ll just leave it at: we know it when we see it. I wanted to make something that was truly delicious to look at.

Step 2 - Building the Shape Language

A fundamental part of both character and environment design in animation is shape language. Here’s a little crash course. Circles, triangles and squares are the three basic building blocks of all other shapes. These shapes have concomitant meanings and feelings for humans. As visual development artists, we draw upon these subconscious connections to help amplify and communicate character and personality in our work:

  • Circles are round, friendly and soft. No hard edges!
  • Triangles are sharp, aggressive and evoke pain.
  • Squares are sturdy, steady and firmly planted.
  • Then on top of that, even directional lines have implicit associations! Horizontals are calm, verticals awake and upright, and diagonals off balanced.

Tapping into, combining, or even subverting the expectations of each gives us infinite combinations to play with.

Above

Catriona Drummond: visual research for Bluey

Above

Catriona Drummond: visual research for Bluey

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

For Bluey, we already had our characters ready to go, this made the decision about where to head with the shape language an easy one. Just like the characters, the world would be built out of big, friendly, rounded rectangles.

This helps unify the world. When there’s an overwhelming amount of choices to be made about architecture, furniture and everything right down to the knobs on kitchen cupboards, it takes all the guesswork out of the little details.

Now that you know all this: pop quiz, smart arse!

Above

Catriona Drummond: “The secret formula revealed” (Bluey characters copyright © Ludo Studio, 2025)

Above

Catriona Drummond: Bluey pop quiz! (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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)

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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)

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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).

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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.

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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.

Above

Catriona Drummond: development sketches for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

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.

Above

Catriona Drummond: development paintings for Bluey (Copyright © Catriona Drummond, 2025)

Above

Copyright © Ludo Studio, 2025

Share Article

About the Author

Catriona Drummond

Catriona is an Emmy-award-winning art director and visual development artist for animation, amongst a worrying array of other things.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.