Interview with Illustrator & Animator: Carolina Búzio

As most of you all know, I am doing a daily challenge to hopefully help me improve on drawing characters. During the time of this challenge, I have been paying special attention to artists who can capture emotion, or tell a story through their characters. And that is when I happened upon the work of Carolina Búzio.As a little background on Carolina, she has roots in Portugal, but now lives in Berlin. She began her college career in fine arts, though realized that her true passion was in animation and illustration. Between her wonderfully expressive characters, and bold color choices, Carolina's work is simply charming. I had the wonderful opportunity to ask her a few questions about why and how she does what she does. She came back with some great insights on how you can enhance your own skills. Read her interview below:Q: What inspired the illustration style you use today?A: I love the style from the 50's and 60's, the way they used shapes and colour and personality in their designs. There are also some really good contemporary Portuguese artists that use bold colours and play with forms in a similar way (check all children's books from "Planeta Tangerina" publishing house!) so a part comes from them as well.Q: I noticed you did a 30 day challenge of illustrations. What other ways do you practice your craft? What impact have these practices made on your illustration skills?A: Doodling just for the sake of doodling no longer comes naturally to me... somehow I missed having a purpose, so I started joining all sorts of challenges just for the sake of it, no strings attached. I suppose it has to do with having constraints: if I have total freedom I'll take forever to decide on an idea. But if I have a theme (as vague as it might be!) and perhaps a deadline, I'll be a lot more focused and have overall more fun doing it because there's less time for second guessing. Two of my favourites are Illustration Friday and SketchDailies (this one is on twitter). The fact there is no client allows me to play with whatever is going on in my head at the moment... so if, for instance, I'm interested in patterns, I might do one. Or take the chance to paint using gouache. Since I see them as exercises and and excuse to play, I don't feel the pressure of failing or feeling bad if I don't love the result. The idea is to free me from that and see if I can push myself out of my comfort zone.Q: What is your favorite subject matter to draw, and why?A: Characters, without a doubt. Be it humans or animals or anthropomorphic objects, each is an excuse to give them a personality and somehow bring them to life. It might have to do with my passion for animation, I just tend to observe more the "movement" and "character" of a certain person or animal, and it's harder for me to pay attention to architecture.Q: How has your passion for animation influenced your illustration work?A: Besides increasing my awareness for characters and people, the animator in me cannot draw a figure and not think about how it could move, or what its personality would be like. I know that for that reason I'll never go into more abstract representations: I just have to have something I can grasp and be able to imagine it animated. It also made me discover the work of amazing artists like Mary Blair, Scott Wills and, more recently and through this blog, Matthew Cruickshank.Future Places spot from Carolina Buzio on Vimeo.Q: What are your grandest aspirations in your career as an artist? What do you want to accomplish?A: I don't think I have a specific goal in mind... I just hope to be able to keep on doing what I love and one day, maybe at the age of 80, look back and feel good about everything that I've done so far. Just like Charlie Harper, I don't think I would ever retire... I would simply slow down, take only the projects I'd love to do. If I could see that my work has inspired other people or that my name is alongside names like the one I just mentioned, then I'd know I had really done my best!Q: What book are you reading right now?A: Right now I'm finishing "Empire" by Gore Vidal. Not my usual type of book, but still a great choice to start my next personal creative exercise: "The Book Cover project"! You can follow more of Carolina's work on Twitter, Vimeo and Dribbble.