Betsy Bauer likes to keep busy. When not working with Disney on Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, she’s teaching at the College for Creative Studies and completing work for clients such as DreamWorks, Sony and Paramount. Fortunately for us, she found time to reveal how she got into character design, and her approach to the craft.
Tell us a little about your background as an artist. How did you get started, and what has your career been like so far?
I grew up in the Midwestern US in a tiny town called Wadsworth, Ohio, so I was very removed from the entertainment industry as a kid. I didn’t know anyone who was making a living as an artist. But, I think like most animation artists from my generation, I was inspired by the 90s Disney renaissance, and learned from all of the ‘making-of’ TV specials that there were actually teams of artists who got paid to make these movies!
I’m lucky to have had supportive parents who believed in my dream, and they helped me to find a good school to launch my career. I studied computer animation at the Ringling College of Art and Design, and since graduating in 2011 have had the
