We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Grace Rabbitte. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Grace below.

Grace, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I’ve always been interested in drawing and making art. I would fill pages trying to draw copies of my favourite characters from films and cartoons, figuring out how to get them to look the same. Learning to copy character poses and clothes was a good start for me because it meant I could breakdown a character into smaller sections rather than tackling one whole image. Taking things step-by-step has helped me plot out some of my bigger projects and work.

Growing up I had a small collection of art books like Tina Mation’s ‘Don’t Just Draw…Animate!’ and Keith Sparrow’s ‘Mega Manga’. I learned a little more about how to make characters but also about animation through making flip books. I liked the idea of making my drawing move and while I love traditional hand drawing-having access to digital software earlier might have made the leap to animation, in later years, easier.

One of the mediums I spent the most time working with was pens -biro’s and liner pens. Outlining my artwork was nice but what I really loved was adding texture through crosshatching and making patterns with lines. It took some practice and trying different pen tips widths until I found a the style I liked best.

My first time making digital art was with Art Rage when I was in secondary school. I mainly used it to colour my hand drawn artwork. Figuring out how to use brushes and mode settings was key to building up my drawings. Being able to play around and experiment on my own time was great for improving my skills.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m currently finding my feet in the industry as an illustrator and animator. I’ve been working on my own projects, my goal is to keep creating art and find my niche in the industry.

I spent a lot of time reading when I was growing up. artwork from Cicley Mary Barker’s ‘Flower Faries’ and Shirley Barber storybooks were what got me interested in illustration. Looking at the artwork and seeing how much work went into the colouring, the smaller details of the flowers and the attention spent on the facial expressions is what makes them more than just a drawing. Comic books like Gotham Academy and graphic novels like Nimona would become firm favourites of mine because of their different art styles and storylines. I always try to find time to draw as it’s how I get my idea’s out and figure out creative solutions.

I got the chance to learn more about animation when I started college. I attended Galway Community College were I studied Graphic Design, and later ATU Galway where I spent 4 years learning Game and Animation. It was a steep learning curve for me, I knew about the theory of animiation but putting it into practice was hard. I preferred making short films and learning about the animation pipeline.

For my 4th Year Entrepreneurship project I chose to make a childrens illustrated book. This was a chance to use my illustrations, digital painting skills and characters I have been working on to create my own picture book. I was able to learn about the process that went into publishing and was able to print my book for the end of year gallery-some of the pages can be seen on my portfolio. I found the typography side very difficult to grasp; picking a legible font that worked with my artwork was more time consuming than I imagined.

Through social media I had the opportunity to join a Celtic Mythology Zine with other artists for charity. The idea was to combine master studies with Celtic Myths to create unique artworks. I had always enjoyed myths and legends, so this was a wonderful way to explore art through an Irish lens. I will always be grateful for being picked as it was a way for me to make Art Nouveau inspired work with the Selkie as my choosen subject.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I have used multiple resources over the years to improve my drawing and animation skills; drawing books, YouTube, Pinterest and different art websites. One book that would have been helpful to know about earlier is Richard Williams ‘The Animator’s Survivial Kit’ This is filled with notes and tricks on how to do animation the traditional way through pencil and paper. The book highlights a lot of things that beginner animators might overlook and gives explanations on ways to impove their workflow.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I want to create work that interests me and are fun to make. It’s easy to got caught up in finishing a piece or research details for a project, but I hope to keep making artwork (illustration or animation) that I find exciting I hope others will too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gracerabbitte.wixsite.com/gracerabbitteart
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracerabbitte/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-rabbitte-818098209/
• Other: itch games
  https://gracerabbittegames.itch.io/

Image Credits

Any artwork I have submitted is created by me.