Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsea Trousdale.
Hi Chelsea, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I studied illustration in college and spent the first several years of my career working in graphic design. I always wanted to work in character design, though, so I kept building my portfolio on the side and eventually started getting opportunities with companies like Disney, DreamWorks, and Spin Master.
Needle felting came a little later. I’ve always loved making things with my hands, and I wanted to see if I could take one of my characters and make it exist outside of a drawing. I fell in love with it pretty quickly. Over time, the sculptures became just as important to my work as drawing, and I think each has made me better at the other.
Today, my husband Jonny and I run the business together. I still work with animation and entertainment clients, but we’ve been putting a lot more energy into our own work too. We recently created a campaign for Wacom (they are known for making drawing tablets), and we’ve been building our own little world around a duck character named Bradly.
One of the biggest opportunities lately has been developing a character design course with Aaron Blaise, a longtime Disney animator and the director of Brother Bear, for his online art education platform, Creature Art Teacher. He worked on films like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, so getting to work with him has been pretty surreal. My career has taken a lot of turns I never could have planned for, and I’m excited to see where it goes next.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely hasn’t been a straight line. Freelance work can be unpredictable, especially in animation. There have been times when I’ve been incredibly busy and other times when things suddenly go quiet. I’ve had to get comfortable with not always knowing what the next few months will look like.
Another challenge has been figuring out how to build something of my own while still doing client work. A lot of the work I do for studios can’t be shared publicly for a long time, so we put a lot of energy into our own characters and share that work on social media.
That’s also where working with Jonny has made a huge difference. I can focus on making the art, and together we’ve figured out how to present it and get it in front of people. We’re still figuring a lot of it out as we go, but I think that’s been one of the most important shifts for us.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Chelsea Trousdale?
My business is really my personal brand, which I run alongside my husband and business partner, Jonny. Most of my professional work is character design. I’ve designed characters for animation, film and television, publishing, and brands, so the projects can vary quite a bit.
Then there’s the needle felting, which is probably the part of my work people recognize the most now. Needle felting is basically sculpting with wool. You use a small barbed needle to shape loose wool fibers until you have an actual sculpture. I started doing it because I wanted to see what my drawings would look like in real life, and it kind of took on a life of its own.
It’s led to some projects I never would have expected. I recently made a custom sculpture for Bobby Moynihan of King George, the character he voices in Pixar’s Hoppers. He asked me to recreate King George in wool, and we tried to get him as close to the character from the film as we possibly could. It was a really fun one.
Jonny and I also spend a lot of time developing our own characters. We have a little world we’re building around Bradly the duck and several other characters, and we’ve been using photography, video, and social media to slowly bring people into that world. That’s probably the part of the business we’re most excited to keep growing.
I’m really proud of how all of this has started to come together. I still get to design characters professionally, but now I’m sculpting, building our own projects, and getting ready to teach character design through a course with longtime Disney animator Aaron Blaise.
I’ve always loved making characters. We’re just finding more and more ways to do something with them.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
There are honestly so many people who have believed in us and helped us along the way. Our friends at Digital Gravy, a Utah-based animation studio, are helping bring one of our original characters to life through an animated short. Utah filmmaker Matthew Butler has also been incredibly generous with his time and taught us a lot about how to photograph and film my work.
My agent, Kyle Williams, has been one of my biggest advocates throughout my career. Animators Tom and Tony Bancroft and Chris Sonnenburg opened up their networks to us and helped us make connections in the animation community. Recruiters Dawn Yamazi and Robin Trujillo have also been incredibly supportive and helped open doors for me.
Aaron Blaise, Chuck Williams, and Nick Burch at Creature Art Teacher trusted me with the opportunity to teach character design on their platform, which has meant a lot to me. We’ve also found great friends in other artists and creators like Zander Miner of Zander Miner Toys, Nic Cabana, and Amber Aki Huang, creator of DeerCat & Friends and legitimately one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram. My longtime friend and fellow artist Melinda Davidson has been there through so many different stages of my career.
Jonny’s close friends Grant and Jon Matheson deserve a mention too. Grant has traveled to events with us, tabled with us, and is just one of those people who shows up.
And of course, Jonny and I have been building this together from the beginning. There are many more people I’m leaving out, but I think that’s one of the things I’m most grateful for. We’ve had a lot of people genuinely want to see us succeed.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://chelseatrousdale.com
- Instagram: @chelsea_trousdale
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelsea-trousdale-a9343442
- Youtube: @ChelseaTrousdale
