Q&A: Joe Brumm, animator, 43

Animator Joe Brumm, 43, on growing up in country Queensland, creating a canine cartoon phenomenon and what he’ll do after Bluey.

Joe Brumm. Illustration: Costa Daniel Kassab. Copyright Ludo Studio Pty Ltd

Emmy-winning kids cartoon Bluey is watched by millions worldwide. When did you first realise the enormity of the canine phenomenon you’d created? It was the first time I saw a Bluey book and stuffed toy in the wild. We were in a restaurant and a young kid was opening his birthday presents. Seeing Bluey as a concrete thing in the real world was pretty big.

Which of these scenarios most blew your mind: Billy Joel throwing his daughter a Bluey-themed birthday party or Lin-Manuel Miranda asking to guest on the show? Lin-Manuel Miranda [creator of Hamilton and In the Heights] is a supremely talented guy and for him to be enjoying the show with his kids really was big. There are some massive Hamilton fans in the crew and that really stopped everyone in their tracks. No shade on Billy Joel or anything.

You’re the first to request an illustration on this page (from animation studio Ludo, co-producers of Bluey) instead of a photo. Surely you’re not camera shy? If I can avoid having photos of me on the internet I will. No one wants to see Bluey’s dad yelling at his kids down at the shops.

Bluey at the Golden Crown Seafood Restaurant, Ashgrove.

Growing up in country Queensland, what did you start out drawing? One of my earliest memories is drawing figures, mainly soldiers. My brothers and I used to draw our version of Where’s Wally with massive battles with soldiers and carnage. My folks always had loads of old printer paper and we’d just pull whole reams out and spend hours drawing.

You worked with comedy legend Steve Coogan in London in your 20s. What was that like? I worked on shows where he and Simon Pegg were the voices but I didn’t know who they were, unfortunately. Now that I do I’m, like, “Wow, I got to animate those guys’ voices” but it was wasted on me at the time.

How much overlap is there between your family and Bluey’s? I’ve got two daughters, all my brothers have got two daughters, so this sort of two-daughter family was always going to be the way Bluey went. I just tried to base it as much as I could on our experience of parenting.

You read a lot of academic literature around play and psychological development. What did you learn? The main thing I took from it is that kids learn in developmental stages, and playing has a real role in a few of those stages in particular. It’s been nice to fold that into the show without it clobbering anyone on the head.

Does Bluey’s dad Bandit set an impossibly high bar for human dads? Yeah, I would say. But it’s a cartoon at the end of the day so it’s not going to be particularly interesting if I model him on human energy levels; it has to be exaggerated. He’s a dog and dogs love play more than any other animal.

Would you ever have a cat on the show? The kids in Bluey watch a show called Cat Squad, which appears a little more in Series 3 actually, so we’ve had a bit of fun with that. I’ve wanted to start a script with the kids wanting a cat and Bandit saying, “I’m not really a cat person”. There’s something that makes me laugh about that.

Can you envisage a career for yourself post-Bluey? I’ve always wanted to try my hand at [an animated] feature film. Whatever is next I will have to drastically rein in my expectations; Bluey will probably be a hard level of success to match.

Bluey Series 3 is on ABC Kids and ABC iview