Curtis Jobling is best known for his influence in production design, responsible for the illustration of Bob the Builder, Frankenstein’s Cat, and many other well know children’s television characters.  Although Curtis is best known in the filed of character design, he started out as a runner at Aardman. The company soon noticed that he had a talent in design, and assigned him a production role in Wallace and Gromits, ‘A Close Shave’ as a model and puppet painter. He also scored a role on Tim Burton’s film ‘Mars Attacks’ as a model and puppet painter, this was before the film converted to a CG format of animation.
Curtis’ design methods reflect his art college background, where he was taught to use a sketchbook to record his doodles and ideas. In an interview from ‘Nation Media Museum’ (2011), Curtis describes the creation of Frankenstein’s Cat during a train journey to the producers of the show, “The first doodle I did (of Frankenstein’s Cat) on a train journey, that picture is the one that stuck”. Ironically that doodle wasn’t part of the portfolio he was going to show them, and as he was about to leave, due to their lack of interest, he showed them what he had done during the train journey. The situation led its self to “being at the right place, at the right time”, after a spontaneous, yet unexpected pitch, Frankenstein’s Cat was successfully commissioned.

With a wealth of experience Curtis has managed to find what key elements of design need to be taken into consideration to meet producer’s expectations. For example Lootie, from Frankenstein’s Cat, went through 3 design fasces. Starting off with the original illustration that was describes as “ugly” by Curtis, then to a simple pre-school model to the final, more mature character. This transformation was due to broadcasters who on the second stage of design, said she looked “quite young”, so Curtis decided to stretch her dimensions, and give her a punk style that would remain “ageless and timeless”.