Bianca Beneduci channels her “huge feelings” directly into the cute characters she crafts

If you don’t know London-based animator and illustrator Bianca Beneduci, you may very well have seen her work, as she previously occupied the role of senior designer at Buck. Before that, Bianca started at an animation studio when she was 19 years old, before things, as she says, got “long-winded”. She continues: “I did that for a few years, had a life crisis, studied illustration, and had an accidental stint in the fine art industry. I then realised everyone was mean there, went back to animation as a freelancer, and only then I was brave enough to try to make a living as an illustrator.” Finally, Bianca had ended up doing what she always wanted to, having been a big time doodler since she was a kid. 

It’s not only Bianca’s childhood artistry that informed her practice, but her early years interests too, with 90s cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory making a significant impact, alongside 50s and 60s cartoons by United Productions of America. “I’ve always been drawn to the simple graphic shapes,” Bianca says. She greatly admires the naive, childlike mark-making – qualities similarly found in the surrealist and folk art she covets. “In terms of storytelling, my first love was the Calvin and Hobbes comics,” Bianca adds, “I used to sleep with Bill Watson’s books under my pillow.”

As a result, Bianca’s illustrative scenes occupy a distinctive space, whereby candid, jolly vibes are laced with a certain melancholic, reality-struck undercurrent – a combination that Bianca sees as subconscious. “I am quite a playful, happy person, but I also observe life very intensely, non-stop, and have huge feelings about it all,” she says. Recently, Bianca has found herself drawn to “exploring anger and grumpiness in female characters”, using her illustrations as a space to vent. “There’s so much smiling through annoying stuff, especially in the UK,” she says, having had fun creating sweet but “visibly pissed off” characters. “Perhaps it’s just my Latin American/Mediterranean frustration with English politeness,” Bianca ends.