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Illustrating Roc’s World: A Spotlight on Michaela Martin

Thunderbird’s mascot, Roc, is a bit of an unsung hero. If you’ve ever donated to the project, he’s the happy blue bird who thanks you for supporting our work. For the 2024 End of Year appeal, the Thunderbird team commissioned design artist Michaela Martin to broaden Roc’s world. Her whimsical illustration, which is also available as a wallpaper download, shows Roc soaring through a sunlit forest as he delivers the mail to its denizens.

Likewise, we’d like to shine the spotlight on Michaela Martin, who has brought our mascot to life in what is soon becoming the Roc Illustrated Universe! She not only answered our questions about her artistic background and creative process, but also provided us some visual peeks into how she turned Roc’s flight from a first draft to a finished product.

What motivated you to become an illustrator? What was your training/education as an artist? What have been some of your favorite illustrations?

I have always had a passion for creating art; I find the process of bringing stories to life particularly fascinating and inspiring. Art can allow others to take a glimpse at what otherwise might exist only in someone’s mind. 

As far as training and education, I attended the College for Creative Studies in Detroit where I studied Animation, with a focus on Design (character/prop design, visual development, and color keys, for example). I learned a lot during my years in school, but I do not want to understate the value of learning from my fellow peers and colleagues, as well as resources available online (classes, software tutorials, etc).

Most of my favorite illustration works happen to be from the field of animation. The background illustrations, concept art, color keys, and character design are all elements that I find quite inspiring. The Prince of Egypt, The Iron Giant, The Road to El Dorado, and Spirited Away are a handful of films that I would say are particularly inspirational to me. Having worked on several animated projects myself now, I have a much greater sense of appreciation for these works of art than I did when I was much younger. 

Tell us about your work process! How do you go from idea to first drafts? About how long, on average, does an illustration take?

I don’t have a particularly exciting answer for this – I visualize and imagine various designs in my head, and I translate them onto canvas with my hand as best I can. I tend to start off with rough sketches that I can get out quickly, which allows me to explore a lot of concepts in a short amount of time.

The length of time it takes me to finish an illustration tends to vary, depending on various factors such as image size/detail, as well as client needs (revisions, adjustments, etc). Usually it takes around 1-3 months to fully complete an illustration, give or take a couple weeks. 

What’s in your toolkit? Do you work mostly digitally, or in more traditional mediums?

I primarily use Photoshop. I do enjoy sketching traditionally in sketchbooks (or printer paper, napkins, notepads, anything that is available). I tend to do more rough works on paper, and transfer them to Photoshop once I am ready to work on them with more detail. I enjoy the feel of working traditionally, but I also enjoy how forgiving digital mediums can be. 

Tell us about how you created the first illustration, aka Roc flying through the sunlit forest? Did you have a direction from the Thunderbird team on what to illustrate, or more free reign? Can you tell us how you imagined and then created Roc’s world?

I worked closely with Laurel (the team’s Design Manager) on both illustrations. She provided me with some details and the main idea; Roc flying over the forest, delivering the mail to the various inhabitants (hinted at through the appearance of houses amongst the foliage). I had a decent amount of free reign for exploration, though I wanted to add some elements that I thought would work with our previously established Roc design, since we had just finished establishing that. I wanted to keep the design elements soft and friendly, similar to Roc’s finalized design. There are not many sharp angles in the design of the houses or foliage, for example. I have included some very early concept art for the final illustration that shows the exploration phase and a couple of unused ideas.

In your illustration for this year’s appeal, you gave us an entire group of Rocs, working together!  Can you tell us more about this design and how you brought it to life?

These were initially just different pose options for Roc that I did very early in the sketch phase. I was exploring character placement, and only expected one to be picked! It was later discussed that all three poses could potentially be used together in the finished illustration – the different poses would have a very simple animation; turning visible and invisible. It would look as though Roc were jumping between different screens at his workstation.

What part of Roc’s world would you like to explore in your next piece? We’d love to have a sneak peak into the greater Roc’s illustrated universe!

I think that more characters would be fun to explore. Possibly Roc’s family, friends, neighbors, etc. Maybe some of them can have jobs alongside Roc, or Roc delivers their mail. More exploration on Roc’s little forest village would be quite fun to do as well (different styles of buildings for different species, different biomes of the forest, etc). Perhaps these explorations could reflect different features of the Thunderbird service!

Were you a Thunderbird user before you began illustrating for us? If not, have you tried us out since?

I poked around Thunderbird a bit, but I have not actually utilized it to the full capacity as of yet! I am not the best at consistently using new technology, even if it is quite helpful. I do use Firefox quite frequently, though!

If you’d like to see more of Michaela’s work, be sure to visit her website at MichaelaM Art and/or follow her on Instagram. We’d like to thank her again for answering our questions, sharing her sketches and explorations, and designing Roc’s world for us and our community!