Sam Knight is a digital 2D animator and illustrator with over a decade of experience in the animation industry, specialising in character design, animation and background art.

Often hiding in plain sight, Sam is a lifelong observer of human behaviour, drawn to capturing the untimed moments most of us miss, hand gestures that unintentionally mimic a wild bird, the furrow of a brow that puts people on edge, those small imperfections that make each of us who we are. Whether people-watching on public transport or studying the quiet details of everyday life, he brings that same attentiveness to every piece he creates.

For Rollie's About the Energy campaign, Sam created three animations that represent energies we strive to feel everyday: Fire representing passion and connection, Aether representing the feeling of being encapsulated by music and Earth the calm roundedness we feel in nature.

We sat down with Sam to chat about where his love of character design began, how he brings his eye for observation into his work and what went into bringing the Kumo characters to life.

Rollie: Your work is driven by a love for creating unique and enigmatic characters. When did you first start creating cartoons and fall in love with this particular art form?

"I was always drawing from a young age. Mum is a painter, Grandma was a painter, so I think that love was always there. I just loved the pencil in hand, the paintbrush and creating things, so I went down that route. I did a TAFE course and one of the subjects was animation. The teacher pulled me aside and said my characters were pretty cool and he'd actually deferred from uni to be there, so I thought, okay, maybe I'm onto something. I applied for RMIT straight after and did a three-year bachelor in animation. The love was there instantly. You're creating things from your own head and watching them come to life. It's such a good feeling, building something from the ground up."

Rollie: You've mentioned you're a 'human observer' (studying the imperfections that make us who we are). How do you bring this attentiveness into your artwork?

"I think the connection, or the comedy, in the characters and animation I do comes from familiarity, the finer details you remember. One character will stand out because of a funny little thing they do, like a tick or nose scratch. So simple, but it brings a character to life. Or something they're wearing, not everyone notices it, but the person who does goes, oh, I had that jacket for ten years. It's the little things that elevate a character. Otherwise you fall into generic, done-the-same-way-every-time territory and humans aren't like that. If we were all the same it'd be pretty boring, so you find the little quirk and accentuate it. With a still image you can pack in more detail, but animation is more gestural, you have to strip things back so it's actually possible to make them move. It's a fine balance."

Rollie: You've also worked with Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Fox Entertainment on animation projects. What's it like watching a character you helped shape move from a static drawing into something that lives on screen?

"It's the best feeling, honestly. A lot of the time you start with just words on a page, or a scribble and then you go through all the tweaks and iterations and it's fun, it's rewarding. I like to think of it as the Cinderella pumpkin turning into a coach. When characters are on screen and you're just seeing the finished product, it's really the team behind it, and me as an animator or designer, we actually work so hard, so many iterations of that certain character to get to where it is now. I've been lucky to work with directors who have such a strong vision that sometimes it's just fine tuning what's already there. When it's my own work, starting from nothing, that's when you really get to grind it out, which is the fun part."

Rollie: For our About The Energy campaign, we commissioned you to create three unique characters for each different Kumo energy. What was your creative process and how did you start bringing these characters to life?

"The brief was awesome and it was a great process from the start. We had three energies to work from: Aether was that feeling you get through music, Earth was about stepping outside and away from your screen and Fire was passion, warmth, connection. Those are such strong feelings to start from that I didn't really need to write anything down, I just started sketching. I find I fall into more of a flow that way, the ideas come through when I'm drawing rather than staring at a blank page."

Rollie: Which character was the most challenging to create?

"Fire, for sure. I went back and forth on him for a while, thinking connection, love, energy, feeling, fire, passion, I write the keywords down on the side in Procreate so I can flick them on and off. In the end it wasn't a fiery, angry character, we landed on someone a lot warmer and happier, freckles and all. The freckles were actually my partner Renee's idea. She said 'he should have freckles' and I just looked at her and said 'yes, of course he should'. I love creative input like that. Most of what I do is solo, sitting in a room with a sketchbook, so I really value bouncing off other people's energy."

Rollie: Which character did you love & resonate with the most?

"Aether, I think. He was definitely the first one, I drew him on the plane going to the UK, it was about 17 hours, so I had plenty of time and pretty much got that whole idea out from start to finish on the plane, which was really good. After that it didn't really change too much and became the anchor for the other two characters."

Rollie: What's next for you and your art?

"I've got some studio work lined up, storyboarding, back in next month. But I've also been using some time off to build my own thing. I've said for a while that I want to move into more of a director or leadership role rather than always working inside someone else's world, and I'm almost finished a logo for a project of my own. The world's the oyster, but I want to give it a red hot crack at building something of my own."

Rollie: Last one, slightly off script, what's your favourite character you've ever done, whether illustration or animation, and why?

"That's a hard one, I've done a lot. But I do often come back to this guy I drew from the Preston Market, knife in one hand, fish in the other, a real character, you could practically smell the place. He's on my Instagram. I keep coming back to him. I think that's the thing with observing people, you don't just get the image, you get the smells and the sounds too, and that's what makes a character feel alive."

Sam's artwork 'About The Energy' is on display in our digital gallery, RollieX, from 1st August - 31st August 2026.