Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bill Burns. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Bill, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I had always been a creative since about 5, but when I was in high school, I was not a popular kid, didn’t care for the whole high school atmosphere, was introverted and kept to myself. My freshman year when I first walked into the art class I met the teacher who would make me believe I might actually have a future in this field. I took four years of her classes moving through to all 4 levels up to graduation, a couple of years of community college and 4 at San Jose State and I got out with a BS degree in graphic design with a concentration in illustration.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I got into the creative industry from the get-go all the way from child to high school to college and right into working for an ad Agency for 15 years and then after being laid off I picked up a job at Trader Joe’s as a sign artist and I’ve been there for over 15 years and loving it I use just about everything at my disposal creative wise for TJ’s along the working path with all those years it also extends to my hobbies my hobbies have included action figure customizing which I had quite a few commissions and did quite well with that for probably 10 years and despite being an introvert I also do a lot of Performing as I’ve been a old west historical reenactor for well over 20 years which evolved into cosplaying which I currently do right now and it has turned out to be quite a pretty fun hobby as the performing aspect of being a cosplayer has turned out to be a whole lot of fun. I’m also able to employ my mini artistic talents to cosplaying as far as it comes to building costumes accessories props and whatnot so everything to come together in this Hobby and I’m really enjoying it. I think what I bring to the table when it comes to cosplaying is the play aspect of it there are thousands if probably not a million or so cosplayers in this world and yes some of the costumes look great and fantastic and the community is awesome but the word play that means to me interacting playing engaging people and I think I bring a lot of that to this Hobby and people have really enjoyed it it’s the interaction that they enjoy seeing this character and the character that seems to have broken out the most for me is the one I do as J Jonah Jameson from Spider-Man he’s a very volatile but fun character and people see him and immediately come up to me and they know who it is and I play with them and they absolutely love it and he has completely exploded onto the scene social media wise. That character is probably the biggest thing that’s happened to me is probably and as cosplaying goes in general and at this point I’m not quite sure where it’s he’s going with it but we’ll see what happens!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience well that’s a word that never really occurred to me until I was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer back in 2018 and after six rounds of chemotherapy and sitting in that chair I knew if I ever got through this I was going to do everything and anything and not look back. There comes a point in your life when that decision is made for you and it was for me then and I’ve always had a saying, ‘Thrive in Chaos’ and lately that’s what I’ve been doing, consistently pressing on and trying do not let any inhibitions hold me back. If I can make as many people happy as possible doing what I’m doing currently that is the greatest reward in this life, for me anyway above all.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Being able to use all my strengths and talents and creative drive to hopefully inspire and instruct people. There’s more in this life than just nine to five jobs you have a life that’s out there and you can all be creative with it in some aspect. If I can make people smile and give them positive memories in this life everything from just a photo with one of my cosplays that they’ll look back upon years from now to a piece of my artwork that they may only see for a few seconds and it makes them smile or something to think about that’s probably the most rewarding thing of all

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @billburnzcosplay and @burnsbill
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/billscustomz
• Youtube: billburnzcosplay

Image Credits
Joy Liu