We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brandon-Iszaiah J. Gatewood. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brandon-Iszaiah below.

Brandon-Iszaiah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

My life as a creative started when I was about five or six years old in a hospital bed. I was born with a couple of birth defects that resulted in the need of a liver transplant which I received at the age of two with my mother as my donor. Although the transplant was a success, being a transplant patient still involved a lot of hospital stays, tests, good news, bad news, worrisome news, all of the above. My life was anything but “ordinary”. I couldn’t go outside and play much; I couldn’t play sports or do other normal things a child my age would do. My only look into the outside world at that time of my life was through television. Watching my favorite shows on tv was the only way that I could experience and understand the world around me, the world outside of the hospital, a “normal” life.

Being that watching television was one of the only pastimes that I could have, I became enchanted with the world of art through animation. I started by drawing my favorite cartoon characters like Ben Tennyson from ‘Ben 10’, Beast boy from ‘Teen Titians’, and Danny Phantom from ‘Danny Phantom’ in attempts to make them real to me. Sometimes I could have visitors and sometimes I couldn’t so when my extended family or friends weren’t around, my favorite cartoon characters became my friends, and I would always imagine being them or being with them. This sparked my drive to bring them to life through my art and further along down the line, create and imagine my own characters and stories. I fell in love with the magic of storytelling and bringing things from imagination to life through art and I decided that I wanted to peruse this as a passion in order to not only help my dreams become a reality, but others as well.

I knew that this was a worthwhile endeavor because everyone has dreams and aspirations and it’s those same dreams and aspirations that led to things that we have today like cartoons, animation, and design. I want to create in hopes to be a part of the magic that made me who I am today. The magic that inspires and continues to enchant me every day. I felt and still feel like I can succeed because if my past has shown me anything, it is that I can overcome and succeed at anything. The doctors told my mother that my illness was fatal, but I prevailed. I already succeeded in life at a young age, and I still have a lot more life to live so why would I not be able to succeed at anything else?

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?

Hello, my name is Brandon-Iszaiah J. Gatewood I am a 23-year-old motion/graphic designer. and painter from Baltimore Maryland. I have always been an artist since a very young age and continued to hone my skills specializing in visual arts through middle and high school at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School and Geroge Washington Carver Venter for Arts and Technology, but I started to learn more about the motion design / graphic design industry through being a student at the Ringling College of Art and Design as a motion design major. Through being a motion design major, I learned that I had a love for the design side of the industry, so I now specialize in things like logo and poster design, and things of that nature.

Being an avid film watcher with a love for the cinema, I also found a love for video editing though my major. There’s something about being responsible for telling a story and making sure that it is told in a way that impacts its audience as intended is very fascinating to me. Being a visual arts major led to a love for painting, so I paint with oil and acrylic mediums as well. I have dabbled in the worlds of traditional and digital art which is amazing to me because through knowing how to use different mediums opens up the door for having multiple ways to tell a story and that excites me.

The thing that I am most proud of is having the ability to make a client’s fantasy become a reality. For example, if someone needed a logo for an up-and-coming company, they may come to me with a vision of what they want it to be, and what story they want it to tell. As a designer and a creative I solve the problem of bringing that logo to life, to take it out of their thought bubble and make it real to and for them. That is a joy that is like no other to know that you made someone else happy.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I have many different goals for myself. I would like to do a lot of different things not necessarily animating or designing myself, but I am a very big Disney fan, so I would love to one day work on a Disney project. I would even like to voice my own Disney character and Avatar from the Nickelodeon franchise become part of those worlds and just do some other voice acting in general. but my one overall goal life is to possibly create my own show that would leave a positive impact on pop culture. This goal is inspired by one of my favorite show creators Butch Hartman who made shows like ‘ Danny Phantom, and ‘The Fairly Odd Parents’. These Nickelodeon shows are so beloved by fans and the characters have inspired so many of their viewers to be heroes like the main character of ‘Danny Phantom’ Danny and teaches them that wishes can and do come true through his characters Cosmo, Wanda, and Timmy from ‘ the Fairly odd Parents’. These shows inspired a sense of hope and new wave of creativity that was and is needed in the world today and I want to give hope like that and inspire even more shows that have that much of an impact. The flow of creativity flows from what was done before so it could inspire something that has an even greater impact on the world..

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Being a motion design student, we dabbled into many different fields of creation like, animation, design, film character design, there were so many different things that we could do that we felt like we were a part of every major because things like film or computer animations were their own majors. A lot of the time we were expected to be great and or perfect at everything. Although we dabbled into a lot we were steered into doing a lot of animation which I thought that I would love to do and would be good at but there were people that had gotten the hang of it faster than I did and there were instructors that made it seem like there was no room for growth as if you had to already be an expert after learning to do something once or twice and if you did not then you were not good enough to be in the industry. and it was heartbreaking because I really enjoyed a lot of the things that I was creating and learning to do for the first time. I was very discouraged when situations like that came around because it made me feel I did not belong there on many occasions and all but two or three instructors that made me feel otherwise. As time went on, I got a grasp of my strengths and weaknesses and came to terms with not being able to be perfect because no one was. All I could do was the best that I could and as long as I didn’t give up, I would be proud of myself and my projects.

I had to unlearn the practice of thinking that I was not good enough or that I could only make it into the industry if I could animate and animate to perfection straight from the beginning. I had to learn that even though I liked animating, I don’t have to stick to that track if I did not want to. I learned that I always have room to grow, I don’t have to be great at everything, that there may be people better than you but only you can make something like you can. Only you can do what you can how you do it and that’s what makes you special, that is what draws people to you and that is what can build clientele and when I learned that I was finally able to be at peace with what I created. I learned that If I didn’t like it then I could improve it, if I wanted to learn more, I could always do that. I could always work on and perfect my craft.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brandoniszaiahjamesg.wixsite.com/brandon-iszaiahjames
• Instagram: Briszyjartistry
• Linkedin: Brandon-Iszaiah Gatewood

Image Credits
KreativeBrain studios