Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brandon Williams. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Brandon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
This is a question I struggle with a lot. By all traditional metrics I started my artistic education and professional career late. I used to fantasize about going back in time to my younger self and forcing me to draw more. Recently I’ve come to really value the things I learned before getting started professionally. I worked a lot of jobs that taught me how to manage my time. How to show up and get right to work. How to manage a team and my email. For too long I took those soft skills for granted. I believe a lot of my professional success has been boosted by these skills so Ive come to really appreciate them. Every artist has their own path. And no two are the same. Im trying to embrace that my path in my own and to appreciate how far Ive come in such a short time.
Brandon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Im a storyboard artist and episode director working in the LA animation industry. I also teach storyboarding remotely for the school I attended College For Creative Studies in Detroit aka CCS. Im very passionate about storytelling through drawings and animation. I love the magic of drawings flipping by to create the illusion of life. While I enjoy all forms of animation, 2D animation holds a special place in my heart. I feel we’ve only begun to scratch the surface in the kinds of stories we can tell with this amazing medium. I want to be a part of that evolution.
I took a winding path to get to where I am now. I worked day jobs for a few years before CCS. I even self published a graphic novel called Dedford Tales. When I found myself not achieving everything I believed I was capable of I knew I had to make a change. I needed time to hone my skills. And thats when I decided to apply to art school.
After college I landed an internship with Disney Television Animation. This was an incredible opportunity and I really tried to take advantage of all the amazing talent and knowledge available. I emailed everyone trying to land a coffee or lunch date so I could pick their brains about art, storytelling and animation. I think I might have been a little annoying but I choose to believe I brought youthful energy and enthusiasm to each encounter.
After the internship I took a slight detour into the production side of animation over at WarnerBros animation. Where I learned about the animation pipeline from the organizational and management perspective, not just the creative. Through that experience I was able to get my start in storyboarding. After working at WB on a few projects like the reboot of Wacky Races and a very cool Mortal Kombat movie called MK: Battle For Earth Realm. I managed to land a job on Solar Opposites and break into the prime time adult animation world.
The first season of Solar Opposites for Hulu was a true gauntlet that tested my every limit. I was staying late most nights just trying to keep up with the level of work I needed to produce. I knew that if I could get chops in place that it would be worth it and I wouldn’t have to do this anymore, but I had my doubts. Thankfully I managed to get through it and the two episodes of season 1 I worked on 104 and 107 are still two of my favorites. In 104 there was the big “healing massacre” scene where the Solars hack and slash at zombie teenagers where the wounds would then heal relieving them of the zombie effect. It was very interesting trying to create an action scene where the result of the violence was a healing euphoria. I reboarded over and over until it was right. That can be a part of the process, especially with such an out-there concept. The important part is to not get down or give up when you get a lot of notes or have to reboard. Instead you use it as motivation to find the right solution and make the best possible scene you can!
The job on Solar Opposites lead to me working on Star Trek Lower Decks, which is also a very demanding show and Im grateful to all those late nights, since they got me to a level where I could take on such challenging work. When storyboarding you are sort of the first director. You are taking words and turning them into pictures to create a blueprint for the animation. Boards are when you solve all the story problems, add gags, jokes, or action and really help the show and the characters find their voice.
As a director the challenge is to manage all of your storyboard artists and pull multiple visions of the show into one coherent voice. You don’t get to draw as much other than scribbling little notes to change a shot here or adjust the acting in a drawing over there. The very first episode I directed was for Star Trek Lower Decks season 4 episode 3. In the episode one of our heroes lieutenant junior grade Bradward Boimler is leading a Starfleet team for the first time. I couldn’t help but feel the parallel to my own journey especially since [spoiler] Boimler dies at the end of the episodes… temporarily. I thought is this job going to kill me? Hahaha. I ended up having a great time and Im back directing on season 5. Which has brought about an entirely new challenge. Which is managing artists personal lives. My team had a few struggles with family and personal things outside of work and our control. I had to find ways to move the workload around, or add freelancers to our episode and of course pick up some of the work myself. And generally just be supportive of my artists and their struggles. It was a challenging and enriching experience that taught me a lot about being flexible and adapting on the fly as things change. Im very proud of the work we did on season 5 and I can wait for the world to see it.
It’s incredibly rewarding and humbling to be a part of the Star Trek universe. To be a very small piece of such a rich legacy that means so much to fans everywhere. No matter what Im working on I always find parts to fall in love with, since I believe you have to in order to make good work when it comes to storytelling. Ive been so privileged to work on so many great shows and IPs. And Im really excited to start to focus on building some worlds of my own!
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I really want to elevate the medium of animation in peoples minds. There are so many different kinds of stories you can tell in animation outside of animation aimed at kids and families. And there are unique ways of telling them within the medium. There has been a lot of progress on this front in the past few years, but we still have a long way to go. Right now my mission is create my own show or film, that helps further the perception that animation is a medium, animation is cinema, and that it’s not a genera. I hope to tell personal stories sometimes with some action flavoring drawn from martial arts films and anime like Dragonball that I loved growing up. But always with something to say about life and the medium. You can do more with animation, animation can be more.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I love drawing and through drawing I feel a deep connection to being human. Early humans drew on cave walls, they told stories to entertain and to learn. The kept a record saying I am here! And here I am thousands of years later drawing to tell stories, to excite my friends and audience. To exclaim I am here! I have something to say! Or at the very least check out this cool punch!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theartofbrandon.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stupidartpunk/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-williams-8b229753/
- Twitter: @stupidartpunk
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/stupidartpunk.bsky.social
Image Credits
Storyboard panel Solar Opposites 20th century animation/HULU All other images by me, Brandon Williams