We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful DeShon Washington Jr. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with DeShon below.

DeShon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is an original animated series I’ve been developing called “Smoke Town.”

I won’t go too deep into the plot just yet, because I want the world to discover it the way I did: slowly, unexpectedly, and personally. But what I can say is that it’s a story about hope in the most unexpected places. It’s whimsical, raw, spiritual, deeply funny, and at times painful. The show is designed to look like chaos on the surface, but underneath it, it’s a love letter to Black creativity, found family, mental health, and the kind of childhood wonder many people feel they lost too soon.

I started working on Smoke Town during one of the most confusing and transitional seasons of my life. I was battling doubt, numbness, and a feeling of not belonging. This project became a mirror because it helped me work through the feeling of being “other,” of wearing masks to survive, and of trying to be perfect instead of simply being human. It’s rooted in everything I’ve wrestled with: my faith, my identity, my love for animation, and my desire to help people feel seen.

What makes Smoke Town meaningful isn’t just the story I’m telling, it’s the heart behind it. I want people to laugh hard, cry unexpectedly, and walk away reminded that joy and pain can coexist. That weirdness is sacred. That healing is messy. And that, even in the darkest cities or corners of our own minds, there’s still light. There’s still love.

That’s why this project matters to me. It’s not just a cartoon. It’s art. It’s not mass produced fast food. It’s a five star meal.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is DeShon Washington Jr. I’m an artist, storyteller, and the founder of a creative studio I call West EndNovation. My roots are in Louisville, Kentucky, specifically the West End, a place that shaped me in every way. It’s where I first started dreaming, drawing, overthinking, doubting myself, and believing in something bigger all at once.

For years, I thought my worth came from pleasing others. I even became a Big Ten football player on a full ride scholarship, despite not loving the sport, simply because I thought that’s what would make others proud of me. But deep down, I always knew I was a creative. That storytelling, especially animation and film was my true heartbeat. I was a kid who would daydream in class or at exactly the same to my football coaches were talking to me. I couldn’t help it.

I got into the creative world because I had no other choice. Creativity is how I process the world, heal, and find meaning in life’s chaos. My flagship project is an animated series called Smoke Town. Without spoiling the plot, the show blends heartfelt humor, social commentary, and surreal imagination. It’s R-rated but full of childlike wonder. It’s underdogs, trauma and healing, chaos and hope. Smoke Town is everything I’ve ever wanted to say about faith, Black identity, mental health, friendship, and the power of choosing joy in a broken world.

Through my work, I try to make people feel seen……….the weirdos, the sensitive ones, the dreamers who don’t fit into boxes. My mission is to create art that’s not just entertaining, but nourishing. Stories that make you laugh hard, think deeply, and maybe even cry a little when you least expect it. I want to create comfort characters and imaginative worlds for those who never saw themselves fully reflected growing up.

What sets me apart is the way I blend rawness with vulnerability, spirituality with humor, and sincerity with style. I’m not trying to be the coolest person in the room…I just want to be the most honest. Identity plays a central role in everything I create. I thrive on subverting expectations, especially the ones placed on me before I ever speak a word.

As a 6’5”, broad-shouldered, bearded Black man, I’m constantly aware of the assumptions that come with how I look. I know what people expect when I walk into a room. I know what they think West EndNovation is going to be. But I love surprising them. My work isn’t about fitting a mold. My work is about breaking the mold. It’s about showing the full spectrum of emotion, softness, depth, and imagination that lives in all of us, especially in places the world tends to overlook

I didn’t start this journey with a lot of resources or connections. I started with a sketchpad, a lot of mistakes, and a quiet but relentless belief that God gave me this vision for a reason. And I’m following it all the way through.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Yes, and it’s more than creative. It’s spiritual.

West EndNovation isn’t just about telling stories. It’s about building a world where people, especially Black people, can finally breathe, belong, and feel seen in all their complexity.

We’re living in the world E.M. Forster warned us about in “The Machine Stops.” Everyone’s isolated in digital pods, scrolling through curated content that never truly touches them. The internet promised connection, but it often leaves us numb. West EndNovation is my answer to that.

It’s a rupture in the algorithm.
It’s crayon joy on a concrete wall.
It’s chalk drawings that cry, laugh, fight, and dream.

I’m putting Black joy unapologetically at the forefront, not as a reaction to trauma, but as something sacred and self-sustaining. West EndNovation is drawn like how kids imagine the world: messy, colorful, spiritual, imperfect, and brimming with life. A place where the characters don’t just look like us, but feel like us.

And I don’t believe in a monolithic Blackness.
The media often reduces us to types: comic relief, cautionary tale, warrior, victim.
But we’re more than that.
We’re nerds and philosophers. Rebels and romantics. Mystics and misfits. Quiet and loud.
West EndNovation creates space for every version of Black identity, especially the ones that never get the spotlight.

This isn’t just about representation. It’s about liberation through imagination.
It’s about spiritual rebalancing. A reawakening of wonder.
It’s about restoring that sacred feeling of community, like family dinner at a restaurant with no phones out.
Like the video store on a Friday night.
Like skating rink birthdays.
Like the sounds of kids playing outside on a summer day.
Playing two player games with your friends in person.
Like sitting in the dark with your favorite people watching something that makes the world feel whole.
I didn’t realize how important rituals were to the human experience until certain ones were gone.

I want West EndNovation to be the place where:
• A kid who feels weird and overlooked sees themselves as chosen.
• A Black artist feels inspired to dream again.
• A whole family with different tastes somehow all laugh at the same joke.

My mission is clear.
To make work that’s raw, funny, weird, spiritual, and unshakably honest.
To build a new kind of table and make sure no one’s left standing.
To draw the sacred out of the silly.
To let God use me to show people they’ve always been worthy of love.

This isn’t just a “cartoon studio.

It’s a place where people who’ve never felt invited…

finally get a seat.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Support the human behind the artist and not just the product they make. A thriving creative ecosystem isn’t built on algorithms and output, I believe it’s built on care, space, and trust.

We’ve entered a time where A.I. can generate, but it can’t innovate. It can remix, replicate, and reflect what already exists, but it cannot feel, cannot wrestle with doubt, cannot cry when a sketch finally says what words couldn’t. True art is born from lived experience. It’s made by people who bleed into their work, who risk rejection, wrestle with God, laugh at the wrong times, and grow over time. Machines can’t do that.

The rise of AI art has made it even more urgent that we protect human creativity, not outsource it. Supporting real artists isn’t just about paying for pretty things, I believe it’s about honoring the soul behind the process. You can’t replace soul. You can’t automate struggle. You can’t fake the quiet, invisible fight that goes into making something real.

To truly support creatives, society should:
• Fund human-first spaces. Invest in schools, community centers, and grassroots workshops where kids can be loud, vulnerable, and weird. Let them grow as artists before they’re brands.
• Champion mentorship, not just money. Artists need belief just as much as backing. Be the person who sees them early.
• Redefine success and failure – Create systems where artists can explore, mess up, and come back better. That’s where masterpieces come from.
• Celebrate slow, thoughtful creation. In a world addicted to speed and the “clout chasing”, protect the space for artists to take their time. Let art breathe.
• Refuse to devalue human labor in the name of convenience. We must resist the urge to replace creativity with efficiency. Cheap art costs us culture.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.behance.net/gallery/196151543/Art-Portfolio
• Instagram: @west.endnovation.studios
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deshon-washington-jr-957aa7110

Image Credits

All images property of West EndNovation Studios