We were lucky to catch up with Rylan Burns recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rylan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
I’m happy to say that I am indeed happy as an artist/creative! Although, I do sometimes think about what my life would be like if I went down a less creative path and pursued something simpler. I considered the classic jobs like policeman and fireman when I was a kid, but I also found myself drawing on every piece of homework I received. Soon those drawings would turn into ideas, and then characters, and then into worlds and eventually comics. It became pretty clear to me that I was into art, and since that realization in my school days, I’ve always found myself drawn to the more creative kinds of careers. Whether it was creating music, voice acting, graphic design, video editing, or just the fun of making art, I knew at least one of those life paths would fit me well. The crazy part is that I decided to pursue all of those life paths at the same time, all thanks to discovering my true calling: animation and filmmaking!
Animation is the perfect culmination of everything I like to do wrapped up into one job! As the creator behind my animation YouTube channel RylanLego, there’s never a dull moment for me. One day I might be drawing backgrounds for a cartoon, and the next I could be making a theme song or even writing a script while directing voice actors! I pretty much do all the different jobs you’d see in the credits of a film, but instead of multiple departments of artists doing their separate jobs to make the film happen, I have to do each and every single one of those jobs by myself. I am the credits! Realizations like these are where I start to think about having a regular job, at least in the animation industry.
Right now, since I’m pretty much the animation director and the entire production crew simultaneously, it can be really tough at times doing things solo. Sometimes I think about joining animation teams and companies to finally have only one job to worry about and be a part of a real production crew. I’m sure it would be so much easier to simply be just the background artist for a film, or to simply be an animator that moves characters and that’s all I’d have to do. Sadly, the animation industry is very hard to get into, and without a team to work for, or a team of my own to help me out, I’m all that I’ve got if I want to make my ideas a reality. Regardless, as hard as it may be to do everything on my own, I genuinely love what I do, and every aspect of the animation process for me is fun and fulfilling for me to take care of. Seeing one of my cartoons get finished always gets me excited to make the next one, and overall, I’m just happy that I get to share my work with the world as an artist. Maybe one day I’ll be able to fund and support my own team of creatives and friends to help my work get created faster, but until that day comes, I openly accept the challenge of doing things myself. This is my dream, and I truly hope to bring my all of my ideas to life!
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! I’m Rylan Burns, and I’m an animator/filmmaker who loves video games, making music, and of course, making cartoons! I share my art and animations across social media and mainly on my YouTube channel, RylanLego, that I’m honored to note has garnered over 170,000 subscribers so far! My art style is reminiscent of early 2000’s cartoon aesthetics, and I’m known for creating original cartoons like The Trio, Cartoon Safety, and my DePaul University student film, Top and RabRab – Player 3, which recently became the winner of Best Animated Film at PopCon Indy 2025! I’m also known for creating Mario Scenarios, which is a fan-made Nintendo parody series. My video “Mario Scenarios – Super Princess Peach” is my highest viewed animation so far, and it has somehow reached over 36 million views which I still can’t believe is real!
I got into animation after making a bunch of comics back in middle school. I always wanted to see my characters come to life and move, and once I started making silly little animations on my Nintendo DSi with Flipnote Studio, my fate was sealed. I had become an animator! It was around high school that I started testing out every step needed to make a full cartoon. I began voice acting for my characters, my band class taught me skills for making background music, and my time with the school news club taught me how to edit videos. After months of balancing marching band and piles of homework, I managed to finish my first real animation, and I worked up the bravery to share it to the Nintendo social media at the time, Miiverse. With that first step, I started my online artistic journey of sharing my work with the world, and I was delighted to see a humble following begin to grow over time!
Since then, I’ve been continuing my creative journey, and I’ve made over 40 animated videos so far. My main goals are to see my ideas go from concepts to fully realized projects, bring more fun into this world we live in, and hopefully inspire more creatives to follow their dreams too. Whenever I get comments saying that my videos make their day, or that my work has given them the inspiration to draw and make their own ideas, I feel like I’m doing something truly worthwhile and special. With 10 different animated shows spanning multiple genres and characters, I hope everyone can have fun experiencing these ideas of mine with me! Right now, I’m working on a few more Super Mario related animations, and the episode 1 debut of my upcoming show, The Trio, so there’s plenty of cool stuff to look out for from me in the near future!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Fan art is the best way that I’ve found to build my audience on social media over the years. There’s an instant connection you can make with others that share the same interests, and they get to check out your art and see your take on different characters and franchises! For me, that fan art consisted of Mario and Sonic related artwork, and I was able to connect with a lot of fellow fans and artists through our shared enjoyment of these beloved characters and games. My fan-made Nintendo cartoon, Mario Scenarios, is a big reason as to why I have an audience so far. When people checked out my Mario videos, they were able to see what other original creations I had as well, and I think that helped give my shows a much bigger boost than they would’ve had on their own.
Another way I built up a social media presence, as an animator, was joining in Reanimated Collaborations! They’re basically group projects where multiple animators come together to recreate an episode or video of some kind, and each scene is animated in each animator’s respective art style! Every Reanimated Collaboration I took part in allowed me to draw even more cool fan art and make new connections, so it was worth it! If you continue drawing the things you’re a fan of, and slowly introduce your own characters over time, it helps familiarize your audience with your original characters and creations. Soon enough, you just might begin to have fans of the idea that YOU created, and that’s an awesome experience to say the least!
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Right now, we’re sadly in an era of no risk-taking. It’s understandable from a business point of view, but very sad when it comes to creativity. Major animation studios aren’t accepting or greenlighting as many new ideas as they used to from fear of the ideas being unsuccessful, so they keep relying on tried-and-true franchises that they know audiences are already familiar with. I think the world deserves something fresher than yet another reboot, and luckily, a lot of independent creators agree. It’s very cool to see that independent animation is now on the rise!
Now that indie animation is becoming more and more looked into thanks to social media, I think people are realizing what kinds of new original ideas and worlds are out there just waiting to be experienced. It’s honestly very exciting and a breath of fresh air for the animation world, and I hope that if we start supporting these risk-taking artists and creators, we’ll begin to see a real boom in creativity, and maybe even an increase in fellow artists who can help speed up the process of making the animations and shows we love to watch and enjoy. With new ideas would come new teams of people to make that idea, making new jobs, and new kinds of content for fans to check out! I hope to see a world where animation is a thriving career choice, and maybe one day that will be possible.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rylanlego.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rylanlego
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rylanlego/
- Twitter: https://www.x.com/rylanlego
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/rylanlego
- Other: https://shop.rylanlego.com/
Image Credits
Rylan Burns