Life & Work with Kade Byrand of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kade Byrand

Hi Kade, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up, I was absolutely infatuated with the television series, The Penguins of Madagascar. It was consistently my favorite show throughout elementary and middle school, and when the 2014 movie came out, my sophomore year of highschool, that love was rekindled. At that time I knew vaguely that I wanted to work in media, but it was more of an amorphous concept versus something concrete. Seeing that movie, and thinking back on my childhood, made me go “oh I want to do visual development art”. The catch was that I had very little art experience.

I always drew, but I knew very little about actual art fundamentals and absolutely nothing about painting. I got a job at a local movie theater and bought a drawing tablet and took some art courses at a nearby university. I can’t say the stuff I was making was any good, but I definitely had the passion and motivation. At the same time my parents knew someone who knew someone who was a PA at DreamWorks and they were able to wrangle a tour for me. So, in August of 2015 my mom and I flew out from Wisconsin to LA.

This wonderful PA, Melinda Farrar, gave me a tour of the offices and introduced me to art director Pierre Olivier Vincent who gave me some fantastic portfolio advice. However, the real key moment for me was when she introduced me to Tom McGrath, creator of The Penguins of Madagascar and voice of Skipper, along with Chris Miller, director and voice of Kowalski, Conrad Vernon, director and voice of Rico, and Chris Knights, editor and voice of Private. Getting to meet these people I looked up to so much suddenly made something that felt completely intangible, being an artist, to something that felt realistic and achievable.

So I worked, and worked. Everyday I used all my freetime to paint on my tablet, or make short films with my friends, another passion of mine. I was lucky enough to go to a very art oriented highschool, so I was able to turn in my paintings for many assignments. I spent the following two years with only one goal in mind, get into the best art school I could so I could become the best artist I could be. My paintings gradually got less terrible, and my senior year I was able to get into the Rhode Island School of Design on a scholarship.

I don’t think going to art school is a necessary step, but in part because of that scholarship, I think going to art school was the best choice I could make. It really expanded my horizons and put me outside of my comfort zone. It gave me a broad knowledge base, and made me understand not just how to make art, but the whys of making art. Most importantly though, it was the most fun time of my life, and I met many amazing artists, particularly my two closest friends and some of the most skilled people I knwo, Andrés L. Mignucci, and Zenon Holowaty.

The time immediately following art school was hard, I in part didn’t understand the importance of social media and self promotion, and I struggled to find work. I did some editorial illustrations, but I mostly just relied on my partner who I lived with in Little Rock, Arkansas. About midway through 2022 I started posting my art on Twitter and also moved from Little Rock to Los Angeles, another step that I don’t think is necessary if you want to work in the industry, but I highly recommend.

Things felt a lot more attainable after I moved, my social media gained traction, I interviewed for a job at Netflix, which I unfortunately didn’t get, and then in December art director Valerio Ventura reached out to me and I landed a job as a background painter at Warner Bros on the second season of Velma.

If there was a happiest moment of my life thus far, it goes to either meeting Tom McGrath, or seeing the email saying I got the job. Both those moments made me feel that the struggles that come with being an artist are completely worth it and every hardship I had been through was part of a broader path that led me to where I am now.

Velma for all its flaws, was the perfect learning environment for me, and an absolutely wonderful experience full of wonderful people. I got the freedom to explore not just the style of the show, but integrating my own style, while also getting to do extensive amounts of background design work along with the paint work I was hired for. I am immensely proud of my work from that time period, and I think it is some of the best, if not the best, stuff I have made. A lot of that though falls on the wonderful leadership of Valerio Ventura and background design lead Yael Givon.

Since Warner Brothers I have worked at the Mill and Nickelodeon as a visual development artist on a Coca Cola ad and pitch deck respectively, and most recently at Green Street Pictures as a background painter and color designer for an unfortunately now cancelled show.

Currently I am working on a pitch for my own show with my partner Joseph Cherbonnier, something that is a long shot, but if I’ve learned anything over the last decade, it’s that you got to try.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being an artist is a very rocky road. It’s one where you get to do what you love, something I am immensely grateful and privileged for, but it’s also one where you constantly second guess yourself, struggle to find work, and come to loath what you love, at least to an extent. In the times when I don’t have a job, I am overwhelmed with the feeling that I am not good enough, and in the times when I do have one, I still worry it’s all a fluke and the rug will be pulled from under me any minute.

The first year and a half after graduating and this last year have been particularly hard. For the former I was filled with a worry that I had made a grave mistake and that I would never get a job. I felt a deep sense of regret and shame for being “another unemployed artist”. This last year, I have more confidence, I know that I can do the work, I have several times, but the fact is, there just aren’t any jobs right now, and I have no idea when the situation will improve. There is a very real chance that at some point I will have to have a conversation about moving with my partner because of a lack of financial security should things not improve in the coming months. Every job I have ever gotten has been from someone coming to me. At this point, there aren’t any job openings online you can send applications too. Instead I just sit there waiting, refreshing my email, and hoping someone will reach out to me. It puts you in a very powerless position. Something’s got to give, but I just don’t know in which direction.

It also doesn’t help that I admittedly don’t fully know what I want to do with my life. For the sake of expediency (in this already long and rambly interview), I’ve simplified a few things, but there has always been a war in me between if my end goal is to be an art director, or a director. I debated a lot between majoring in Film or Illustration at RISD, and chose Illustration mostly because I liked the department head more. I don’t regret that choice, but I often wonder if I should go back to school for directing, or even screenwriting, something I have taken up in my spare time. I know I want to create, but it is as if I want to be involved in every aspect of the creative pipeline, not just one small corner.

Still, I am immensely grateful that I have made it as far as I have. I am proud of myself for taking a risk, leaving my small town in Wisconsin, and pursuing what I wanted to do. I am proud of myself for pushing myself as hard as I have, and getting to where I am at with less than 10 years of actual art experience. At the same time I am incredibly thankful, and lucky, to have had supportive parents, teachers, and peers. So many people don’t get the chance to pursue what they love because of the families and countries they are born in. I have gotten the chance, and so I feel like it is a mitzvah for me to make the best of what I have been given.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I have found over my time making art that my passion lies in anything related to cityscapes and environments. I’ve never particularly loved drawing people, in fact it’s probably my biggest weakness, instead I’ve always been attracted to the surroundings, especially the built environment. It’s only natural that I have found the bulk of my work in doing background painting, and visual development art related to the urban form.

Making a place feel real is of the utmost importance to me, even in a highly stylized show, I want everything I paint to have a purpose, to make sense. On Velma, there was an episode set in Sacramento, and I practically begged the art director and background lead to let me go into the background designs and tweak them so they better reflected the real Sacramento. I knew they were minor changes, and technically not my duties, but I also knew someone from that city would end up watching the episode and go “hey, I know that place, wow the artists really took their time to know my city”. I was very lucky to be given a long leash on that project, as in general I’m not one to overstep my bounds, but they let me make some of those changes. Over a year later, when the show came out, someone on Twitter messaged me saying that I included the church their parents got married in one of my backgrounds, and it was really cool. I felt very vindicated.

In general I am really good at finding ways to connect things back to the things I am passionate about. I think one of the reasons I was brought on for Velma is because the show takes place in a fictional California town, and a lot of my work is very intrinsically Los Angeles. I felt deeply impassioned about every background I worked on, because I knew it “existed” only a short distance away from me and the world I know and love. For a background I was assigned to design, I put some apartments in based off ones in North Hollywood I would regularly see. However even on projects that are more fantastical it is still easy for me to find those connections. I love movies, watching movies is my primary hobby, and so even for something that is very unrelated to my own life, it is very easy for me to connect things back to the movies and stories I love.

Another thing I am really proud about when it comes to my own art is how hyper specific it can be. One of my favorite movies is Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla reboot. My absolute favorite scene in it is when a monster fight plays out from the perspective of a child watching the news. I think it’s such a creative and funny, but also harrowing way to present what could just be another generic monster battle. The scene makes me wonder, what would it be like in that world to be working for CNN and have to broadcast a disaster that feels completely unprecedented and impossible. Taking inspiration from real world disasters, I made a painting of the inside of that newsroom, in chaos, as people edit together the news of that monster fight. I showed it to one of my former professors at RISD and he said “no one, in the history of humanity, has ever made a piece of fanart like this.” I take very strong pride in those words.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
If you know Tom McGrath, let him know I want to thank him for putting me on this path.

In all seriousness, follow me, interact with my art, enjoy it, that’s the most important thing. If you think I am the right fit for a project, keep me in mind. I try to be pretty good with checking my email, so that’s definitely the best way to reach out to me. In general I do prefer working on larger projects, I am a huge fan of the collaborative environment, going into the office, things like that, it’s definitely a long term goal of mine to be able to support myself fully through industry work. However I am certainly not opposed to working in smaller freelance roles and in general just love to collaborate. I really need to start selling prints, it’s something I’ve chronically procrastinated on. Once I get that up and running, hopefully in the near future, if you like my art, buy a print of it!

Pricing:

• Hourly rate is $50 USD

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kbyrand.myportfolio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kadebyrandart/
• Twitter: https://x.com/Kbyrandart

Image Credits
Kade Byrand