Matt Braly

Braly was inspired to pursue a career in animation after a "career day" at high school, where a Pixar animator drew an image of Lumiere from Disney's Beauty and the Beast while talking about working on animation for a living,[2] and started his career studying at the CalArts institute. After graduating, he joined DreamWorks Animation, where he worked as an storyboard artist in the computer-animated film Turbo (2013).[3]

While working on Turbo, Braly and several other DreamWorks Animation storyboard artists went to visit Alex Hirsch, who was working on a show titled Gravity Falls (2012–16) for Disney Television Animation.[3] Hirsch also went to CalArts and, while they never studied together, Braly liked his student films.[3] During the visit, Hirsch pitched Gravity Falls to Braly.[3]

Fascinated by the concept and how Hirsch wanted it to be serialized program, Braly did a test to work on the show, after which he was hired, serving as a storyboard artist and director for the series.[3] Braly credited Hirsch as the one who "taught [him] so much about storytelling, about developing characters and developing a world", as well as the one who inspired him to create his own show.[3] The series premiered on June 15, 2012, and ended on February 15, 2016.[4] In 2016, Braly won an Annie Award for directing the Gravity Falls episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery".[5] Braly also served as an in-house key animator for the closing scene for the episode "Not What He Seems".[6]

After directing on Big City Greens,[3][7] Braly developed a show titled Amphibia, for Disney.[8] The show centers on the adventures of a Thai-American girl named Anne Boonchuy in the titular frog-populated world.[8] The show is based on Braly's childhood trips to Bangkok, Thailand, where he felt like an outsider but ultimately ended up not wanting to leave.[9] He also drew inspiration from video games such as The Legend of Zelda and Chrono Trigger.[10] Braly, who is Thai-American himself, made the choice of making the lead character Thai-American due to a wish to creating a Thai character, as there were few Thai lead characters in television series when he was a kid.[11] The series aired for three seasons of 58 episodes from June 17, 2019, to May 14, 2022. He considers the series finale "The Hardest Thing" to be his favorite episode.[12]

In August 2023, Braly wrote a Sonic the Hedgehog online comic strip as a part of the Sonic Fast Friends Forever campaign.[13] He is currently working on a graphic novel, set for release in 2024, and is developing a feature film.[14] Braly is also supervising development on a series of shorts exploring social issues.[14]

Braly is of Thai descent. His mother, On Braly, provided the voice of Mrs. Boonchuy on Amphibia.[15] He is currently married to software engineer, Kathrine Bedrosian.[16]

As a kid, Braly used to watch films such as Mortal Kombat (1995) due to them being filmed in Thailand, as there was no Thai representation on TV.[11] He also used to draw characters from franchises like Mortal Kombat and Sonic the Hedgehog.[2] Braly is a fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and was inspired by the opening sequence in the first episode of the anime Sonic X for the climax of the Amphibia episode "True Colors".[2] Similarly, he was inspired by several horror films for the episode "The Shut-In" due to being a horror fan.[2] He is also a fan of the Disney series Gargoyles and the film The Princess and the Frog; cast members from both productions have appeared through Amphibia.[17] Both Braly and his wife are fans of RuPaul's Drag Race; RuPaul himself had a recurring role in season 3 of Amphibia.[18]

• Matt Braly at IMDb