Meet Bryan Engram
Bryan Engram is the CEO and CCO of Brazen Animation, an award-winning animation studio based in Dallas, Texas. Brazen Animation works with the world's top brands and IPs, including Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Warner Bros., Marvel, Fortnite, and more.
In this episode, Bryan shares and retraces his journey, creative and spiritual journeys, and discusses the studio's exciting expansion into gaming with their newly launched venture, Brazen Games, and their debut title, Green Ember: Helmer and the Dragon Tomb.
Brazen Animation
Brazen Games
Green Ember: Helmer in the Dragon Tomb (Steam)
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Thank you. Thank you for having me Brock. I really appreciate being here. Thank you so much.
Absolutely. It was a really it was a blessing for me to be there with with you and everyone else. That was having so many people that are like-minded and want to serve and honor God with their talents and their gifts.
(...) It's real. It's real. Again, I'm grateful and it's a blessing and it's amazing that God allows us to come together in that way.
Thank you.
Yes, absolutely. I hopefully came across how much I love those guys. I love I love Sam and Josiah's heart and their heart for kids and families and to tell stories that are meaningful. And,(...) you know, even if it's not, you know, the Green Ember is not a story that is overtly faith based per se.(...) It does point toward Jesus. Absolutely. And so I love that about about them, about their entire family and about their ability to tell those stories.
Yes, I can. I can go all the way back.
Okay. Well, you know, I grew up.
My dad left when I was I it starts like a tragic story and I apologize, but it does show that how God works in our lives. Right. So but, you know, my mom, she had me when she was 30.
My dad left when I was two days old.
And so she raised my brother and I by herself. And we grew up pretty pretty poor in government departments. And and so, as you'd imagine, you know, that upbringing could be tough.
There were lots of abuse and things like that around in in that type of environment.
But I will say that there were some pretty amazing things that happened that God, you know, God has been with me the whole way because my grandparents, my mom's parents were very influential. My grandfather was an elder in the church that they were in. And my grandmother was an amazing woman. In fact, there are, I think, six kids and grandkids are named after her. And so, you know, the only time I got to go to church was with my grandparents.
So I would, my mom would drop me off and I would stay with them a lot. In fact, actually, even early on, my mom could not handle necessarily me as a baby in light of what had just happened with my dad. And so actually, I think the first six months of my life, my grandmother was raised me.
And so, but my mom is a very I love her and I'll just brag on it for a second. She's very, very smart. She got her bachelor's in theater. Her minor was in music. Her master's was in classical literature.
And so if you can imagine growing up in that environment where there's lots of drug abuse and general, you know, verbal abuse and physical abuse and things like that. I had this mother who would we'd watch movies together and she would teach me about, you know, acting. She would teach me about story and she would actually like literally stop, you know, if we're watching a movie, she would stop the movie and say, hey, Brandon, watch what this actor does here. You see what they're doing. And so we'd talk about that. She would talk about Shakespeare. She would talk about Beowulf. She would talk about the, you know, the Illy did Odyssey. She would talk about so as you can imagine, it's a quite a dichotomy of an experience of growing up really poor and very dysfunctional while at the same time having this.
Both the this amazing spiritual influence from my grandparents, but then also the sort of like academic artistic influence for my mom as well.(...) And and you only know later looking back like, wow, God really put some things in place for me that has influenced me greatly in my life and my purpose now. And so,
but I continue to grow up and, you know, I end up acting myself. I always drew. I was always drawing and I played football. So I was into sports and just continued my journey, you know, still dealing with a lot of dysfunction in my family and being in that environment. But, you know, eventually went to college, did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up,
but I became a believer, became a Christian. I was baptized at 19.
And that's when I really, really started to focus on studying the Bible and getting the word.(...) And during my college years, actually, I would I would guess preach it at small churches.
So like they would like small churches that maybe they didn't have a full time minister or whatever. And I would go and or preacher and I would I would go and I'd actually preach in college and and then teach and teach Bible study even for the for the adult classes as well. In fact, one of my Bible studies, adult classes were I taught a class that was called modern day parables where I took movies and clips or movies and I would talk about how the that story and how those films had all these biblical truths in them. And I would I would type the scripture. And so that was actually one of my favorite things that that I ever did with with teaching Bible studies was actually taking films and using them to to teach truths. So it makes sense, obviously, that later I ended up majoring in in film and and in art was, you know, it was it was an art degree with a minor or emphasis in film.(...) And and then I was teaching myself animation on the side. And and then eventually that led me to, you know, basically working at the time, I didn't know anyone doing animation. So I I was teaching myself animation like any books or really literally anything I could find to to learn animation and I spent an entire year after graduation actually learning and trying to teach myself animation until I got a portfolio at least good enough to finally get me an unpaid internship at Real Effects, which is they're based in Dallas as well. And.
Got got into into Real Effects and that's that's an amazing story I could I could certainly tell. But, you know, God was involved in that where he, you know, I was working at Smoothie King and submitted my work and then the Smoothie King.
They offered me a job to make thirty two thousand dollars a year to manage a Smoothie King and and then I had to went home and I prayed about it and asked God what should I do? And then the next morning I woke up and I had an email from Real Effects saying, do you want to come in and be an unpaid intern? And I knew that was the answer. And and then that sort of month later, then they real effects hired me for thirty seven thousand dollars a year to be a junior layout artist, which is the one that does the camera work and stuff.(...) So it's just just God showing up throughout my life, just constantly showing up in key moments where things that where I thought there was no answer, God would show up with an answer. And and so so that I continue my career Real Effects and went from unpaid intern and then I was a junior animator, then I was a senior animator, then I was a animation director and then I was director of studio animation for that studio. And we grew really quickly.
So over an eight year period, it went from I think 20 people to over 600 and and then left to start brazen. And I'd always known that I wanted to tell stories that were meaningful, purposeful, but do in an excellent way.
You know, I think I think you know, Brock, you and I have discussed before that, you know, unfortunately,(...) there are there are things within faith media, you know, whether it be video games, whether it be film to television.(...) I think unfortunately, there's been a lot of faith media that the the quality and standards were were sort of watered down.(...) So so even if the message was good, the quality wasn't wasn't good. And I believe that God made us to do excellent work. You know, we are the term Pwema, right, that that Greek the Greek, which is where his workmanship or masterpiece in some translations. And and so I believe we're supposed to be excellent and do excellent work and to take the gifts and talents that he's given us and honor him. And so that was the reason we started brazen was for that reason. And, you know, brazen, the Old Testament is the brazen altar. It's where you brought your best to God.(...) And so that's why we called it brazen. And and it's also partly Romans one sixteen, which is I'm unashamed, right, as well. And and to be to be brazen with our faith, to be bold with our faith. And and so, yeah, so that's I try I try to get through as quickly as I could there. But that's yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, definitely. I would say by far, I often talk about it in 3D and 2D, but, you know, I would say I saw I saw a line. I mean, I'd always watched obviously I'd always watched animation growing up as a kid and been in and played video games and been infatuated with both.
And I end up seeing Lion King and that movie has so many things in it that are if you want to talk about like a like a parable or modern day parable. And if you think about Lion King as a film,
think about just the correlation.
And again, whether it was intentional or not, I'm not really sure, to be honest with you as far as the filmmakers are concerned. But, you know, just the idea that there's a scene where where Simba looks down and he looks down in the water and he sees the image of himself and and his father. And then he ends up having that moment where his father's in the clouds and he says, remember, remember who you are.
And that type of storytelling where again, that that film is not overtly faith based in any way, but there's so many things about it that are rooted in this this that scene, especially this Amago day. We are the image of God.
And I just feel like that had a huge profound effect on me that I knew that storytelling and especially animation specifically has the ability to
watch animation or or play games and the stories because of the medium and what it is people people tend to lower like the kind of lower their their guard and they can accept messages that they might not be willing to accept in a live action film or live action.
You know, medium. So, so there was that and then I would say Beauty and the Beast is interesting to me because, you know, you know, Glenn King, who's a who's a believer, you know, he he animated much or was in charge of much of that film in terms of the beast.
And he talks a lot about how there's that final scene where he turns the beast turns into a man and that scene is so powerful because he talks about how when he animated that scene, he viewed it as
us as as as sinners.
And how Christ can make us a new creation,
right? Go from a beast to a man. And so he animated it with that in mind, even though again, there's there's no one no one has ever said that Beauty and the Beast is a faith film. But there was a believer that was influential on that film that that animated in such a way that made it powerful for the audience. Right. And so just knowing that you can tell stories with this medium and do it in such a way that you can touch an audience, even if you're not explicitly saying Jesus,
you can show them you can show them Jesus and touch the soul with storytelling and with specifically this type of storytelling. And, and so, you know, I know that was a long answer to your question, but I just there are certain films that really have had a profound effect on me through the years in my faith.
So, so that sort of the story that's really interesting, which is like, I don't know if I knew it at Smoothie King.
But I will tell you shortly after that, I mean, really shortly after that, and just keep in perspective. So I was hired on a three month unpaid internship. It real effects.(...) And I didn't actually have enough money like my mom. I was newly married. My wife and I didn't have any money.
And I knew I wasn't gonna be able to last the full three months.
And so again, that was again, God,(...) you know, I kind of already told you about the part about getting hired. But then God showed up again, like a month later, because we only had enough money in the bank to last us a month.
So I actually was getting ready to have to go talk to my bosses about I don't I don't know if I can afford to do this. And so I had gone in that day. It was exactly a month. In fact, I could tell you it was it was in October.(...) And so I started my internship on the beginning of October. And this was like the very end of October, like almost toward, you know, like the 30th 30th 31st.
And I was getting ready to go to go talk to my boss about I don't know what to do. And he came in, he knocked, he knocked on my desk before I could even get talked to him, knock on my desk and say, hey, come talk to me. And that's when he pulled me in an office and he said,
he said, you know, Brian, he said, you know, you're not you're not a what do you say? He said, he said,(...) so I know you want to be an animator, right? And I said, yes, sir, I do. He said, well, you're you're not very good. I said, okay, I said, okay. He said, he said, but you but you but you will be.(...) And he said, so what I'd love to do, though, is I'd love to start you off.
He said, we just won a direct DVD movie for Hasbro.
And it was it was like it was one of those ones was 45 minutes long. It was one of those ones that they put in the toy. So you like you buy the toy and you get you also get the get the film. And he said, so I want to start you as a junior layout artist doing the cameras and, you know, cinematography. He said, you know, your degree was in film, you know, cameras, you know, composition,(...) you know, the software, which is Maya.(...) So I'm gonna start you there.
And then so what I would do is I would basically I would do layout during the day and then go home at night and work on animation.
And well, so so again, as I said, he said, I'm gonna start you at thirty seven thousand dollars a year, which was again just a month prior was thirty two thousand with smoothie King.
And so, well, within that period of time,
a big idea had had gone under, you know, big idea that, you know, veggie tales. So big idea had gone under and we had hired real effects that hired a bunch of sort of key people from big idea.
And so that was amazing for me because I had I had been following big idea and veggie tales for a while and I love the silly songs and all those things.
And so all of a sudden, those influx of people that came in and we went to we went to lunch and we were going around the room. We were talking and I like to ask the question to even now, like that's question. Hey, what do you want to do? Like, what do you see yourself later in life and your career and that sort of thing? They're going around the room and finally came back to me and I said, Brian, what do you want to do?
And I said,(...) I remember just it was kind of funny looking back on it because I just I just sort of put it out there and I said, well, you know, I would love.
I would love it if.
One day I could maybe maybe I have a studio that could tell stories that honor honors God the way that, you know, big idea did. But but what if it was like at a high, like really high level quality? Like what if you could do it like at a Disney or Pixar level?
And I just remember putting that out there and that was so crazy to me thinking about it now, Brock, as I put it out there, that was the beginning of my career.
That was like the first month that I was I mean, I was still an intern, right?
And then and then to fast forward and see that that that thing that God put on in my heart eventually came true and and and and that's what and that's what I mean, that thing that I said is what is what brazen is right. And so anyway, I just I praise God for it because I.
Clearly he has again, that's why I told the story of how I grew up is because if you just look back at my life, it's like God has literally been guiding and directing and putting things in my path to help me get to this place, right?
For for what I believe is the purpose is the reason why I'm on this earth. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, okay, so I have to there's the there's there's there's the young Brian who could basically eat anything from smoothie King and so that one that one's called Peachy King and that one is basically it's Hoggandah ice cream with with peaches and yeah, that was so that that's not that's like a shake. Really, it's not a really smoothie. So that that's what I said, that's what I love back then.
Now actually, when I go to speaking, I'll get the it's called the peanut power plus chocolate. So it's basically peanut butter and chocolate, but it's a it's a it's more of a muscle builder type smoothie. So I absolutely they're actually they're right by my house. So yes, definitely. Definitely.
Oh,
wow.
So,
so I have the honor of being animation director for both the Simpsons ride universal and also the minion the minion right at Universal.
And that is really a different process because in both cases, you have essentially what amounts to it, it needs to feel like a seamless like one seamless camera, right? Moving moving through space.
And then also you have the hydraulics. So you have you have the developers or the programmers that are at Universal.(...) So you have to make sure that the camera and the moves that you do with the camera are going to work with the ride. So you don't make it you don't make anyone sick. Right. And so there's there are basically that process of going back and forth and we had to do that a lot, which is you would you would animate the camera and you really had to make sure the camera. With a ride the camera, I'm not gonna say it's more important than the animation performance because they have to work together. But if the if the camera doesn't work, which means the ride doesn't work, then you've you've made it you've really you're going to cause people throw up and be sick and have a horrible experience. So you have to basically fly back and forth where you do the camera you fly to Orlando.
In this case, flight Orlando,(...) they program the camera back into it, you actually get in the ride itself and you ride it yourself and see how it feels. And then you're basically taking notes and saying, okay, yeah, that section is too sharp. We need to change the tilt of the camera or the speed or whatever. And then and then fly back and then make the adjustments and then fly back out there. And so, oh, yeah, yes, definitely. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, sick or like, like, like whiplash, like, oh, no, that's too hard. You know, absolutely. Yes, for sure. So, yeah. Yeah.
Yes,
yes, yeah, absolutely. And so you and you have to and that's a good point because you have to
whether it's a ride or whether it's a film or whether it's a video game, you have to you have to really sort of like separate yourself.
Almost have an out of body experience in a way where you've you put yourself in a position of the end user or the end viewer and basically say, okay, now I'm not the filmmaker. I'm not the creator.
I am the I'm the person I'm the audience now and literally try to separate yourself from that. And in fact, it's interesting. I heard people who have worked with John Lasseter and they've talked a lot about why he was so successful at Pixar. And they said that was that's actually his superpower is his ability to somehow detach himself from the film that he was making to where he can he can he can view it from the audience's eyes and not not. Yes. And yeah, and what's amazing is that allows allows him to be not defensive with notes.
Right. So, so, so people like, oh, you know, this section doesn't work or this thing doesn't work. And he can he can totally sit in a room and have people beat up his film. And he's, and he's, and he's fine. He's totally okay. Yeah.
And, and so that's I just think that's a that's a really powerful thing as a as a creator of any medium to be able to learn how to do.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Because can you because how are you able to, you know, you know, this term, are you, are you able and willing to allow people to call your baby ugly? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. You know, the let's take something as simple as not simple. It's all it's all hard, but but let's take something like making sure that you're animating the cycles. So let's say you're working on a game and you're working the animation cycles within the game, which is, you know, it's just, you know, you're talking about gameplay and response on this and things like that.
And the ability, you know, and then so you've got, you've got animators and artists trying to make that work. And they're trying to make that look as good as they can. But then you have developers that are saying, well, listen,
for this, for this gameplay to work, this, we have to, you know, we can't use that many frames in the cycle or we can't, it can't take that long for that move.
And so having the artists and, you know, where art and science meet and having those people work together collaboratively to where they're both trying to help each other to make for the best experience. And so that definitely is the case in making a ride film at a theme park. And it's certainly the case in making a video game where it is truly collaboration. It's not, it's not like one, one serves the other or this one serves that one. It's, it's, you have to work together to get the experience to work.
And so, you know, even, even with a game, you're, you're redoing those cycles over and over and over. And you're working with the, with the developers over and you're plugging it back in the engine. And you're like, okay, how does that work? Okay, how does that play? And that's where all the game testing comes in. Right. And, and so that, that's just one example. But, but you're absolutely right. You have to work together. And it's constant and it's just this, this round robin or this, this, this very cyclical feedback loop that happens between the teams over and over.
Yeah.
Definitely. Well, I, you know, I would say, I would say before brazen, I can give you two answers that, you know, before brazen, I would say one of, one of my projects I'm most proud of is, well, there were, there were two at real effects. And so one was, one was, one was faith oriented and one was not, but so the, the non-faith one was, I got to be animation director on,
it was a series of Looney Tunes short films that were theatrical. And they were, and they were also at the time, they were, they were stereoscopic as well. So you actually, they were theatrical and you would put the glasses, glasses on.
And the reason I have always been really proud of that one is because that was one of the first projects that we did at real, you know, real effects eventually went on to do feature films and,
but that wasn't a period of real effects where we were trying to grow and push the quality level of what the studio could produce in order to do feature films.(...) And so with those being feature film shorts and they were with these beloved Looney Tunes characters for Warner Brothers,(...) the Warner Brothers client had said that they had spent years trying to figure out how to get the 2D sensibilities that were in the Looney Tunes into 3D animation.
And they had struggled quite a bit. Like the, the people were really, were still struggling a lot to try to get, like how do you make Bugs Bunny look and behave and feel like the animation style of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck or, you know, Road Runner, Wileen Road Runner. And so what they had done, what Warner Brothers had done at the time is they basically decided, well, if we can't make it look like those classic cartoons,(...) what we'll do is we'll just basically, we'll just, we'll just create something different that's like Wileen Road Runner. They essentially redesigned the characters completely and they were just, they were just, they were just, they were just another thing so that it wouldn't be compared.
Well, the problem is when we, we were awarded those short films from Warner Brothers and my good friend Matt O'Callaghan was at Warner Brothers and he had, they had sent over the models or the designs for the models and they, they, they'd look like the,
the best way to describe it, they kind of look like Tiny Toon Adventure versions. They were like, it was Wileen Road Runner, but it was like, they didn't look like themselves. They like had big heads and like big, like their ears,(...) big head and a pot belly and like big feet. And like, it just, it just didn't look like, you know, Wileen Road Runner. And, and the problem for me was, is I was concerned that,
well, first of all, I didn't want to do those versions because I was concerned that people would, would see them and say, well, you know, real effects basically ruined, you know, Wileen Road Runner.
And so I was talking with Matt about it and, and Matt was like, yeah, I know Brian. I, I kept telling him, I was like, Matt, we cannot, like we cannot do, like, there's gotta be different ways. He's like, he's like, I know I've talked to the executives of Warner Brothers and this is what it's going to have to be. And,
and so, so what I did was I told the team at Real Effects. I said, listen, we can't, we have to somehow figure out how to do this and make it look like the Chuck Jones 1950s. The versions that we know and we love, we have to find a way to do this. And so what I had the team do is basically we, we were still in the, in the modeling and rigging phase.
And I had them model a version that looked like what they had sent us.
And then I, I told my rigging supervisor, I said, remember I'm animation director. So I'm talking with him and I said, open up all the channels on the rig. So what that means is, you know, on a character rig, a lot of times you'll lock the channels so that you can't really stretch or squash as much. And I said, I said, just unlock everything.
And then, just, just let me, just let me play with it. So I took Wiley home over the weekend and I took the model that we had. And I, I literally just started pushing and pulling him and scaling his body and changing the proportions.
And I took the original model sheet from Chuck Jones.(...) And I, I just, I've started to pose him to look like the Wiley coyote that we all know and love.
And so we had a meeting the following Monday with Warner Brothers and it was on a, you know, it was on a, on a call and like, like, like a zoom or whatever it was. And I told my, I told the production manager, I said, I said, don't send this right away. Wait till like five minutes before the call and then send it.(...) And so we sent it so that they had basically both versions. I had, they had the version they asked for and then they had the version where it was Wiley posed and all the, the, and, and I'll never forget. I mean, for as long as I live, I'll never forget when the camera popped on Matt was did this.
And he said, he said, Brian, you're going to get me fired.
And so I said, I said, Matt, I'm not, I'm not trying to get you fired. That's not my intention. I said, I just, I feel really like I feel like I, we have to, we have to make these characters.
People are going to blame us if we run these characters. So, so he goes, okay, okay. Well, I've got an executive meeting this afternoon.
I'll, I'll present it. So that's what he did. He, he presented.
The, the one that they had said, and then right off that he presented what I had done over the weekend. And then once they saw it, the, the executive said, okay, okay, fine. Let's, let's, let's do it. And so then once we got the green light to do that, then we went all out. I mean, we basically like, okay, we're going to animate the style of the Looney Tunes. We're going to do smear frames and multiples. And like, at this time,(...) you have to remember this is, you know, this is way before spider verse or, or peanuts or any of the ones that had, had done any sort of like that type of thing where you're basically trying to push CG to feel more 2d.
And so that year,
that, that first short, the one, the first short that we did was, it was shortlisted for the Oscars,
a VES nomination and an anti-nomination.
And,
and I, there was just a sense of like a real accomplishment with actually moving the industry. I felt in some ways moving the industry forward in terms of like, what, what 3d animation could be moving forward.
So that, that's one.(...) The other one is, is I got an amazing chance to work with Yarrow Cheney and his wife, Carrie.
And we did a Christmas special called,
it was, it was, at one point it was called the very first Noel and now it's called the three wise men.(...) And it was a 22 minute Christmas special that aired on ABC.
And they look like little miniature ornaments.(...) But it was, it was the voice was done by Andy Griffith just before he passed.(...) And it was, it was about the three wise men going to see Jesus. And I still love that.(...) I love that project. It was very, I was very emotional the whole time, making it. Because it was the first project I'd ever worked on. It was faith that was overtly faith based and, and, you know, Yarrow went on and Yarrow was the became after that he, he, he went to. Illumination. He was the director on the Grinch and he was, he was the, he's actually the, he was the art director that defined the Despicable Me style as well.(...) Yeah. And so Yarrow is amazing, amazing believer and, and his wife, Carrie. So, so that those are my two projects that I, that I love the most. And again, they,(...) I think you can hear the pattern, right? It's pushing quality. And also there's faith involved. And, and I just think those two things about wanting, wanting to be excellent for God, right? Like wanting to do excellent things and, and tell stories that are redemptive. And it brazen, of course, we have our own IP, like temp, like tempest is one of ours. And so there, there are things that we still are doing and want to continue to do. And I think that over the last couple of years of brazen,(...) God has blessed us with, you know, we, we've still worked with one of brothers at brazen. We still, you know, we've worked on Marvel and things like that. But, you know, God has been bringing us projects. We've worked on the, the, he gets us campaign.
He, we've worked on the chosen animated series. We've worked on the green ember.
And so what God has done is he's this, this mission and vision that he's sort of put forth for brazen.
You know, it's taken us a while to where we've gotten to the point where we can finally start doing, working on these types of projects. God is, is bringing them to us now. And it's been an absolutely amazing and really a true blessing that we can finally start to do the thing that we set out to do. To begin with. So yeah.
I, I think that God is, has been putting things in place to where, what it seems, you know, and his ways are higher than ours. Right. And so for me to know exactly where, where God's going to take us, but where it seems he's taking us is where a combination of working with other like-minded people that are, that are, you know, believers who want to tell redemptive stories.
And we, we work with them on their stories and we help them as a, as a service provider, right? In a sense, in terms of like, we work with them, we help them, we partner with them on these things.(...) And then God has also been opening doors for our own intellectual property. You know, the stories that we have internally brazen as well.(...) And you know, and that's not to say that we're still not going to be able to work on the, the Warner brother projects or the Marvel projects or, you know, we do, we work on all the, all the John Madden football games, which is great.
But I think that God is really, this is an interesting time culturally and within the world where I think people are,(...) there's a yearning and striving for, for redemptive and meaningful work. And I just feel like, I feel like people now are already reaching out to us more and more to help them, help them with that, with their stories. And then also people coming to us about our stories as well. And I would love, I would love if brazen became a company where it allows people to come together to tell these things because, you know, there, there has been a period of time historically where like, there are a lot of believers that wouldn't work necessarily work together. They would, they're kind of in silos. They like, they were doing their thing and they're doing their thing. And I just think that God's bringing people together for the kingdom to work.
And it almost is like God saying, okay, you guys can't be separate anymore. It's time. It's time to be together and use your collective talents together. So does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
Oh.
Absolutely.
Wow. That I mean, the short answer is absolutely. Yes.(...) There's a much longer answer there.
We have, you know,
especially as you get closer to fulfilling the mission and vision.
It seems like there, there are more spiritual attacks that come and,(...) and, you know, Satan wants nothing more than to, you know, he's the accuser. He wants to divide people. He wants to, you know, in some ways he wants to tempt.
And I believe we've been offered projects that would go completely against our values that with very large budgets that I've just simply had to turn down because, you know, and, and that it's such a large budget that it would change the trajectory of the company. Right.
So it's not, it's not who we are and it's not what we're about. It's not, we're going to, what we're going to do. And, and so, so there's been that there's been, there's been, you know,
maybe, maybe people that both internally and externally trying to attack the company in different ways.
And I just, I, so,(...) you know, there's all, there's, there's financial challenges that come with running a company, of course. Right. And so I just, I just, I feel like that,
that,
how should I put it? I don't want to sound like a victim by any stretch because, because God, because God has actually been the one taking care of us the whole time.(...) But I do feel like in some ways, Satan has thrown a lot at us to try to, to try to get us to fail. And, but, but God, the God keeps showing up, man. I mean, I, I go to work every day, feeling like I'm surrounded by angels protecting me seriously. And, and so, and I know that as we continue that,
that as we find more, let's call it more, more influence and culture,
I think that Satan will try even harder. Right. And, but I think, but I think that at the same time, God finds a way to refine you through those, through that, into those processes and try to prepare you for that. And I definitely feel like that, that has been the case where these challenges have, have, have been difficult and they've, they've been hard to, to endure in some cases. But also God has been refining the same way he refines a fire and, and tries to, to purify the gold. Right. And, and so, and I think that's to get us ready for the future of what brazen is going to be and, and to fulfill the mission and vision that he set up. Yeah.
Did that answer the question, by the way? Okay. Okay.
Yes. So,
you know, the evolution of us in games has been interesting in that when we, when we first started, you know, when we very first started the company, we were doing mostly like, like ad agency work for, you know, for, for agency like commercials, you know, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, things like that.(...) We did, we did some work for Dallas Mavericks, you know, for the, the jumbotron.
And then we made a conscious decision, a purposeful decision to pivot into doing marketing and like game cinematics.
Because what we found is we just found that the, the games industry,(...) they,
I'm trying to be careful and diplomatic here, so forgive me. But the games industry seemed to be an industry where the clients appreciated our work a little bit more, if that makes sense,(...) in terms of like, like, like, appreciate the artistry and those things. So, but so we pivoted into that, but we were doing game cinematics and they were pre-rendered, you know, like using Maya and then after a while the game studios were like,
"Well, can you, can you work in engine? Could you do cinematics in engine?" And we were like, "Yeah, we can do that." So we, you know, Unity and Unreal and started doing cinematics with an engine.
And then that turned into, "Wow, we, you know, we love your work so much. Could you do, could you actually help on the dev side?" Meaning, could you, like, could you do cycles and the, you know, the lighting in the actual game? And could you do, so that, that's when we started getting the, you know, Frostbite is the, is EA's engine and we started getting into like all these other studios, their, their proprietary engines and working into those.
And so it just became this really interesting evolution of, of doing animation cinematic, just, you know, purely cinematics to in-game cinematics to cut scenes to in-game animation, lighting effects.
And pretty soon we realized, "Wait a second, we're, like, we're learning how to make games."(...) Right? And, and so then that's why it's been so amazing working with Sam and Josiah is that, you know, we,(...) I've talked with Sam for eight years about making a feature film, making a series,(...) but then, you know, this opportunity of, of what could, what if we could make a game together?(...) And, and so we were like, "Yeah, let's, let's do it." And, and so it's funny because I bought brazinggames.com like 11 years ago.
But I, but, but not, but not knowing when or if we would, we would ever use that URL or that, or that brand.
And, and then suddenly we know here we are. We, we, we made a game, the Green Ember and launched brazinggames. This is a division of brazing animation. And, and then, and then we already, we already have other game projects we're working on, you know, like the development, like, "Hey, we want you to build our, you know, want you to build our game." So it's funny how God works, man. He just, it, it's,(...) it just, he is so amazing in the way that he guides our path, our paths and where we go. And you don't, you never know, you never know till you look back. Like, that's why, just think about that. I bought that URL, not knowing what would happen eventually. Right. And so, and then when the opportunity came to launch brazinggames, it's like, "Well, here we are."
So, so anyway, it's, it's been phenomenal. Oh yes, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I'll tell a quick story. So one part of that, part of the way that we won the Madden, the Madden, because we've done the last seven, eight years of Madden. And then we've done the last two years of called the call us a ball game for EA Sports.
And part of the way we won that is because I started playing, I started playing Madden. Like,
I think the first version I, and I definitely, because I, I have every job man and football game that's ever come out. I have a copy of it.(...) And, and when I was in college, I would enter Madden tournaments and everything. So when we were talking to EA about doing work for them, I literally said when we were talking, I said, I just want you to know how massive of a gamer I am. I mean, not just Madden, but like I told them, I said, you know, I own every copy of Madden since it's come out. And they're like, what? I've never even heard of someone. I've never even heard of anyone like doing that before. That's crazy.(...) And so I guess the,(...) the, how excited I was about the game and I've played it every year. And like I said, with internments and things like that, they just, they're like, wow, I guess we need to, need to work with these guys. And, and so, so yeah, I mean, like all the Mario's, all the, I'm definitely gamer. And so I, I love, I love video games.
So, and it's a little sad because I have two daughters that they're not as huge of gamers, but I have like a, have a, have a room in my house. It's like, it's kind of, it's sort of like a man cave. It's like a little man cave, little man cave, but I've got games and stuff. And I'm always trying to get my girls to come play with me and they'll, they'll play Mario Kart with me, but like they, they're not, you know,
but, but yeah, man, and the whole studio is that way, by the way, like everyone, everyone in the studio, they're, they're huge gamers here. So it's been great.
Wow. Okay. So let's see. How did that, how did that happen?
Someone had told them about us and they reached out and I cannot remember if it, if it was like a cold email that they reached out.
It definitely wasn't, it wasn't an introduction.
I think they might have just reached out to us cold. And I, but I just think remember, you have to remember how long ago this was, but I think remember that after we, after we talked to them, they immediately scheduled a meeting at the studio. Like they came to the studio. They saw what we were doing.
And, and yeah, and actually right off the bat, we were talking about doing a feature film back then. And, but, you know,
I know Sam eventually wants to do a feature film and in a series. It just hasn't been the right timing.
And so,
but yeah, I mean, we, we hit it off right away, right away, hit it off right away and(...) have been friends ever since and have stayed in touch and, you know, check in on each other, no sent a text. How you doing brother? Praying for you.
So even before making the game, we had just stayed in touch all these years. Yeah.
I think someone had, I think someone had told them that, hey, you might want to look, you might want to look into brazen because I think you guys share the same values.
And so, you know, someone was funny. Someone was funny early on at brazen or not at brazen, but someone was funny, funny early on. They were talking about brazen because
I feel like we're pretty upfront about our faith. Like if you look at our LinkedIn and you look at our posts and things like that. And I feel like I'm open. You know, obviously I'm open in podcasts about my faith.
But people have said that for some reason they view brazen like a, they say we're like sniper Christians.(...) And I was like, I was like, what, what does that mean exactly? I don't know what that means. Like, like, well, you just, you, you are, you're open with your faith, but it's not, it's not, it's not always completely like apparent. Like if you go to our website, there's a lot of metaphors in our website, but maybe it's not overt. And they said, they said, so we, we, we like that because like a sniper Christian is good because they, they, they, they, they, they never see you coming. And I'm like, wow.
And so, so I don't know. I don't know if that's still the case, but I know, I know that that's what I was told, right? So, but it's funny because I feel like I'm, I'm open with it. So if people don't know, I don't, I don't know how they don't know at this point, but so, yeah.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
he had reached out and he had said,
because he wasn't aware that we were already making games ourselves. Like we, because, because we have, we have, we have our own, our own IP. We have our own, our own games. And he wasn't aware of that. He, again, he had only seen the animation stuff that we've been doing. And so when he reached out, he was like, Hey, I, I, we're thinking about wanting to make a game, but we're trying to figure out where, you know, what we want to do and, and exactly, you know, what kind of game we wanted to be and that sort of thing. And I said, I said, Well, you know, you know, we're making our own game, right? He's like, No, I didn't know that. And so then I, we did a, we did a, a call and I actually presented him and I showed him, our, our working our prototypes and stuff for, for our game. And he's like, Oh, this is like, he saw it and he said, this is amazing. This is awesome. I had no idea that you guys were doing this. I was like, yeah, I was like, we, we, we basically have been working at everyone else's game to this point. And we're like, well, why don't we make our own game? And then it was just perfect timing where he said, well, then let's talk about, let's work together on this game. And I said, absolutely. And so then what we did was we, we presented him with several different types of like genres of games, like we were showing, you know, obviously what we, what we landed on eventually was, was sort of this like tunic mix with Zelda, you know, that, that top down three quarter, I think, that's symmetric.
And, but we showed him a bunch of different genres of games like, you know, it could be this, it could be this could be this. We did a full deck presentation. We talked about, you know, art style, things like that.
And, and so he eventually, you know, he fell in love with tunic and, and that sort of Zelda approach for, for Helmer and telling his backstory. And, and that, that character in that series, you know, Helmer sort of like the, the Obi Wan Kenobi of the, of the, of the, of the Green Ember series. And so Bill to tell his backstory and having that companion book that he was writing at the same time. And it just felt like a great, a great approach. And it's worked out really, really well. And, and kids have, I mean, kids, you know, we did a ton of play tests, but kids love, love the game. And, and so we're extremely excited about that and about Bill to further the, the lore and that world and help, helping Sam do that with, with this, with this game. So,
so yeah, that, and the collaboration has been amazing with them.
And so Bill, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think he's, he's a, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's a head. He's always, he's always ahead of us clearly. But, but it was that that's what made the, the experience so great is because,(...) because they were kind of be done in parallel.
And so Bill, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think it's a good balance of just how much story do we get into the game, you know, because you, you obviously don't, you want to bog the game down with stopping down constantly with the story.
He's, he's writing a novel, and then also taking the key parts of that story and making sure that we weave it into the game into the narrative as well.
Yeah. Yeah,
absolutely. So we did it.
So the whole, from start to finish, it was a little over, a little over a year, maybe year and two or three months, something like that.
And which is pretty quick. That's a pretty fast development.(...) And that, and that's starting from scratch, right? That's like, you know, white, you know, gray boxing. And I mean, you're, you're just, we had no, no designs, no characters. We're just working, you know, working from scratch, but the, the overall team, I think the final count, you know, being like, was it like somewhere between 12 and 15 people, I think is where we finished, all told.
And, you know, we ended up having to,
I mean,
the core development team, I think the developers themselves, I think that was seven.(...) But remember we had, we had our department, we had,
so I'm considering everyone involved, right? You know, you know,
creative direction and art director and all that stuff. So, but it was, again, a collaboration amongst their team, our team, and, and the technical hurdles, you know, we were working in Unreal.
And so the game, game is built in Unreal, and really trying to make sure that we could constantly optimize knowing that it was good, you know, it was Mac, PC,(...) iOS, Android, and then now Switch. And so really trying to work hard to make sure that we don't, we didn't end up with a bloated game, you know, because they're, you, you clearly know your experience, you know, that it's pretty easy. You can, you can, you can release something for Mac or PC. And then suddenly you need to port it to, you know, a mobile device, and the thing can't run.(...) Right. And, and then the problem is that you end up getting like really bad, you know, the reviews come in that really bad because the thing's not responsive. And it's like, even if it is a great game, they can't play it.
And so we just wanted to make sure that we were trying to keep all that in, in perspective, and it caused us to make a lot of decisions creatively, even technically and creatively to help, you know, how do you create this big world? Or what feels like a big world, but how do you keep it optimized? So for example, there are certain levels where you'll see the player won't notice, but we know it would like we built it, you know, you go in and you build a tree.(...) And then let's say you build, let's say you build three trees, and you know that you're going to use that tree and you, but you design in such a way that you can constantly turn that those trees and create a forest. And that forest look, it looks like a forest with with and all the trees look different, but it's actually just three trees that you're using over and over. Right. And so it's just things like that. The way we approach the texture, you know, the textures on the environment and the models,(...) make sure those are optimized. And so there was just a lot of things that we had to consider the entire way through about, okay, how do we keep this with the timeline, the scope?
And also the platform and how to make sure we can make this a great gameplay experience and maintain the fun of being fast and fluid and those sorts of things at the same time. Yeah.
Well, lots of things, but I think the biggest thing,
and you use the word career, but I have to have to look at it more like my life.
And I mentioned that earlier, which is, you know,
there have been a lot of challenges, I would say.
I mean, a lot of great things and amazing things in my life, but there've been a lot of challenges in my life.
Growing up the way I grew up and,
you know, even in college, there were struggles with,(...) I couldn't, you know, it took me seven, I didn't mention this before, it took me seven years to get through college because I kept switching majors and schools and things like that. And God has shown up so many times and I've looked back at my life and seen him where he's always taken care of me. And I feel like there's this constant reoccurring theme of, "Brian, you just have to trust me."
And so knowing that he has a plan for all of us, for our life, and then knowing that we just trust him and put our trust in him, he will come through. There's never been a time where he's, there's been times where it has looked dire and I have thought, is this, you know, is this the end of brazen? Is this the end of whatever, right?
And even when I don't think he's there, he's there and he'll answer my prayer and not in a Santa Claus way too.
When that situation, for example, and that situation happened with the Smoothie King and that opportunity,
you know, I went home that night and I got on my face like David and I literally prayed and I was in tears and I was like,
you know, I knew that I wanted to do animation.
But also my prayer to him was literally, "God, not my will, but yours."
And if your goal for me is to be the Smoothie King guy,
right? Then that's what I'll do. I'll do whatever it is that you want me to do. If your plan is not for me to do animation and to be this thing that I feel like I'm supposed to do or being called to do, then I, then just, just, just the thing was just, just my plea to him was just tell me what you want me to do. Just tell me. I'll do whatever you want me to do.
And like I said earlier, the crazy thing is I had, I had that prayer and I got up the next day and my job was to actually open that the Smoothie King store. Like I opened the store every morning and I always checked my mail before I went to work and I opened my email and it was a, it was an email from real effects saying, "Hey, we'd love for you to come in for a three, three month unpaid internship."
And it was literally the next, it was that next day.
And I've had so many situations like that.
Brock, I, I can't, I... There have been times in real effects, this history where we literally had no, we had no money,(...) right? And I didn't know where the money was going to come from. And suddenly a check hits the account. Right? If you, if you want, if you're a business owner, you run a company long enough, you're going to have those ups and downs. I mean, it just happens.
And God just, he just keeps showing up, man. And there's no,
and the message is, "Brian, just trust me. I've got you.(...) I've got it." And it's not, it's not me. It's when I say this, it's not me, it's him.
And so I always have to point toward him. It's all, it's all about him. It's for him. And he made me to honor him. And he put me on, I believe he put me on this earth to serve him. He's given me, he's given me what he's given me. He's given me certain gifts and talents and I should use them and go to him. And I, I was put here to, to worship him with my life.
And so,
so I think, I know that was a long answer maybe than, than what you asked for, but that,(...) that's what it is over and over for me. It's, it's just trusting me. And then to, and to take what he's given me and honor him with it.
Yeah.
Thank you, Brock. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
