In a career that spans over three decades, Brad Rader has worked in the animation industry as a layout and storyboard artist on numerous TV series including The Real Ghostbusters, The Simpsons and Batman. His foray into directing won him an Emmy for HBO’s Spawn. He has also illustrated graphic novels and comic books and recently formed the Experienced Workers committee at TAG.
For his 10th birthday, Rader’s parents gave him “The Art of Disney Animation” and he fell in love with the craft. Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, he and his siblings—two brothers and three sisters— all liked to draw. Rader recalls how they’d sketch out story ideas and pass their drawings around. At a young age, he decided he was going to be one of the successors of Disney’s Nine Old Men. But he soon realized, “I couldn’t draw the same thing twice, let alone 24 times per second.” So he took up drawing comic books, and by age 12, in 1972, his first love had been supplanted by a new one. Throughout high school and college, nothing mattered more than becoming a comic book artist.
Rader’s junior high school art teacher, a graduate of the ArtCenter College of Design, advised him to pursue the craft. He took her advice literally, graduating from ArtCenter in March 1983, when he set about searching for whatever work he could find in California. He heard that Ruby-Spears was looking for storyboard artists, so he thought he’d apply, despite having scant samples of storyboards in his portfolio. As it turned out John Dorman, the head of storyboard, was “super into comics” and Rader had plenty of illustrations to show him. At the time, Dorman was using people like influential creator Jack Kirby for storyboards and character design on action- adventure shows. “[Dorman] gave me my first job—God bless him— because I wouldn’t have hired me,” Rader says with a laugh.
Unfortunately, with that job, no training was provided. Rader describes the instructions he was given on his first day: Keep the camera angle low; don’t block screen directions; cut out the script and tape it down on the board before starting; and a list of a few essential camera movements. Rader turned to the other new hire, Dan Riba, to ask him what a pan and a tuck were. The rest he learned on the job by watching over the shoulders of his fellow professionals and comparing notes. Within two months, Rader says, Dorman fired him, and in the same breath provided him with contact information to Hanna-Barbera studios located just across the street. “I went over and introduced myself to Kay Wright who was producing on The Dukes and Richie Rich as well as The Little Rascals series.”
After work at Hanna-Barbera dried up, Rader struggled to find his next job. Eight months later he was freelancing at DIC while also working as a security guard at the Norton Simon Museum of Art. It was a hectic schedule as he was frequently pulling all-nighters. It was at this time he met his mentor, French artist and director Bernard Deyriès. Rader brought the storyboards he was working on to Deyriès, who asked him if he wanted to make his own changes. Rader had never been offered this opportunity before and says he was essentially working blind, following the script religiously. Rader watched Deyriès make changes in the margins of his storyboard paper. It was a revelation to him to see how he opened up the story, making his own additions. “All the things that took him about five pages of storyboard to play out, I’d done in one long shot pan,” recalls Rader. He pointed out to Deyriès that he’d followed the script as instructed. Deyriès pointed to his version, and asked in his French accent: But is this not better?
Inspired, Rader went home and applied what he’d learned to the remaining third of the storyboard. “It was like a light went on in my head,” he says. After that, Deyriès put him on staff where he continued to value the mentorship. “That’s one of the things that really interests me, is how to pay that forward—because I’d say in all honesty that I think Bernard saved my life—I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met him,” he says.
Rader continued working for DIC on shows like The Real Ghostbusters and Alf Tales. By 1991 he was at Warner Bros. on Batman, which led to finally getting his much sought-after foothold in comic book illustration. He then segued into directing animation, which he pursued from 1993 to 1998, culminating in winning an Emmy in 1999 for best longform animation for his work on HBO’s Spawn. Despite this milestone award, in the first six years of the 21st century it became difficult to find work. There was a shift to anime and manga and shows were being bought and dubbed into English rather than new work being commissioned.
Fortunately, Rader’s frequent freelance work with director Anthony Chun landed him a job on the final two seasons of King of the Hill. Over the years his approach has shifted, he says, in that he now anticipates more what clients’ issues are and what they might want, rather than doing what he thought was right and then having them tell him differently. More recently, he worked on Bob’s Burgers, which he left in 2017 after eight seasons.
While he’s currently working on Titmouses’s Bless the Harts, Rader also finds time to pursue his own passion project. In 2003, he started Flaming Artist Press and has published his own homoerotic comic magazines and artwork. He has noticed that since he turned 60 it’s been harder to find work, which is one of the reasons he’s started the Experienced Workers committee where he hopes to address best practices for getting and maintaining work. “I want to flip the script,” he says. “You know how they say don’t put anything older than ten years on your resume. Screw that—I’ve got 34 years of experience and I’m going to brag about it!” He wants to highlight how experienced workers know how to get things done and can continue to learn and evolve their skills. He also wants to promote mentorship, to pay forward the experience he had with his own mentor, Deyriès, who was such an important influence on his career.
If you are interested in learning more about the Experienced Workers committee, email Rader at ewc@tag839.org or visit Rader’s website at www.bradrader.net.
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