Chad Bennett has lived and breathed cartoons his entire life. When he was little, he would run in place mimicking the sound effect that Scooby and Shaggy’s legs made with his mouth, or he’d lightly dab his lips with a napkin after eating, like Sylvester after eating Tweety Bird, and he’d spin around in place like the Tasmanian Devil. His parents found it entertaining, if not a little concerning.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and growing up an only child, Chad had a lot of time to himself, where he fostered a wild imagination, that was only bolstered by animation and comics. He dreamed up stories and worlds and characters and made a point to draw as much of it as he could, as often as he could, mostly through comics. He came to be known by everyone around him as the “art kid,” and he spent most of his childhood drawing almost everywhere he went; at home, at school, on trips, in MS Paint, basically wherever there was a blank canvas or a spiral notebook, Chad was looking to deface it with his silly drawings, inspired by the cartoons he watched religiously on TV.

As a teenager, thanks to the Internet and the advent of social media, Chad was exposed to industry professionals from shows like Adventure Time and Steven Universe sharing processes and explanations of the television animation pipeline. He realized TV animation was a world where not just funny, but truly engaging, smart, and powerful stories could be told… and that making silly cartoons could be a job! With the support of his encouraging parents, who saw his potential even when he struggled to, Chad pursued a degree in animation at Columbia College Chicago. There he found a deep love for storyboarding, which he saw as a combination of his passion for animation and his childhood love of comics.

Post-undergrad, Chad was hungry for opportunities, but initially few came, until the pandemic arrived. Surprisingly, this notably dark time was a boon for him. As his skills improved and he shared more of his work online, industry people, now with a higher amount of time online as well, noticed his talents and passion. This confidence boost gave Chad the push to move to Los Angeles to break into the industry, hoping for the chance to share with others his sense of humor and desire for complexity and diversity in the animation world.

Chad is ecstatic to join the Artist Program and is grateful for the opportunity to work in the studio system and begin his career in animation, where he can hopefully keep living and breathing cartoons for a long time.