Thomas Bryson-King

Thomas Bryson-King, a London-based illustrator and animator, makes bright cartoons that are a little too cheerful to be harmless. Color and absurd jokes share the frame. Reality and invention slide into what he has called a descent into “total nonsense.”

Bryson-King's entry into animation was propelled by the medium's potential for "strangeness and rule-breaking," a philosophy that still defines the work. His characters are bizarre yet easy to like. "My drawings are a form of self-entertainment," he shares, "an attempt to make myself laugh, which has always been integral to my process." Recently, he has pushed the pictures toward positivity, a choice against the usual gloom.

His style holds across jobs, whether a commission for W Magazine or a personal piece of a dog looking into the cosmos without comment. "I aim to craft worlds brimming with joy and populated by eccentric, flamboyant individuals," he reveals. "While my earlier work often depicted people on the cusp of a breakdown, I now find myself drawn to creating figures that exude an unsettling happiness—a reverse panic attack, if you will."

The week still splits between paid work and private play. His collaboration with W Magazine to animate a piece on Tyrell Hampton showed he can tell a vivid story on someone else’s brief. The dog’s indifferent stare is the other desk, the one that makes strangers smile.

Bryson-King's art is less a surrender of control than a decision to keep the joy that shows up when a scene goes wrong. The animations ask you into a place where the ordinary becomes slightly marvelous, and the strange starts to look like a normal Tuesday. Nostalgia and a present-tense joke sit together. The expected and the unexpected share a room.

In a week that takes itself too seriously, the pictures offer a pause: look for the laugh inside the odd thing. His view pushes against the usual gravity, asking you to keep color and joy even when the scene is one step from chaos. The W Magazine job and the cosmic dog are still the same hand: one paid, one private, both a little too happy to be harmless. He has said the drawings are self-entertainment first, an attempt to make himself laugh. The public can have the laugh after.