Matt Braly

Matthew Benjakarn Braly (born November 8, 1988) is a Thai-American animator, storyboard artist, writer, and director. He is best known as the creator and executive producer of the Disney Channel animated series Amphibia. He also worked as a director on Gravity Falls and Big City Greens.

Early life Braly was born in Sacramento on November 8, 1988, and raised in Davis, while spending his summers, as a child, with his mother's family in Bangkok, Thailand. He also grew up in a bilingual household.

Career After graduating from California Institute of the Arts, he joined DreamWorks Animation, where he worked as a storyboard artist for Turbo (2013). 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. In 2016, Braly won an Annie Award for directing the Gravity Falls episode "Northwest Mansion Mystery".

After directing on Big City Greens, Braly developed a series titled Amphibia for Disney Channel. The series centers on the adventures of a Thai-American girl named Anne Boonchuy in the titular amphibian-populated world. He also drew inspiration from video games such as The Legend of Zelda and Chrono Trigger. 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. The series aired for three seasons consisting of 58 episodes from June 17, 2019, to May 14, 2022. He considers the series finale "The Hardest Thing" to be his favorite episode.

After Amphibia ended production in May 2022, Braly left Disney Television Animation. In August 2023, he wrote a Sonic the Hedgehog online comic strip as a part of the Sonic Fast Friends Forever campaign. Braly mentioned that he was currently working on multiple feature films, including a fantasy-adventure film for Sony Pictures Animation he was set to direct and co-write with longtime collaborator Rebecca Sugar. In February 2026, Braly announced on social media that the film, about a teenage boy traveling to a world filled with Thai spirits before he undergoes an important life-altering medical operation, and inspired by his own life story and background, was scrapped at Sony Pictures Animation in early 2025, with the studio determining that the film was not "commercial enough" to produce. In May 2026, Braly announced that a Thai animation studio, THE MONK Studios, had acquired rights to the film, under the name "Afterworld: กลับบ้าน", but that it was not funded, in production, or greenlit, but that the studio would be at Annecy trying to get "potential partners and investors". He also said that he was stepping aside a director, focusing on Clara And The Below, until the studio can "secure the means" to produce the film, and that no A.I. would be used in the film's production.

Braly also developed a graphic novel, Braly is also supervising development on a series of shorts exploring social issues.

On February 11, 2026, Braly announced that he founded his own animation studio, Fantasy Project. Its first project would be Clara and the Below, a gothic horror adaptation of The Nutcracker, with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. On March 17, 2026, Braly launched a Kickstarter for the series, with a goal of funding a single episode which was 6-10 minutes for a cost of $25,000. After less than a week, it earned "more than ten times" that target amount, at over $231,000 by March 23, 2026. TJ Hill, who did work on Amphibia, serves as the music composer. The first episode is slated to release on December 25, 2026. Braly told Cartoon Brew that his goal is to produce four interconnected animated shorts to form a "roughly 24-minute film," focusing on Clara in the first section, and others on different characters. He described that Samurai Jack as a major inspiration since he is a fan of Genndy Tartakovsky, while ensuring his crew is "fairly compensated" through crowdfunding.

Personal life Braly is of Thai descent. His mother, On Braly, provided the voice of Mrs. Boonchuy on Amphibia, in her first-ever voice acting role. Braly married Katherine "Katie" Bedrosian, a software engineer, on April 21, 2018 at the Sacramento Zoo. Prior to this he attended the same high school, Christian Brothers High School, with her, with both graduating the same year. They had their first child, Alex, on January 31, 2025. Braly and Bedrosian also have a cat named Domino. Similarly, he was inspired by several horror films for the episode "The Shut-In" due to being a horror fan. Both Braly and his wife are fans of RuPaul's Drag Race; RuPaul himself had a recurring role in season 3 of Amphibia as Mr. X.

Braly has suffered from short bowel syndrome since childhood.

Filmography

Films Year Title Storyboardartist Others Notes 2012 Adam and Dog Assistant animatorShort film 2013 Turbo 2021 The Mitchells vs. the Machines Uncredited

Television Year Title Creator Executiveproducer Writer Storyboardartist Director Actor Others Role Notes 2012–2016 Gravity Falls 8 episodesKey animator 2014 Steven Universe Episode: "Lars and the Cool Kids"2017 Billy Dilley's Super-Duper Subterranean Summer Storyboard revisionistEpisodes: "Lab Friends... Forever?" and "Surviving Billy" DuckTales Additional character designerEpisode: "Woo-oo!" 2018 Big City Greens 7 episodes 2019–2022 Amphibia ChuckNewtopian gatekeeper The Seamstress 2025The Art of AmphibiaCo-author with Drew Taylor Family Force VSkybound CometCo-author with Ainsworth Lin TBAAmphibia: Strange VoyageDisney PressTOKYOPOPCo-author with Beatrice Bovo

Nominations and awards Year Award Category Nominee Result Ref 2016 43rd Annie Awards Outstanding Achievement, Directing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Gravity Falls (for "Northwest Mansion Mystery") 2021 Daytime Emmys Outstanding Children's Animated Series Amphibia 2022 Annie Awards Best TV/Media – Children "True Colors" 33rd GLAAD Media Awards Outstanding Kids and Family ProgrammingAmphibia Children's and Family Emmys Outstanding Writing for an Animated ProgramAmphibia 2023 34th GLAAD Media Awards Outstanding Kids and Family ProgrammingAmphibia