[Parental discretion advised. Some cartoon images may be too violent for young readers.]

Just another idyllic day in the woods. That is, until a lime green bear dressed in army fatigues knocks the teeth out of a squirrel’s head, slashes out his intestines, and combines the two into a bagpipe machine gun for a murderous rampage. That’s just one of many twisted scenes from “Operation: Tiger Bomb” (again, viewer discretion is advised), an episode of Ka-Pow! that was directed and co-written by Classical Animation grad, Brad Rau. The series is a spin-off of the wildly-successful Happy Tree Friends, another great show in the “cute gore” genre.

Brad has since co-created a successful animation company, Ghostbot, and developed high-profile ads for Esurance. We asked him a few questions about his rise to success recently, and here’s what he said:

Hi, Brad. Thanks for taking some time out from your schedule. Could you start off by telling us about what first drew you to this career field?

Thanks for having me!  I’ve always been a big fan of the finer arts: Animation, Comics, Toys, Video Games, Sci-Fi novels, Role Playing games… I had to try and be a part of it all.

For the benefit of others who might be considering a similar career, could you tell your “breaking in” story? (ie. Your first big job.)

After school, I hit up every single contact I could think of and was lucky enough to squeeze in on some storyboard revisions/cleanup for Wildbrain in San Francisco.  Since I didn’t live in San Francisco at the time, I got over here as fast as I could.  I spent as much time/energy as humanly possible trying to get the job done and make a good impression, while crashing on my Uncle’s couch at night.

Without too much exaggeration, I’ve just been swinging the bat for a home run as much as possible ever since.

How did Ghostbot start? Where would you say the company is in its evolution?

The three of us founders (Alan Lau, Roque Ballesteros, and myself), created an extremely productive working relationship through the course of various jobs at Colossal Pictures, Curious Pictures, Wildbrain, and Leapfrog.  We worked so well together that we often discussed forming our own studio.  In 2004, we began to work on the Esurance commercial campaign with Phil Robinson at Wildbrain.  As that campaign started to take off, it seemed like the right time to fire up the Ghostbot engine.

In terms of our current evolution, right now I’d say we’re somewhere between the Paleolithic and the Future Industrial periods.

Could you explain your involvement with Happy Tree Friends and Ka-Pow!? (Maybe describe what those shows are all about, for the shrinking number of people who haven’t heard of them.)

Ah, Happy Tree Friends… you can’t go wrong when you mix innocent cute cuddly characters with ample helpings of over-the-top violence.  We’re good buddies with Happy Tree Friends creator Kenn Navarro and Executive Producer John Evershed at Mondo Media, and have worked on a bunch of episodes over the years.  Recently they brought us in to team up on a new action-packed spin-off of the show, under the title “Kapow!” Each of us three directors at Ghostbot got the chance to do an original take on some of the classic characters and basically blow a bunch of stuff up.  Totally Awesome.

There’s a great entry on the blog of your Ghostbot colleague, Arvin Bautista that describes an experience you had at this year’s WonderCon in San Francisco. What’s been the highlight of your career so far?

WonderCon was great!  We’ve nerded it up tons of times at conventions, but this was our first time hosting our own booth.  We premiered one of our new original projects, Little Lost Ghost, and did hundreds of drawings.  It was a lot of fun, and definitely a highlight was getting to interact with everyone.

Setting up Ghostbot has definitely been a big highlight.  It’s a lot of hard work, but we’ve been able to do a lot of fun stuff.

Are there any new projects on the horizon you’re excited about?

There’s this really cool project we’re hoping to land called “sleep.”  Personally, I think it’s just a pipe dream.

Thanks for your time, Brad. And congrats on your success!