It is always a supreme pleasure to see a nerdy kid not only live out their dreams, but excel at them at a high level. Doctor Who fans feel that when they think about David Tennant, a massive fan of the show who literally grew up to be a beloved Doctor. Same goes for Oscar winning actor Michael B. Jordan, a comic book and anime nerd who portrayed the MCU’s Killmonger and had a starring voice role in gen:LOCK.
The same sentiment also applies to indie creators like Breana Navickas, who went from watching Disney films as a kid to working for Disney as an animator. And, they are blazing their own path in animation with The Three Tomes, a queer story that blends vampire romance and magical girl elements together in a 2010s era Midwestern locale. It follows Tammy Harris, a Black girl who accidentally releases 13 spirits from an ancient tome while filming a short horror movie with her best friend in a graveyard. Tammy now has to capture them, face off against a mysterious foe, and try not to fall in love with two vampires.
We caught up with Navickas to chat about their many career highlights, crafting unique protagonists, and why whimsical Black stories are vital.
Nerdist: What are some of the cartoons and who are some animators that inspired you as a child?
Breana Navickas: So this is going to sound kind of generic, but I was a big Disney kid growing up! I’m 32 years old, so I’m a millennial and the Disney Renaissance era was my big thing. I watched things on my VHS tapes… Remember that kids? VCRs! [laughs] I watched Bambi in particular quite a bit and there’s a feature at the end where Walt Disney would come on and talk about the multiplane camera. I didn’t quite know what was going on, but I knew I loved the process of seeing all these people drawing and explaining what the multiplane camera was and how they painted it. All of that blew my mind.
And Naoko Takeuchi, who’s the creator of Sailor Moon, and her works, too. I grew up with Toonami, which was very much a staple in my foundation for cartoons that I watched. Sailor Moon was the first anime that I remember watching and being like, “I don’t know what this is, but it looks way different than anything I’ve seen before. And I want more of that.”
In high school, I got a little bit more serious with learning about different animators. The creator of Proud Family, Bruce W. Smith, ended up becoming my boss and is such an inspiration.. I worked on The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder reboot. Gendy Tartarkovski, who created Samurai Jack, was also a big inspiration as well. As I got into the industry, I started to learn more about more just different Black and brown animators and women and femmes like Carole Holliday. She’s a veteran, Black woman animator who did the design for Roxanne in A Goofy Movie and such an inspiration. I feel like she needs to get more flowers.
Yes, shout out to her indeed! Roxanne is one of my favorite animated characters of all-time. How did you get on the pathway from watching anime and Disney to going into animation yourself?
Navickas: Funny enough, Disney wasn’t really my goal! I really wanted to work for this company called Titmouse. They do crazy, wild, and super interesting stuff. It’s very unique in comparison to everything else that the industry does. There was a cartoon called Motor City in particular that I was very fascinated with, which was on Disney Channel. So I guess it still goes hand in hand.
I went to Columbia College in Chicago, which is where I am from, and that’s where I got my schooling for animation and whatnot. And I ended up after graduating and taking a year off. My grandmother passed away and I was just trying to refine myself a little bit. I ended up moving out to LA in late 2016 and that was when I decided that I’m going to be more serious about trying to break into the industry. I wanted to storyboard and not animate. I found out that full-on animating is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.
But I love being a storyboard artist, which works in tandem with the director and the writers to bring that initial blueprint of the story to life. That part I really, really enjoy. And I ended up networking my first year out here in LA. I worked as a graphic designer for a little bit just to keep food on the table and pay the bills. I eventually became a production assistant on a Disney Junior show, and not for Disney proper, but for a third party studio called Wild Canary Animation. That first job as a PA was on a show called Mira, Royal Detective.
I was the PA, a design coordinator, a host coordinator, and then an episodic coordinator all within a year and a half to two years! With a small studio, you end up doing a lot. But then after that, I went to Disney as a production coordinator, and that’s where I worked on The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder for the first two seasons. That was probably one of the most magical… this sounds corny, but it was one of the most magical moments for me. Because again, Disney wasn’t the goal, but Proud Family was special to me because I had grown up with it…
And most of my career has been with Disney ever since… I did a very short stint on Jessica’s Big Little World for Cartoon Network. And that’s how I got to work with Carole Holliday actually as a supervisor, which was an immense honor. Now, I’m headed over to Fox to work on King of the Hill.
That’s really, really awesome! So let’s get into your work, specifically The Three Tomes, which is about a young Black girl who accidentally releases spirits while filming a short horror movie with her best friend in a graveyard. I’m so curious about how you came up with the idea in the first place. What were some sources of inspiration you used when you were crafting that story?
Navickas: A lot of the inspiration came from just being a millennial. I grew up in a “peak dystopia YA” kind of time period for the teen times, the 2010s era. So you had The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, Hunger Games, all that stuff. All that media was cool but it has a lot of issues. Let’s be real. Let us not ignore the issues that are with Twilight. I also didn’t see any Black people in some things.
Being a Black teen kid that really enjoyed the supernatural white melodrama stuff, I just didn’t see myself represented. But when you’re that young, you’re not quite thinking about it. You’re just like, “Wow, this is neat.” But as you get older and you start to unpack things, then you realize, “Oh, I was lacking this stuff and now I crave it in the media that I’m part of or that I want to see now that I’m an adult.”
The Three Tomes also came from me just doodling in my sketchbook in around 2017 or 2018, somewhere around there. In cartoons, there’s the trope of the side character who’s the Black best friend who doesn’t really do too much. And I remember drawing this black girl with glasses and a tomboy white girl and just posted online to see who people thought the main character was.
I kept drawing these characters over and over again, and they sort of morphed and changed where the Black girl became more front and center. The tomboy white girl became not white anymore. And I just got rid of the gender binary for that character in particular and just made them non-binary. And then I added a little vampire boy as well, whose name was Greg, and he just was a Murdoc Niccals clone because I was going through a resurgence in my fascination for the love of the band Gorillaz.
I’m a big fan of Interview with the Vampire and I really love Anne Rice’s works. I am very much in love with the new series as well with Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson. I feel like they are the peak adaptation versions of those characters. So yeah, so that’s kind of where this story just came from. My love for YA kind of vampire media melodrama and also my love for anime, and me sort of smashing those two things together to create a story that reflects coming-of-age stuff that I would’ve liked to have seen as a teenager.
Usually when we get coming-of-age stories for young Black people, it’s always kind of Black pain or we’re struggling. And not that those are not valid, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing. I feel like having Black whimsy and fantasy is so important because whenever we as Black people are in fantasy, it’s always a question of, “Why are they Black dwarves? Why are they Black mermaids?” And it is simply because they can be. We can be a part of that world too and have adventures.
Exactly! What are your ultimate hopes for The Three Tomes?
Navickas: Right now with the pilot being out, I’m trying to just build a fan base and gain traction, and I’m hoping to launch a Kickstarter for episode two and for future episodes. Those episodes would still be in animatic form just because we’re in an indie animation boom right now. There are a lot of professionals like myself who are dipping into the indie world, especially those of us who are Black and brown people.
It is not lost on me or anybody that we are in a very hostile political climate right now that is very hostile to Black, brown, and queer stories. And mainstream Hollywood is just scared to touch any of that. Some stuff gets through like Sinners, Interview with the Vampire, and even Heated Rivalry. Ryan Coogler broke through with that anomaly [of Sinners], but he still had to work his way up.
Yeah, it took him well over a decade and a lot of proven commercial success with films like Creed and Black Panther to be able to have his original screenplay get the support it needed.
Navickas: Yeah. It still takes a while for people for their original stuff to get made and even harder for us as Black folks. It would be really great if a studio did want to take a chance on me and my story. I’ve been in the industry for almost 10 years at this point. I’ve worked in production management and on the artist side of things, so I know how stuff works. But that’s kind of up to the studios willing to take a chance on a Black and queer story because that’s what this is.
It is a Black queer YA story because my main character has two boys pining for her, but all three of them are bisexual. And I have non-binary characters. I have two gay vampires. There’s a sapphic relationship and everybody’s a person of color… well, except for the one white boy. And that’s something that just scares Hollywood now, which sucks, and I really hate that. But that’s sort of why so many of us, myself included, are doing stuff independently.
The Three Tomes was my idea, but I just always want to make sure I’m giving credit where credit is due to my team. In 2024, I had just rolled off of a show and I was unemployed and also pregnant when I decided to jump into production of this.
I called up my creative partner and very dear friend Waymond Singleton, who was my director on it. I was like, “Do you want to just make something? It’s a mess right now. There’s so many shows that are getting canceled and all the Black and brown shows are getting canceled and mergers are happening.” And it was just very distressing to see, but I wanted to make something original with my friend. And he was just like, “Yeah, let’s go. Let’s do this.”
I had the script written, but I just didn’t have the time before. Without my team of 40 plus people who worked on this with me, it wouldn’t have happened. I’m a board artist, but I’m not the strongest action board artist nor the strongest editor. It really was a team effort of just grabbing people who were industry professionals that wanted to work outside their nine to five because they were craving something more creative. This project really was a creative outlet that allowed a lot of people to be free.
My team consisted of a lot of black and brown and queer people, and that’s so important to have on screen and in the background making the thing for me. And also contracting my friend Kennedy Freeman from Luv Letter Studios to do the animated sequences. They’re the only female Black-owned anime studio here in the US, and it was very important to me to have Kennedy on to do that animation. Her team knocked it out of the park!
It truly takes a village and people have to champion for and support the projects that they want to see! One more question for you. At Nerdist, we are all about celebrating the things that bring our nerdy hearts joy, from comics to gaming. Outside of animation, what do you nerd out about?
Navickas: Outside of animation, I nerd out about video games really f**king hard. I love video games so much. I am a big RPG person. Persona is one of my favorite franchises that I love to play. Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, I love those video games so much, and I can rant on and on for hours, especially when it comes to Final Fantasy! My favorite is Final Fantasy 10.