Born and raised on the North Side of Chicago, Chris and Justin Copland spent a lot of time indoors drawing and imagining worlds outside of poverty and violence. Brought up at a time when graffiti and underground hip hop began to surface as inspiration in every medium, the brothers took to both quickly, as they scanned the rooftop masterpieces on the “L” trains through Chicago.

Film directing was always the goal for the Copelands, but it seemed unattainable given their life situation. However, after watching the 1989 Batman film and receiving a box full of comics (as well as the making of the Batman film book), the duo turned their attention toward drawing and comic books. The comic industry, while very difficult to break into, offered the Copelands the chance to attend comic conventions and meet artists from all over the world and to expand their horizons. It also gave them a medium to hone their drawing and filmmaking skills.

After years of conventions and networking, a few up-and-coming animation industry artists encouraged them to pursue animation as a career, which they took to immediately. Chris was quickly hired at Warner Brothers, and Justin at Marvel Animation.  After years of successfully navigating around the industry and learning storytelling, Justin made his directorial debut on Batman: Hush at WB, while at the same time, Chris debuted as a director on Kipo at Dreamworks. SkyBound came calling soon after with an offer to work on Robert Kirkman’s “Invincible” animated tv show for Amazon.”

After a year working with Skybound, Chris and Justin are now at Dreamworks Animation overseeing development of two TV series and a feature animated movie. As brothers and co-collaborators, they look forward to continuing to work together and push the boundaries of storytelling.

The Copeland Brother are repped by Jason Burns and Anna Berthod at UTA and Jairo Alvarado at Redefine Entertainment.