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South Bend - 2016 to present
The South Bend start: Brandon Reed was born and raised in South Bend, and he has never built his career anywhere else. He started drawing at around five years old and sold cartoon pictures to his friends, drew through middle and high school, gave it up, and came back to it after an associate degree in graphic design. The trade record of his start is Tubefilter's "Creators Going Pro" profile of 24 April 2019, and it is a hard-luck document: after a breakup he was a single father raising two kids on a grocery store income in his hometown, making side money on customized shoes and necklaces covered in his drawings, unable at first to afford beds for the new place. What he did not have, in South Bend, was a single working animator to learn from. YouTube's own blog, in its profile of him of 14 August 2020, records that there were no professional animators for him to look to in South Bend, Indiana, and that he trained himself on the platform's tutorials instead, a school he calls YouTube University.
The night it worked: He spent about a year watching animation tutorials before he posted. On the evening of 22 August 2016 he dropped his debut cartoon, a two minute comedy bit built around a character called Lil Ron Ron, and went to sleep on the couch he shared with his kids. By the next morning the video had passed one million views; the same cartoon took off on Facebook overnight and the audience found its way to YouTube within the week. His first online video revenue check, one hundred dollars, had arrived in March 2016, before the hit. In November 2017 he quit his job to animate full time, and within the following year the channel's money had bought the family a house, and beds. Tubefilter's headline tells the arc in the trade's own words: the channel took him from barely scraping by to buying his own home.
The size of it, dated: By April 2019, when Tubefilter profiled him, the channel, then called Cartoon Connection and now Cartoon Connect, stood at 1.3 million subscribers and between 3 and 6 million views a month, five seasons into Lil Ron Ron, as part of the Fullscreen network. The figure has grown since, and this record prints the newest citable point rather than a live count: the South Bend Regional Chamber's Rooted & Reaching podcast, in its November 2026 episode on Reed, puts his following at roughly 9 million across platforms, including 1.59 million subscribers and more than 270 million views on the Cartoon Connect YouTube channel. The same episode treats a 2016 health scare, a throat abscess that took two surgeries and breathing tubes and left him unable to speak, as the turning point that pushed him to build the channel. A South Bend animator with nine million followers is, on this record, the largest audience ever assembled by a creator working from inside this city, and he assembled it without leaving.
Sources:
- Tubefilter, "Creators Going Pro: Brandon Reed's YouTube Channel 'Cartoon Connection' Took Him From Barely Scraping By To Buying His Own Home", 24 Apr 2019: the South Bend origin in Reed's own words ("I am from South Bend, Indiana"), the single father and grocery store start, the 22 Aug 2016 debut and the million views by morning, the March 2016 first check, the November 2017 resignation, 1.3 million subscribers and 3 to 6 million monthly views, the Fullscreen network, the house purchase.
- YouTube Official Blog, "Brandon Reed: Making cartoon connections", 14 Aug 2020: no professional animators to look to in South Bend, Indiana; the self-teaching he calls YouTube University; a first full-length cartoon within a year; Lil Ron Ron an instant viral success.
- South Bend Regional Chamber, Rooted & Reaching podcast, episode "From a Hospital Bed to 9 Million Followers: Brandon Reed on Building Cartoon Connect in South Bend", Nov 2026 (episode description): born and raised in South Bend, building from his home here, roughly 9 million followers across platforms, 1.59 million subscribers and more than 270 million views on the Cartoon Connect channel, the 2016 health scare as turning point.