The Brothers Chaps

Did You Know?

• Matt and Mike Chapman were born in Indiana but grew up in Decatur, Georgia and later resided in Atlanta.
• Growing up, the brothers enjoyed creating comic books and filming Super 8 movies.
• Mike attended the University of Georgia and studied photography, while Matt went to film school at Florida State University.

Career

The Brothers Chaps, Mike and Matt Chapman, first brought Homestar Runner to life in 1996, with Mike creating the character alongside friend Craig Zobel. The initial appearance was in a children's book titled The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest, which later found its way online as a sequence of images. By 2000, the duo was producing Flash-based cartoons featuring the character. The series expanded over time, introducing new characters and spin-offs, most notably Strong Bad Emails starting in 2001. Matt handled the primary voice work for Homestar Runner and other key characters like Strong Bad, while Mike took charge of the animation and the technical upkeep of the Homestar Runner website. Both brothers shared responsibilities for writing and directing.

Matt’s career extended beyond Homestar Runner. He worked as a writer and director on Yo Gabba Gabba!, contributed to Gravity Falls and The Aquabats! Super Show!, and provided occasional voice and acting roles. He co-wrote the Wander Over Yonder episodes "The Bounty" and "The Timebomb" with the show’s writing team, and voiced Neil’s father, Carl, in the second-season finale of Camp Camp. Mike, meanwhile, created deliberately bad impressions of Matt’s voices for the Powered by The Cheat cartoons on the Homestar Runner site. He also wrote for Yo Gabba Gabba! and, like his brother, collaborated on Wander Over Yonder, earning a writing credit for the episode "The Liar."

The brothers secured a general development deal with Disney Television Animation, which led to the short-form series Two More Eggs for Disney XD, airing from 2015 to 2017. Their directorial work includes music videos for several artists: "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" by Of Montreal, "Experimental Film" (featuring Homestar Runner characters, especially Strong Sad) and "Figure Eight" by They Might Be Giants, "Brand of Skin" by Folk Implosion, and "LA Lindsay" by Y-O-U, the same band that worked with them on Strong Bad Sings. In 2017, the brothers joined Robert Schneider and James Husband to form the Air-sea Dolphin project, which released two split singles with Honey Radar and Sloshy, a fictional band from the Homestar Runner universe.