Ruzicka was born October 14, 1977, and graduated from the animation program at California State University Northridge. He began as an intern at Marvel Lionsgate in 2008. In 2011, he started working as a storyboard revisionist on Hasbro Studios’ Transformers Prime, G.I. Joe Renegades, and Transformers Rescuebots.
Over the past several years, Ruzicka spent time at Sony Pictures Animation working on the canceled Boondocks revival for HBO Max and at Dreamworks where he storyboarded and directed episodes of Netflix’s Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight.
Other standout series that benefited from Ruzicka’s storyboard work include Ben 10: Omniverse, The Legend of Korra, Justice League Action, and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, among others.
Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight executive producer Shaunt Nigoghossian, who worked with Ruzicka on numerous projects over the past 12 years, said on a public social media post of his long-time colleague:
Details about a memorial service for Ruzicka are still being worked out, but an event is tentatively planned for sometime in March.
William was one of the sweetest, kindest, most hardworking people I’ve ever known. We’ve worked on seven shows together spanning twelve years time. He was a generous and thoughtful leader to his teams, a good friend, and a good man.
According to colleagues, Ruzicka had been feeling unwell for around a week with cold and flu symptoms. After testing negative for Covid, Ruzicka’s symptoms got worse and he was having trouble breathing so he left his home to visit urgent care but fell while on the way to his car. Paramedics arrived shortly after, but they were unable to resuscitate him.
Storyboard artist and director William Ruzicka died suddenly on February 1. He was 45 years old.
Since then, Ruzicka put together a diverse and impressive resume that included several major series productions. He had extensive experience working on both 2d and cg productions, coordinating with local and global teams on projects of vastly different scales.
In 2019, he began working at Skybound Entertainment on Amazon’s breakout hit adult animation superhero series Invincible. There, he boarded and directed the final episode of season one, including the iconic “Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power” scene that has become one of the internet’s favorite memes.
