In the year 2000, (say that with a flashlight to your face if you like) I had the dreams of a young artist with the world at his command and his life ahead of him. I was heavily into music, playing in a band and in a time where “the dream” was to get signed to a recognized label and put out lots of albums, making a percieved boatload of money and groupies along the way. As the realities of this kind of life sunk in through some hard lessons, I thought twice about it. Although I never abandoned my music and went on to put out lots of music on my own, a big career in music never materialized and I instead got caught up in other aspects of that industry.

An experienced artist and computer guru, I got caught up in the dot com boom and now envisioned this as where I’d make my millions. Websites. Multimedia. Album artwork. Merchandise. Communities. It seemed to be growing exponentially with no signs of slowing. Little did I know I was setting myself up for more incredibly difficult lessons, but hey that’s what life is I guess – a series of those, one after another, and a bit of good stuff in between. In the meanwhile I learned some basics about computer animation, and this was fascinating to me. I made my first flash animation in that same year, a bad ripoff of Dragonball Z, some of my first major exposure to anime, which YTV in Canada was starting to air more and more. Then for a few years, I didn’t really do anything in animation, I just knew I wanted to do it. And that desire grew.

I started to write a lot of story concepts. I knew vaguely what themes I wanted to touch on. I knew roughly what type of setting it would be. But over the years many disparate ideas were jotted down, and I wondered what would work the best. Eventually it dawned on me that many of the ideas would work well together, and so I weaved together a new story, and it was really a euphoric feeling that I still remember. The way it suddenly gelled in my mind felt like magic and like a real universe has been created at that moment. Brute was born. That was around 2005. By that point I had started finding my real views on things. I had also researched animation methods of all kinds and studied the work of the greats, and watched series after series. I wanted to know what would work best for me. What style, what software, and so on. What mistakes should I focus on avoiding, and just how similar did I want to make my “anime” to the Japanese? All these questions I continued to ask myself for the next few years.

Basically though, I knew that this would be something unique. I had some techniques floating around in my head and I knew it would incorporate a lot of Finnish & Scandinavian culture/mythology into the fold. 99% of Japanese anime has to do with one of these 3 things: 1. Ninjas. 2. Schoolgirls. and 3. Mechas. While I certainly have nothing against any of those things, I wanted to make the content as different as the visual style, while making nods to anime in other respects. I have great admiration for certain character drawing styles as well as the incredible detail of some manga artists – and the form of the storytelling itself. The overall result is so different from American animation and can be appreciated as a serious medium, if that is the intention of the producers. Of course, most of the time anime is drenched in cutesy crap and fan service (translation: catering to perverts) but sometimes it is as good as any serialized live action television show. When it follows an arc and avoids filler, building up to a great climax over a few dozen episodes – that is when it is at its best, and what I wish to emulate. Not so short it feels like you can’t really do a lot with it or connect with the characters, but not so long that it begins to get boring.

2007 comes along, and I’ve really fleshed out a great deal of the overall arc. I know the basics of how it will begin and end, while leaving room for it to evolve if I see fit to add, remove or make changes. I know the names of the main characters and some sub characters. I know their personalities. I have written out pages and pages of plot, and even a couple of chapters in book form. I have decided at this point that it will make a great novel as well.

2008, I come up with major new ideas for the beginning of the story. I write a script for a section of the opening act, and recruit some voice actors. Lines are recorded, and I end up with around 6 minutes of material. Good length for a video to go viral with and get word of Brute out there. Let’s pause for a second on that note. Having read this far, perhaps you are wondering if I am out of my mind, trying to animate a show myself? I mean, Japanese animes have entire TEAMS of dozens of people involved in the creation of a single episode.. Outside of voice actors, which should be an obvious necessity to anyone – What gives me the nuts to say I can do this entirely by myself? Well, first of all, I’m not saying that at all of course. But I do have a very specific goal and belief. When you have that, you need to retain full creative control so the things you want to convey are not compromised. Some things should not be compromised. I believe we have a great capacity to create, and most of us just sit on our butts content to be consumers. If a human can discipline his or her self to achieve great physical feats, like the strength of 10 normal men, etc. then how much more can we accomplish with our creativity, and where our only limitation is our ability to learn, our artistic skill, and our determination? The internet is such a valuable tool and gateway to everything else needed to do it.

As I developed my own methods I came across the work of others via the internet, such as Terrence Walker who have created their own “anime”. What struck me about his case is that while he had and has skills and the ability to get things done, his work had many visible flaws that would distinguish it from production quality commercial anime, and yet he spent most of his time blogging and selling his methods on dvds and his website. Practicing and making something serious out of those skills that he has seemed to me to be the more logical thing to do, but I appreciate that I could at least observe the path of another guy in a similar position to mine and learn from both his successes and mistakes. And I suppose I may have put a few bucks in his pocket too, by buying his Anime: Concept to Reality dvd in 2004. So more power to the guy, and I see that he is learning and planning bigger things. Good for him!

What I hope to achieve through deliberately taking my time and really doing this right, is to in the end have a product that does look, quality wise, like anything you would expect to see on film or tv, but at the same time different and pioneering – not just a painful facsimile of anime that I can say “hey, look I did this myself! You can too!” because I could have easily done all that by 2001 and slapped together my own “How to” series. THEN, and only then would I have the interest to try to teach others, and heck – it’s probably wise to build up an audience who respects your body of work first as well. I started off really impatient about this stuff, believe me, but if I’ve learned anything it is that good things take time. I tried and failed many times taking shortcuts in an attempt to speed productivity but it just doesn’t work that way!

You really learn your limitations as well, and in the end you do have to make some compromises. The trick is in making acceptable ones. I am blessed in that I have artistic people all around me. A wife who shares my love and skills of anime drawing and animation, as well as taste in stories and philosophy. A brother in law who also animates and plays music. And a sister who is a formally educated fine artist with nature painting skills. So an immediate pool of talent I can turn to if things get overwhelming. But thankfully I believe that all my years of research on animation methods and software have led me to find a pipeline truly suitable for the kind of goals I have set out for myself. Which would be to create full length half hour episodes divided in parts for web release, and would then later be put out in whole on dvd or television. And I think that I have some really solid methods and advice to teach that don’t necessarily rely on a single piece of software that may not be suitable for everyone, or become obsolete. The key is really that it is manageable and it is fun. So it may be that I have stumbled upon something here.. The “Scanime method” or what have you. Scanime, by the way is Scandinavian + anime. I registered this name all the way back in 2005, and Studio SCANIME was born.

In 2008 when we bought this building for the studio, it was named VoxHouse because of its vicinity to the Voxna river in Sweden, and in context of having a creative voice. So that’s where that comes from, and so our productions will normally carry both names unless they have nothing to do with animation: For example any music or learning videos I produce would simply carry the VoxHouse name. To the present, then! This spring I completed a 40 panel storyboard for the premiere episode to be titled “The Man With No Name: Part I”. Which might give you some clue as to some influences, but there’s a definite twist there you will have to find out for yourself. Shortly afterward, I created the animatic, which clocks in at about 6 minutes as planned. And now I am undergoing the process of placing in the final artwork! In the words of Scottie, “It’s all so exciting!”

More on Brute in the coming days, including shots of the storyboard, final production shots and perhaps even a clip or two before the big reveal.