This is a post about the history behind the work in progress that is "The Brave & The Awesome".

During the 6th Grade, I met and befriended Diane (a.k.a. "Sister" or whoisdiane.deviantart.com) and Patrick (also known as "Tip", "Vevo", or tipwnage.deviantart.com). They remain some of the nicest people I've ever met, and very easy to get along with too. God bless them both.

Diane, in particular, I still keep in contact with, and we are still super great friends. Yay!I even took her to prom once, during the 11th Grade, although we never had a romantic relationship.

Patrick, on the other hand, has seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth. Honestly, I don't know whether or not he's even still alive! Honestly, you have no idea how scary it is!!!!!!

During the 7th Grade, around the 3rd day of school, last period (Science class), a girl sat on my right who was drawing a picture of video game icon Spyro. Impressed by the drawing, I asked her "Wow! Did you draw that all by yourself?" She replied, "Yyyup!" "I draw too, ya' know. Would you like to see one of my old drawings?" "Uuuh, sure I guess." I took an old drawing of mine (a drawing tha tI did of Sonic The Hedgehog) from my backpack, and showed it to her. "Oh, cool! Say, what's your name," the girl asked. "Oh! My name's Andrew. What's yours? "Victoria," she replied (she is also known as "Vickers", thebloodink.deviantart.com, or megab1tes.deviantart.com). Every day during class, as a way of communication without interrupting the teacher, Victoria and I would do funny little "doodle fights" as a way of communicating whilst working/listening to what everyone else was saying.

Victoria, Diane, and myself formed our own characters, a trio of anime-like wolves that could also turn into both people and dragons. Drawing them and communicating with eachother through them was super fun, as well as super amazing! I saved some of them, and put them up on deviantart 2 years later (since the papers that bore the drawings on them were getting old and starting to rip. It was the only way for the drawings to live on forever). 

During the 8th Grade, along came Matt (also known as "Slim" or liquidrockman.deviantart.com). At first, he came across as very talkative and slightly annoying, but within a few months of getting to know him, he started to mellow down and become more careful of what came out of his mouth. Victoria and I soon became close friends of his to the point where we we called ourselves The Bad Friends Trio, based on The Bad Touch Trio and The Trembling Friends Trio, both of which hail from the famous anime series called "Hetalia". Speaking of Hetalia, the gang and I quickly came up with our own Hetalia OC characters: Matt's was the Fijian islands, Victoria's was Czech Republic, Diane's was Indonesia (since that's her home country), Patrick's was the Bermuda Triangle (even though it's not a country, but since he loved murder mysteries and stuff, we figured it was the only way for it to really work), and mine was the Dixie (after the Civil War, not the racist guy from before and during the war). We even did a fairly good, yet also fairly not-so-good, Hetalia mini comic that featured our OC's in it. Check it out in the following URL, if you dare: http://heathinvader.deviantart.com/gallery/49662227/Hetalia-Mini-Comic

We eventually stopped using these characters and moved on with some more original ones.....

As the 8th Grade came to a close, and the 9th Grade gad begun, Victoria and Diane left Real Life Christian Academy. Only Matt, Patrick, and myself were left. However, that was also when Fiona (also known as "Fifi", "Fionerz" or "Larue") stepped in, but we didn't get to know her that well until the end of that year. It didn't take long for us to become great friends, though. Probably the most devout and uplifting person in my age group that I've ever met, Fiona became very much like a sister to me. Today, next to Matt, she's my best friend in class I'm blessed to have a great friend like her.

However, also shortly before the 9th Grade had begun, we lost a classmate who had a successful lung transplant 5 years beforehand that came back to bite him in the but: the late Eric Bradley (1997 - 2012). We only got to know him a little bit, but not as nearly as much as we should have. He was a funny, creative type of guy who loved cartoon shows, in particularly Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time. We will never know what could have been. We can only look back and imagine........I believe that had he survived, he would've been a 3rd founding father of a series that Matt & I had later created, which I will talk about later (we ended up making a character based on Eric in his memory and dedication. He will 1st appear in a Wizard Of Oz-based episode {hint, hint!}......

The 9th Grade was probably the worst school year that Real Life Christian Academy had ever faced. Everyone, both student and teacher (in particularly our literature teacher) was killing themselves by working themselves too hard and too much with little to no rest. I didn't know what it was at the time, but looking back I understand that everyone there was trying to bring every situation there was into their own hands when they could've (and definitely should've) put it in God's. That's what lead to so much pain, hurt, and destruction for everyone. Yeah, those were not good times!

Around the 3rd week of the 9th Grade, Matt, Patrick, and I were seated at a group of 4 tables in homeroom (Life Skills class). Matt and I were having a conversation, and Patrick was sitting there listening. Although I forget what the conversation was originally about, it eventually got off topic, and we started talking about what would happen if we had our own web show series. At that time, Matt knew way more about YouTube shows than I did. For example, he already knew about TomSka, eddsworld, Daz Black, & various other awesome "youtubers". I only knew of Tobuscus, TFS Abridged, & some stupidly hilarious YouTubePoop videos by various artists.} 

So I asked Matt, "Okay, well if we DID have our own YouTube series, what would be a rad name for it?" We both agreed that it had to involve the word "Awesome" because we were in our mid-teens and that's just how our minds worked at the time. So we just kept throwing out all of these thoughts as they came to mind. "The Awesome this" "The Awesome that". "The Awesome _____" Going nowhere with it until someone started talking about a local news bulletin that was on the air that morning about "Boy rescued from apartment fire by dog" or something! But anyways, Patrick (who was sitting with us) commented about it saying something like, "Wow, that dog was pretty brave, there. I don't know if I would've done the same thing if I were that dog?" Matt & I overheard him & I stated "That's IT! 'The Awesome Bravery!'" "No," replied Matt, "'The Awesome & The Brave!'" "No," we both replied eagerly, "Make it 'The Brave & The Awesome'. It's PERFECT!"  We realized a few hours later that it sounded similar to Batman: The Brave & The Bold, but 2 things:
1. we did not intend for the 2 names to sound similar
2. we just didn't care

So we started planning on some sketches & thingies for the possible idea for our own web series (which would probably end up being a webtoon), but we never really took it all that seriously until that Christmas, when we got our Wacom Bamboo Tablets. Now we could draw & animate stuff (although our animation skills are FAR from......good.....but they're definitely improving, though)! We met up with Victoria again a couple of times during the summer of 2013 to do a series of 3 short pilot episodes for the series (Night Of The Livin' Slim, Doctuh Why, & Happy Trails?) and 1 full episode with Diane and Patrick called Planet Battles (which is currently in the process of being remade). 

Now, in the works is "Planet Battles Redux" (a remake of the very first official episode of the show), a trailer-like video for a spinoff called "The Brave & Awesome Quest" (which will be animated by long-time friend and fan, TANblaque), a short prehistoric episode called "B.S. (Before SLim)" (which MIGHT get animated by my friend The AVG Tube), and an approximately 25 minute long monster parody episode called "The Wizard Of Oops", which has been in the works for as far back as February 2014 (multiple voice actors & animator(s) dropping out of the project over the years really kept the episode from going anywhere. But recently, someone named Greyson Terry stepped up to finally relieve my friends & I of the burden by animating it. Last I checked, which was a couple of weeks ago, he said that he was up to the wicked witch's daughter's first scene, last I checked). Meanwhile, Fiona gave me the idea for making a comic for the series so as to keep people interested bewteen episodes of the actual webtoon. However, even though the comic is about the same gang of characters, I decided to give the comic a different name due to it taking place in a different universe. I call it, "Tales From The Outsiders", since it tells the story of the gang that The Brave & The Awesome revolves around: Andrew, Matt, Victoria, Diane, Fiona, Patrick (formerly), and Ashleigh, of a bunch of kids called The Outsiders (the founders of the group were considered "outcasts" throughout middle and high school, hence the original meaning of the group's name).

The real people of whicc the main characters are based have all gone their separate ways since having graduated from the 12th Grade, but they all keep in touch regularly, keeping eachother up to date with life as well as (in Andrew's case) the webtoon & comic that stars all of their characters.

Please, whenever you've got the time, go on & check out "The Brave & The Awesome", only on YouTube, Facebook, Wikia, DeviantArt, Tumblr, & (soon) my Newgrounds page!

Andrew