Interview: Welcome To The Sci-Fi Wild West Meets ‘Samurai Jack’ World Of ‘Axiom Chronicles’

It’s hard to create a completely unique world these days, but that’s not an issue for Axiom Chronicles, a new animated web series that feels like some sort of crazy science fiction western with just a touch of Star Wars and Samurai Jack.

Intrigued yet? Yeah, we figured that would do the trick. Recently ComicBook.com had the chance to learn a whole lot more about this intriguing project when we sat down with the founder of Edison Creative and executive producer Luke Bolin, Axiom artist and co-creator Dillon Wheelock, writer and co-creator Coban Rudish, and voice actor Joe Brogie.

To get started we wanted to know where the project originated, and it all kicks off in Omaha Nebraska.

“So I own a little production company here in Omaha, Nebraska, and we have been doing animation for various clients for years and I’ve always wanted to do our own passion project,” Bolin said. “I met Dillon through a friend and was able to kind of look through his portfolio, and I was like this dude is amazing. I want to hire him. And some of the stuff he had in some of his sketch books was this story that he had kind of had made up with these characters that essentially became the Axiom Chronicles.”

While that was the start, it wasn’t until Coban came in that that the project really started to get off the ground.

“Along the way, a good friend of mine, Coban, who also has an extremely awesome pedigree with animation and character development and the business I guess you would say, came in and helped really craft the story as well. And so between the two of them and the rest of the team, we basically developed The Axiom Chronicles and the characters and the world, and it’s been a really fun ride for the past two-, gosh almost three years. But really we’ve been in hardcore development for the past almost two years I would say.”

The full team would grow to include Lauren Abell (junior animator and sound effects), Shawn Gourley (animator/editor/director), Skylar Hogan (animator/action lines), Kristin Zahra (3D animator/artist), and Luke Atencio (composer) and together they started to discover the potential Axiom possessed.

Hit the next slide to learn about the biggest challenges of the project!

Challenges And Breakthroughs

Any project is going to have its set of challenges and obstacles, but sometimes the biggest challenge can also be the most rewarding breakthrough.

“Probably the answer to both questions is animation,” Rudish said. “For our client work we mostly do all our animation in After Effects, and that includes our character animation. Knowing that we are going to- After Effects is not the best situation for character animation, but we have a brilliant animator here named Skylar who has pretty much re-designed After Effects to do what we needed it to do, but I don’t know what magic he did (laughs). And so I mean, probably the biggest challenge has been the character animation and we figured it out along the way and we made the tools in our toolbox work for us to get what we want. So we’ve overcome it.”

While animation overall can be difficult, character animation specifically can be difficult to not only pull off but also find a style that works for you.

“Yeah, I think like kind of to piggyback off that, character animation and just animation, in general, has been a challenge but also the storytelling process with the animation,” Bolin said. “You know we’re used to telling 60, 90-second explainer videos and stuff like that. Which we have a formula for that and some of that did carry over pretty well with what we’re doing here, but a lot of it is just studying animation that’s already out there that we really admire. There’s obvious odes to Samurai Jack in there, but even taking some other animated series that we think, “Wow that’d be really cool to emulate.” I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the PBS show Wild Kratts, but they use some really nice animation techniques in that piece that we’ve been trying to take from. And also adding some environmental stuff, you know, lens blurs, all sorts of particles and stuff like that enhances the whole piece.”

A Cinematic Flair

Fans will get to meet the series’ main character Rake early on, and it is during this action sequence that those nods to Samurai Jack can be clearly seen.

This sequence features Rake shooting a grapple gun and attaching a line, only to have it cut by one of the sentries that are chasing him. When he falls he enters into a stylish and very cinematic spin, which is broken up into separate panels as he attaches to a ship. If all the action looks like this, then fans are in for a treat.

“I story-boarded the first versions of it and that was one that actually stayed from the original boards,” Wheelock said. “So much had changed, you know, as time when on and stuff, but that one was like, it made it through every round of revision and stuff. Just cause it was such a, like you’re saying, it was a little different of a shot. Definitely like derived from Samurai Jack where they have cool little vignettes like that where they split screens and stuff happens but I mean, I’m also a huge comic book nerd too. So, I’m sure between those few things I’m sure they just married each other and that’s what we came up with.”

Some 70’s In The Mix

While there is definitely a Samurai Jack vibe in Axiom, there’s also nods to what inspired that great series, which came down to 70’s action films.

“It’s funny, I just recently fell down a YouTube rabbit hole and I was watching Genndy Tartakovsky talking about Samurai Jack,” Rudish said. “And he was talking specifically about that cut screen stuff that they did. He referenced a bunch of 70’s action movies and stuff like, oh what’s his name? The, anyway whatever. But yeah, so this 70’s cinematic filmmaker saying what they did in live action films and even like a Japanese influence in there too. I think its, for Dillon, something he grew up seeing so to him, it’s normal.”

 

Meet Rake

Rake is one of the series main characters, and while there’s a lot to process in his design, there is one element that will have people talking.

“I think Rake was the first character I drew,” Wheelock said. “When Luke was saying he looked through my sketchbooks and stuff and I definitely had a lot of him in there. Kind of obviously ripping off of different characters. There’s a little bit of Jack in there but there’s also the cybernetic leg has been such a – everyone’s always asking about, “How did he get it?” That was totally the first question and that’s kind of what sparked everything. It was like ‘well I wonder why this dude just has this cool robot leg and kind of looks like a bandit’. That’s exactly where everything led me when I was starting to create the world and the characters and stuff. He was definitely like a cyber-punky Western kind of character – that’s kind of where we’re settling with this thing.”

Snipers And Armadillos

Rake won’t be all alone in the world of Axiom, and one of the more memorable characters fans meet is his trusty sniper Lefty.

“The world kind of defined a lot of these characters too,” Bolin said. “For instance, Lefty is the armadillo sniper guy. That was a really fun conversation to hear these guys talking about. Coban was like, I remember talking about, “So what kind of animal would it be? Or what kind of character would this be?” Dillon, what that Coban’s idea? The armadillo?”

Wheelock confirmed that with Rudish adding “We were trying to think of scraggly desert creatures we could kind of re-appropriate into some weird alien thing and we honed in on desert animals.”

It was also important to Wheelock for Lefty “to have a southern drawl,” but it was a google search that solidified the direction.

“We just Google image searched armadillos and Dillon and I exploded into laughter and tears,” Rudish said. “Ah, that’s what he needs to be.” Hillbilly armadillo.”

Bringing Life To The Lead

Rake will be in the starring role and will be brought to life by actor Joe Brogie, who also happens to have voiced the best turtle in Donatello (Injustice). Things are still early in Axiom Chronicles, but Brogie is already hard at work finding the character’s roots and voice.

“When I first met with these guys, I was emailing them back and forth and talking to Dillon and asking him, “What do you think? Who is he?” We don’t really know a whole lot about his background and stuff,” Brogie said. “I think you guys were kind of like, “Well, we think we might sound a little bit like Donatello.” We can start with that, that sounds good. I don’t know, I guess I just, he’s pretty much my speaking voice, maybe a little bit higher of a register. I tried to keep him a little bit cocky and rough and tough, street kid type of spin. Since we haven’t done a whole lot with him yet, I think there’s still room to figure out who he is as a character and I’m sure the voice will slightly change depending on that.”

For Rudish, it came down to maturity with a youthful tone. “We liked Joe right away, just because we needed an adult who could handle the responsibility of the craft of acting but could sound like a teenage to 22 year old,” Rudish said, with Wheelock adding “Joe’s perfect.”

“It was really cool when I saw this, as I didn’t know these guys at all,” Brogie said. “And one of my friends posted about it when they were doing their initial Kickstarter. I live out in Los Angeles but I’m from Omaha, and when I saw this I was really upset because the whole reason I moved out to Los Angeles was to get into voice acting and more of the animation world cause I was doing commercial stuff in Omaha. I was like, “No way. This stuff is done in Omaha, Nebraska.” These guys are doing this insane artwork. This is the kind of stuff that I watched as a kid, you know like Toonami. I was very influenced by Toonami and Samurai Jack. Did you guys watch Reboot back in the day? I saw that Circuit City type of thing and I was like, man this is the stuff that I loved as a kid. So I emailed them, reached out to them and was like, “Please, just let me read something for you guys and hear me out,” type of thing. I feel very fortunate to get to even be a little bit involved in this project.”

“You made the right move Joe, because we’re the only ones here doing it,” Rudish said, with Brogie adding “Exactly. I love it.”

The Comedic Foil

Fans will also meet an adorable robotic sidekick named Dunebot in the series, who by my assessment seems to be like a dystopian version of Wall-E. e won’t just be played for comic relief though, as Rake will find himself changing as a result of his interactions with Dunebot.

“So he’s definitely the lovable sidekick and comedic relief looking-type,” Wheelock said. “The show’s pretty intense, decently heavy material, themes, you know. Our characters kind of a tortured hero at the beginning and Dunebot is really the person- or the thing that brings out the hero in him and shows him that there’s a better side of life than what he’s used to. He’s totally this ball of sunshine and funniness and he’s just super hilarious.”

Dunebot will also be quite different from the other robots Rake knows.

“He’s also kind of, is allegory the right term? The main antagonist in this whole thing is the suppressive hive style robotic sentient mechanical entity and as far as Rake knows, all robots are evil,” Rudish said. “So when they first meet, Rake’s gonna have to deal with his prejudice towards robots. And it’s totally made our little way of trying to make the world a better place. He’s going to have to deal with that and realize that not all mechanical things are bad or evil. He does have some important, deep- deeper story elements attached to him than just being funny.”

A Tenuous Partnership

Fans will meet Rake’s boss early on in Axiom, who goes by the name of Shogun Syn. Rake is Syn’s apprentice, but as he makes clear in the first episode, he doesn’t necessarily have a problem with taking out Rake if he ends up on the wrong side of an issue or fails his intended mission.

“It is, it’s kind of a love-hate thing,” Rudish said. “Rake was an orphan, so he’s never known anyone else to be his caregiver other than Syn, so they do have an attachment. It’s not exposed immediately, but Syn definitely has a soft spot for Rake. He’s definitely kind of his pride, his baby project that he’s crafted into the ultimate espionage tool. While they interact with one another in a father and son kind of way, ultimately Syn is an antagonist. We’ll see that eventually, that is worked into there. There also may be some twists and turns further down the road. Some redemption for Syn maybe.”

“To kind of add to that, when I created Syn, Syn was the next character I made after Rake and he- I totally had this, have you seen the movie Unleashed with Jet Li? It’s kind of that relationship where he has his collar and it’s more like Coban said, he’s a project. He’s not so much his son, but more of a project where he’s developing this thing, this tool,” Wheelock said.

“This pet project,” Rudish said.

“Exactly, he’s not really, he doesn’t see him always as this kid,” Wheelock said. “He sees him as a weapon. If he can’t get the job done then he’ll find a new weapon or he’ll find a new project.”

That also means just rebuilding that weapon, and that is where Rake’s augments come in.

“We have this cool storyline to where he just augments Rake if he fails,” Wheelock said. “He just gets augmented to succeed basically.”

It’s here that Rudish reveals “Rake had his leg when Syn first found him. Syn is responsible for that robot leg, with Wheelock adding “He’s the one behind all the augmentation, stuff like that.”

That’s bound to build some resentment, so you can see where part of the conflict arises.

The Mechno Hive

Rake, Lefty, and Dunebot will find themselves going against the Mechano-Hive, the larger entity that is currently in power over the planet, and we now have an idea of when we’ll see that journey into power.

“We have an episode, a Mythos episode, which explains the timeline in a way where you see the world before the Mechno-Hive and when their basically seedlings of that entity,” Bolin said. “As time goes on, you see how they grow and become what they are in the present day.”

As for how long they’ve been in power, Wheelock prefers to be a little vague, saying “I think the best answer to that specific question, “How long have they been in power,” is strategically vague cartoon answer, “A long time.” Leave a nice hole where you can fill with story later that you don’t have to think of now.”

While they didn’t reveal specifics, they do have them in an Axiom bible if you will.

“We have back story that will probably never be seen but it helps us to build the world,” Rudish said.

The Finished Product

So, now that you know all about Axiom Chronicles, when can we plan on seeing more?

“That is a great question- That’s also the big question of the day,” Bolin said. “We’re anticipating getting the second half done before the end of the year. That would be our super awesome goal. Which is honestly, way expedited from the first half in comparison because we know what we’re doing, kind of now. I say that loosely. We have a better idea of what we’re doing. We wanna be able to release this again, it’ll be released on YouTube, the second half. We’re debating on putting the two together, that’s probably what we’re landing on. Putting both halves together as one piece to be shown in its entirety. From there, our goal is to get this onto- become a series. We have five seasons arced out already.”

In fact, they’ve already started work on some of the season 1 scripts.

“We have the first season, pretty much every episode plotted out,” Bolin said. “I think we’ve started scripts on a lot of the stuff too. There’s definitely some direction there for the future as far as with the show. We would love to get it picked up obviously by either a streaming service or a network. We have a few feelers out there right now. Hopefully, we’ll get some bites but that’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

“We’re just kind of in hustle mode right now I guess right now, trying to pick what we have but also trying to keep development going,” Bolin said. “We’ve thrown around the idea of finishing up this second half and maybe even starting another Kickstarter for episode two. That’s another thing we’ve talked about. I think to answer your question quickly, hopefully, the end of episode one will hit before the end of the year. The dream is to get it picked up or keep doing things we need to in order to push the series forward. That’s a slow process though. We get picked up, obviously, it’ll be much quicker.”

Here’s hoping that happens, as we would love to see more of this stylish world.

You can find more behind the scenes videos of Axiom Chronicles right here, and you can find Joe Brogie’s official website right here.

Let us know what you think of Axiom Chronicles in the comments!