The 3 Brothers

## About

*The 3 Brothers Series* is an English Flash-animated web series that revolves around three brothers, namely Fred, Ted and Bobby, who live in the suburbs of a coastal British county Smileton and get into many adventures.

The series was created by Owen Steel, and has been running for four years.

## Production

The series is produced in many softwares.

The script is written either by hand or with aid of a typewriter and the voices are then recorded in Adobe Audition. Afterwards, it is animated in Adobe Flash (with props and backgrounds designed and made in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop) and then that is edited in Adobe Premiere with the sound effects and lighting added. This process is done within one month.

The 3 Brothers uses the simplistic design of the 50s Art Deco era, alongside collages and photomontaging. This empathises more on the action than the art of the show in order to make the series more energetic and watchable. The overall style of the characters differs on their personalities, and the same rule applies for the areas too. An example of this is that snooty, aristocratic townspeople are drawn with more 'sharp' lines and edges and are not as articulated as, for example, the brothers, who are more rounded and 'smooth'.

## Characters

**Fred** - the athletic, energetic and adventurous middle child of the brothers, who is always getting into trouble with hare-brained schemes and ideas. He is very witty, and always manages to get his own way.

**Bobby** - the bouncy, cheerful younger brother of the trio. He is characterised by his misconceptions of common phrases, and his wide personality. He always follows Fred on adventures, especially if they're fun. He also has an obsession with cream crackers.

**Ted** - quiet, self-reflective and responsible, Ted is the older brother in the siblings. He doesn't ever want to get into adventures, and if he is dragged into one, he is always the first to try and get out. He loves cleaning things, and always makes sure that everything is orderly around the house. His most favourite things are gardening, playing piano, watching documentaries, reading books and cooking.

### Supporting Characters

**Charlie** - a spider that lives in the brothers' house with them since he was found living in the attic. Now lives in the spare room thanks to a deal bargained by Fred.

**Mr Baldworthy** - the snooty, bossy, loud and annoying neighbour to the brothers, who is always making an uproar about the smallest violations. He also enjoys criticising Ted’s garden, and constantly threatens to “inform the county council” if he is annoyed by something.

**Ms Whippen** - the second next-door neighbour who owns a mischievous pet cat. She is aristocratic and everything she owns is beige in some way.

**Bert The Postman** - the local postman for the Pringleton Housing Estate. He is cheerful, kind and is good friends with Ted.

**The Grannies** - namely Granny Georgia, Granny Barbara and Granny Ethel. They are always seen either standing or sitting down somewhere, either it be on a park bench or at the tram stop, spreading gossip to each other.

**Mr Pockett** - the example of the everyday gentleman in Smileton, Mr Pocket works at Smile Enterprises as a second secondary secretary to the second division. Although he tends to get through life trouble-free, he is unfortunately usually at the receiving end of the brothers’ antics, however he does not have a particular hate for them. He is also very nosy, and listens in to telephone booths and gossip from the Grannies, which he reports to the Smile News Newspaper.

**Wilbur Wackett** - the bossy, irritable director of Smile Enterprises, the dominant conglomerate company famous for it's ability to gain ownership of the entire county of Smileton from just one shop. He controls the company with his consecutives, and is spoilt, snobbish and hates to be contradicted.

**Dr Guding** - a distinguished doctor who owns a medical practice in Smileton.

Many other minor characters give roles in the show, either having single roles or appearing again in the background.

## Setting

The whole series is set within the fictional British coastal county Smileton, a large county consisting of a seaside, a mountinous area, a huge city and a complex suburbian district. Smileton is dominated entirely by the single conglomerate company Smile Enterprises, a company that appears to sell every possible thing in it's famous 'Smile Stores' that line each city street. Because of this, each product in the show is Smile-branded, unbeknownst to the characters, and gives many hints about the negativity of modern consumerism.

The brothers, although parentless, are barely noticed by any authority considering their position. The oldest brother, Ted, can drive a car at the age of only sixteen. The brothers all live independantly in their own house, one of the many identical family houses located in the surburban estate that borders the city. It can be understood that Smileton may be in a parallel universe to reality, which may involve different laws and global occurances that are responsible for their luck, which would explain many things.

Each season is perpetually timelocked within the year 2014, however, Smileton seems to have very dated fashions, such being that all adults wear suits and bowler hats and vehicles being quite old-fashioned in their design. Jazz is still mainstream, and expressions used in perhaps the 1920s are spoken by most of the characters, including the brothers. Modern technology like computers and televisions do exist, but mobile phones and other devices do not, and rotary phones and electric typewriters are still in popular use.

## Episodes

*Main article Episode List*

The episodes of the series all have the same reoccurring format; the brothers all begin doing something completely irrelevant to the later plot, such as racing each other, eating breakfast etc. then going on to have an adventure.

## Music

The series also uses a variety of music in the episodes. For example, the background music uses ragtime piano, swing and occasionally orchestral music reminiscent of 50s cinema.

Each character has their own musical genre and instruments, as this is intentioned to add more to their character.

## Trivia

* Owen Steel, the creator, currently does all of the stages of production in the show independantly. This is why each episode takes a month to be made.
* Although the music is professionally created with the correct equipment, Owen Steel can not actually read sheet music. This means every piece of music composed in *The 3 Brothers Series* is all improvisation played from memory.
* The series originally began as an extensive series of comic strips written and drawn by Owen Steel from age seven to eleven. This is the reason why the series is set in 2014, because it is the year the comics stopped being drawn and the animated series started.