We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brodie Rush a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brodie, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

My dad was always an amature with his super 8 film camera. Mostly filming our family and rock and roll concerts in the 1970’s. We later got a series of different video cameras throughout the 1980’s and 90’s. I would experiment by making videos with my friends. Skits, lip-synching, embarrassing “acting” and awkward young person moments. In my teen years I decided to pursue playing in a rock band. I’ve had the same band since 1994 Be/Non. Working with famous producers I learned how to produce and record. In the late 1990’s I started a silkscreen poster business and started doing graphic design self-taught. In 2009 I started to learn how to animate and learn motion graphics. Again, self-taught. I’ve been doing voiceovers for years now and just got hired by a design firm that I’ve been freelancing at for over a decade. Since I’ve mostly learned my skills by myself, I think my process could have been accelerated had I had peers that did this type of work to collaborate with. I’m from Kansas City and there just aren’t a lot of people in tis town doing what I’m doing. So, it’s been a slow burn. Since I’m where I’m at now, I don’t think I could have done it differently considering my circumstances.

Brodie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Brodie Rush. I do a lot of creative things with my time. I’m also an aortic dissection survivor. I write music, produce and record music. I have a home recording studio and front a band named Be/Non for the past 29 years. I’ve learned how to animate, do motion graphics and graphic design in the past 2 decades. I use Cubase for recording ad the Adobe Creative Suite for all other creative projects. I make promotional videos, visual effects, music videos, do voiceovers, I produce music and music content for commercials and albums. I work at a design firm called Singlewing Creative in the Crossroad Art district in Kansas City, Missouri. My style leans more toward the fantastical. My music video projects tend to be a lot of eye candy. Visually striking and sometimes disturbing or funny. I have hosted many event over the past 3 decades as an emcee, karaoke host and performer. I also make haunted houses every October for the past 20 years. I have ort of a different take on things than my peers. That sets me apart from the pack. Also being a 4th grade dropout, I’ve had to teach myself most everything I know. It’s been a struggle to stay motivated over the years but I can’t stop the creative force within, so I just have to keep going. My 11 year old daughter helps inspire me to keep going and pushes me to do better. I also feel like I have a large community of support locally and nationally. So that helps keep projects roll in and keeps my brand reaching new audiences. I am currently making a comedy web series called “The Music Expert” and developing an animated series “The Eradicators” with a writer out of LA, Jeff Hatz.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In October 2019 I had an emergency aortic dissection. The survival is about 9-30%. Celebs like Lucille Ball, Albert Einstein and John Ritter are a few people that didn’t survive their aortic dissection. Riddle with survivor grief it took me about 9 months to recover from this ordeal. Glad to be alive I started putting all my efforts into finishing old projects and starting new ventures. I raised 27,000 with a Kickstarter project for an animated web series called “Food People” A show teaching kids and adults about food and making meals. Unfortunately the project only got one episode out before me and my partner split and the project is now in limbo because of legal business reasons. It’s really sad because this project was 95% all my idea, my art, my music, my animations, my characters. So it was very tough to realize that something I had worked so hard on and put so much time into, is now caught in a web and out of reach, for now. So, I have had to switch gears and start other projects to fill the void. You get knocked down in life and you just have to keep going because it’s the only thing left to do. Never stop creating.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding thing about creativity and art projects is when the project is finished and approved by the client. If they’re happy, I’m happy. For my own projects I enjoy the end product. If everything went well, happy accidents and learning a new trick that actually worked out inspires me to want to do more. I love it when a project comes together quickly and efficiently. Because some projects drag on and on to a point where you become lost and free of the confidence you had at the start of the project.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rick.cardio.7/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3EIUIn3HnDdMBuRL17kp_A