Appliance Video Contest Animation
The Lone Stanger Saves the DayIn an effort to win a new oven for the house, I entered a video contest. I brainstormed with the idea to create an animation using a parody on the Lone Ranger TV Series and mix that with needing a new appliance.
Storyboarding
This has become an important stage in my storytelling process. I gained a
great deal of insight and content development ideas from drawing a few sketches and making some preliminary Illustrator comps. First, my character
needed something that looked similar to the Lone Ranger TV series. I was a inspired by the new Lone Ranger movie releasing soon. I love Lego’s. There you have it. The Lone Stranger characters would be Lego style.

There is nothing new here. Lego has been producing animated video games for years. I have the three Star Wars Games. Ok, how do I make an animated character that was easy and did not take a staff of 1000 animators, riggers and lighting experts to produce? You guess it “South Park”. I don’t watch the program but the characters are simple shapes like circles, squares and rectangles. They have limited movement and lip-synching is minimal. I can do that but I didn’t have the time to lip-sync.
I patterned my design after a Lego and animated it like a South Park episode. My sister helped with a female voice and storyline development. My brother Bryson jumped in and helped with character development. Most producers set the audio first and develop the animation. Since I was making things easy, I banged out the animation and set the audio track to match.
After the video was submitted and the voting was complete, I did not win a new oven. Bummer. However, I did have some great experience in creating characters, writing a storyline and participating in a competition.
Garen Michael
December 2012