The Second Episode Of Edgar Wright’s BRANDON GENERATOR Gets User Generated
Last month The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator premiered online; it's a promotional thing for Microsoft Explorer (remember that browser? Netscape's saving you a place, pal!) written by Edgar Wright with really amazing art by Tommy Lee Edwards. The hook was that at the end of the first motion comic/webisode you, the viewer, could help shape the story by submitting monster designs, prose, and voicemails. I assumed the reader submitted material would be just thrown in, and that the main story would continue as Edgar and Tommy Lee Edwards had always planned it.
And when I watched the second episode I sort of thought that was the case, that the submitting monsters were just superimposed over the existing images. Imagine my surprise when I spoke to Edgar and discovered that not only was the main big monster in the episode - Caffiendo - user submitted, the bit with the mystery girl grew out of a real user leaving a mysterious voicemail on the Brandon Generator line. When you watch the episode you'll see that these are two of the big moments, which is impressive.
I'm interested in seeing where this thing goes now; there are all new user interaction prompts at the end of the latest episode, and knowing how influential the user generated stuff was in episode two, I bet episode three really goes places. This is probably the closest many of us will get to collaborating with Edgar Wright, so enjoy it.
