Way back in 2004 I was attending a TAFE web design course. During a break in class, I was fiddling around with a copy of AGS (Adventure Game Studio) when another student saw what I was doing and asked how easy it was to make something. To show him the ease at which you could make something, I quickly put together some graphics in Adobe Photoshop and quickly coded a very short and easy game.
This was Brad Bradson I: Key Quest!
The game was arguably a game, and featured: one screen; one single puzzle which wasn't quite a puzzle; stupid jokes; and finally, instead of actually exiting the game, I made it cause and error and crash. All in a short 5-10 minute window.
The game became a popular in-joke for some on the AGS forums and the character I came up with, Brad Bradson became the official mascot of the Quick Quest Qrew (QQQ) of which I was a founding member. Further, I started work on a sequel to the game and meant for it to be an actual game, with plot and puzzles and so forth, but an unexpected hard drive crash meant that it was not to be.
The Man Himself
From his first appearance, Brad has been noted to be an idiot. He says weird things. His appearance is that of a strange looking man, wearing a security officers attire from the original series of Star Trek, and this worked it's way into the "plot" by revealing that he was an avid Star Trek fan whom was enrolling in Star Fleet. The other thing of note is that he seemingly dies a lot in things that I have used him in. Even in the first game he appeared in, he got shot at the end of it by a Klingon.
And then the game promptly had an error and crashed. I never said that my first attempt was a scripting masterpiece.
Apart from this first game, he went on to appear in a cameo role in many other games made by other QQQ members. These range from a more prominent cameo in my game, Lifeboat: Story of Cedrick, to games in which he appeared as a figurine in a safe.
The Series
I was screwing around with The Movies when I decided to start putting together a little short. I originally started to use a character I came up with named Clint Briscoe during a session of actually playing the main part of the game. The character was essentially a Flash Gordon rip off, who came from the black-and-white era of filmmaking.
After downloading a mod which had costumes from the Original Series of Star Trek, I decided to change the character to that of Brad Bradson. And naturally, from there, the short changed from what was originally going to be a serious test of some ideas I had for the Doctor Who series, into a short in which I could just come up with weird shit.
The first episode was made in about half a day, along with the second episode. I wrote the dialogue after the scenes had been set up, recorded them and then moved on to incorporating it into the scenes to take advantage of the lip-syncing feature available in The Movies.
A bit of tweaking to the scenes, and then it came time to render the scenes out. To do so, I used FRAPS and recorded the screen, and finally put that video through Avidemux to crop it and to render out a version to use in editing. The editing took advantage of Adobe Premiere, and it was rendered out.
The music used for the opening was the same music to be used as the theme for the Brad Bradson sequel game. I found it appropriate to use as it was epic, and already in my mind, identifiable with the character.
Finally, the first two episodes were completed and put up on Youtube.
The third episode took a little longer to create, as it was more ambitious. It included much more dialogue as I wanted Brad to meet a version of himself from another dimension. We already got a glimpse during the second episode of a double, but it doesn't really hit home that there are multiple Brad's running around until this episode.
It's stupid, whilst at the same time, being a little bit smarter in it's use of the tropes of it's sci-fi setting. The idea came to me from the episode of Stargate SG-1 in which Daniel Jackson appears in a diner in which ascended beings interact. I wanted an interesting setting to use to conduct a conversation between an intelligent Brad and our lovable imbecile Brad.
And of course, I had a typical Brad Bradson ending.
The three episodes made a very loose arc, following Brad from his starship, to a planet, and finally into the diner. Whilst no more episodes have been made, I have decided that the arc continues and wrote some ideas for how to continue the series. But then I have a file in my Bradson folder called episodes.txt and I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it.
Moontime? For the life of me, I cannot remember why I wrote the next episodes title in this file as Moontime. I didn't write anything after it, and none of the ideas I came up with had anything to do with the moon and none of the notes that I wrote have anything to do with this... so buggers me how drunk I was when I wrote it.
In all, Brad Bradson is not something I am serious about and just want to come back to it whenever I get in a silly mood. The second episode came about because I wanted to use the animation of someone slipping on a banana in at least something. I figure, might as well do it with Brad. And that is the thing I love about Brad, he is a vehicle in which I can use to do things I wouldn't get a chance to do with other characters.
And then the game promptly had an error and crashed. I never said that my first attempt was a scripting masterpiece.
Apart from this first game, he went on to appear in a cameo role in many other games made by other QQQ members. These range from a more prominent cameo in my game, Lifeboat: Story of Cedrick, to games in which he appeared as a figurine in a safe.
The Series
I was screwing around with The Movies when I decided to start putting together a little short. I originally started to use a character I came up with named Clint Briscoe during a session of actually playing the main part of the game. The character was essentially a Flash Gordon rip off, who came from the black-and-white era of filmmaking.
After downloading a mod which had costumes from the Original Series of Star Trek, I decided to change the character to that of Brad Bradson. And naturally, from there, the short changed from what was originally going to be a serious test of some ideas I had for the Doctor Who series, into a short in which I could just come up with weird shit.
The first episode was made in about half a day, along with the second episode. I wrote the dialogue after the scenes had been set up, recorded them and then moved on to incorporating it into the scenes to take advantage of the lip-syncing feature available in The Movies.
A bit of tweaking to the scenes, and then it came time to render the scenes out. To do so, I used FRAPS and recorded the screen, and finally put that video through Avidemux to crop it and to render out a version to use in editing. The editing took advantage of Adobe Premiere, and it was rendered out.
The music used for the opening was the same music to be used as the theme for the Brad Bradson sequel game. I found it appropriate to use as it was epic, and already in my mind, identifiable with the character.
Finally, the first two episodes were completed and put up on Youtube.
The third episode took a little longer to create, as it was more ambitious. It included much more dialogue as I wanted Brad to meet a version of himself from another dimension. We already got a glimpse during the second episode of a double, but it doesn't really hit home that there are multiple Brad's running around until this episode.
It's stupid, whilst at the same time, being a little bit smarter in it's use of the tropes of it's sci-fi setting. The idea came to me from the episode of Stargate SG-1 in which Daniel Jackson appears in a diner in which ascended beings interact. I wanted an interesting setting to use to conduct a conversation between an intelligent Brad and our lovable imbecile Brad.
And of course, I had a typical Brad Bradson ending.
Moontime? For the life of me, I cannot remember why I wrote the next episodes title in this file as Moontime. I didn't write anything after it, and none of the ideas I came up with had anything to do with the moon and none of the notes that I wrote have anything to do with this... so buggers me how drunk I was when I wrote it.
In all, Brad Bradson is not something I am serious about and just want to come back to it whenever I get in a silly mood. The second episode came about because I wanted to use the animation of someone slipping on a banana in at least something. I figure, might as well do it with Brad. And that is the thing I love about Brad, he is a vehicle in which I can use to do things I wouldn't get a chance to do with other characters.
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