The Big Lez Show is an animated comedy series that originally aired on YouTube in 2012 and finished in 2019 the show's creator Jarrad Wright was later commissioned a spin off series called the Mike Nolan which aired on Comedy Central Australia, Throughout all seasons and the Spin-off series the shows were produced with the same techniques as traditionally used by the creator. The show was entirely made via. Microsoft Paint, from 2012-2019 the show was noticeably different in it's appearance with more colour pallets being used in episodes as well as finer detailing to characters and backgrounds, as well as better audio quality and resolution. Jarrad Wright admitted in numerous instances that the entirety of season was animated "On a laptop issued by the Australian school laptop program with the drawings done on a Track-pad in Microsoft Paint", as seasons progressed they went on to use a stylus on a Microsoft Surface, which is why the quality of the show is improved in later seasons.
The reason Big Lez is so memorable is because the art style is notable unique, with crudely drawn freehand frames and a limited colour palette the show does well to portray a story with limited animation, the humour to the show is crude and mainly aims towards a mature audience with many scenes involving bloody violence, swearing and drug use as well as certain instances showing many psychedelic themes.
The show is very similar for production like many student films, even when the creator was approached by comedy central as part of the deal he wanted to make sure that no outside personnel were employed. Jarrad wanted to make sure that the show took onboard all aspects of the original production including the writing, voice acting, animation, editing, music and distribution. The only downside to this is that the production time of each episode and series takes a larger amount of time to complete than what it would if it were to take on board a production team.
The main software that was used was Microsoft Paint for animation, then it was edited on Adobe Premiere and audio was recorded in audacity. Even when more animation programs, editing software and audio software was made, Jarrad carried on to make his show the same way as he always had done, many animations and TV Shows go through many stages of updating it's quality over the years, as times change so does the method of animating, but even with all of the available software to his disposal Jarrad carried on with his techniques, even on the ''Mike Nolan show and Mike Nolan's Long Weekend''
The show successfully reached a cult following, with its YouTube Channel reaching nearly 1 Million Subscribers and getting over 140 Million Views collectively over all 36 episodes, many media outlets and critics positively credited the shows success, as it become so popular with any commercial advertising. I will carry on to look into the big Lez show, look at it's techniques, its consistency in writing, and how it was produced.
Jarrad Wright Released a 1 hour "making of" episode on YouTube less than a year ago, and there was also 10 minute Documentary that was named "The Big Lez Doco" unfortunately it will be hard to see the documentary as it was taken down from YouTube Earlier this year.
Comments