what is Motorbike Man?
(image from apollo_101)
The Many Adventures of Motorbike Man and Friends began as a series of toy motion-comics (to put it generously) made between 2005 and 2006, literally because I was a dumbass teen with too much free time. Let's photograph some dumb scenarios, chuck it into a PowerPoint slideshow (no joke), and then improv over it after the fact. They are very puerile and indicative of mid-'00s sensibilities.
Motorbike Man (actually Dino-Snare Dirtbike™ With Carter™ from The Lost World: Jurassic Park's toyline) was a hero in pretence only. He'd beat people up to save the day, and was sometimes called upon to protect the sanctity of Christmas, he was otherwise a violent force of nature who somehow embedded himself in a community of weirdos. I guess. That's putting way more thought into it than I ever gave it at the time. Teenage me was not known for greater wit than random violence and epithets.
(MS Paint storyboard for series 1 episode 1, "The Motorbike Man Returns")
From 2009 to 2012, Ian Linn (the voice of Dash Badminton, MBM's alleged nemesis) and I tossed around the prospect of reviving it as an illustrated motion comic; dynamic speech bubbles, mid-'panel' pose changes, screen shake, little flourishes like that.
We spitballed ideas, doodled a bunch, gave far too much thought to the relationship between Dash and Motorbike Man, and plotted out roughly three 'seasons' worth of material, including run-ins with cosmic entities and arsing about in parallel universes... but at no point did we actually figure out how we'd make it.
I still hold a dumbass torch for the character, even if I've done nothing publicly with him since those dodgy old toy videos. I have idle notions of new scenarios or premises to fold him into, but if anything comes of it it'll surely be accidental. In the meantime, folks seem to like his design, and that's neat to see!
