This Wacky Animated Short from Hornet's Gabe Askew Is Too Fun to Miss

From the director of the gripping short film "Goat and Aaron" and momentous fan music video "Two Weeks" comes the cleverly animated comedy "Trail Mix: The Buffalo Ball." The pioneer era story follows Leroy — a colorful, 13-year-old boy whose only wish is to become a famous stage performer — his criminally insane grandmother and his feverishly simple father (who is a potato) as they make the 2,000 mile trek across the Oregon Trail.

“When I was a kid I once had this class assignment to write the diary of a person who was traveling on the Oregon Trail, and I thought it was the most boring project in the world,” noted Director Gabe Askew. “So I came up with this really weird cast of characters to make the homework more interesting. That was sort of the seed that started the whole story.”

If the detailed sets, complex character rigs and intricate props throughout “Trail Mix: The Buffalo Ball” weren’t enough, Askew single-handedly built “Trail Mix: Turtle Hurdle” — an original mobile game for both iOS and Android to compliment the film. Based on the film’s main characters, “Trail Mix: Turtle Hurdle” challenges players to fend off hoards of wild animals by launching chains of turtles at them.

“We had all these amazing assets from the film and I just really wanted to do more with the characters and the world we built for them. I didn’t know the first thing about programming, but I was sort of dead set on making the game happen,” he said.

Never having built a game before, Askew first outlined the premise of each level and then went about teaching himself C# and Unity3D, spending a solid week combing over tutorials and reading articles on the language and dynamic game building platform. After many diligent hours studying and several rounds of trial and error, Askew had a beta.

“It was surprisingly fun, so I kept going and kept building, and now I have thousands of lines of code, a new set of skills and a fully functioning game to show for it,” said Askew.

Complete with several different levels and the aide of a few helper allies, “Trail Mix: Turtle Hurdle” will be available for iOS and Android this Fall.