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THE LASSO KID STORY
 It’s
hard to believe that its been twenty years ago since I awoke in the
middle of the night and the words just came out, "Lasso
Productions". It was to become a new name for my film, video and
advertising company. The concept most likely evolved from a
combination of my baby-boomer childhood memories of cowboys, a
fascination with mid-century cowboy collectibles (furniture,
clothing, etc.), and a love for hillbilly roots music, including
recent attendance at that time of live performances by Ralph
Stanley, Dwight Yoakam, Asleep at the Wheel, Sleepy LaBeef and
others (I remember having a "Ralph Stanley for President" bumper
sticker on my Ford Bronco! Long before "Oh Brother Where Art
Thou").
Needing a logo
for the new name, I came up with the idea of a cowboy riding a
camera with his rope spelling "lasso". This was a rather simple
corporate looking logo. Shortly thereafter, I became acquainted
with a young starving artist named Darryl Banks. I knew he was
gifted the moment I saw his fantastically drawn comic book
characters. It was only a matter of time before he would be
discovered by the comic book world. But in the meantime, I
provided Darryl with logo and design work on a freelance basis.
He had an amazing ability to draw exactly as I im agined,
sometimes right in front of me as I described my ideas. His work
inspired and excited me, and soon we where discussing the
re-creation of the Lasso logo as a comic book super hero: "The
Lasso Kid". He was to be the superman of film and video
productions, the "Teleranching Cowboy" who could easily rustle
up the best creative projects on time and on budget! We did some
story boards for a comic strip but I decided I wanted to convey
The Lasso Kid message as a comic book cover. I told Darryl I
wanted The Lasso Kid to be pictured flying over the Columbus,
Ohio skyline with a lassoed mechanical / robotic steer that had
a television head and an antenna tail. The steer was a
representation of the advertiser’s or production client’s
"target market" and we dubbed him the "Steeroid". Well, Darryl’s
hand painted "comic book cover" turned out stunningly and it can
be seen on the back of Lasso Productions’ brochures and press
kits.
My film, video
and audio production skills are self-taught and my venture into
animation was the same. I always figured that if someone else
can do it, so can I. I wanted to make a short animation of The
Lasso Kid for the beginning of my Demo Reels. So, I bought some
books and ordered an Oxberry type peg bar drawing board, some
paper and animation cels (computer animation was in its infancy
at the time). My next step was to convince Darryl that he could
draw animation frames of the Lasso Kid and the Steeroid. After
some time, Darryl started to get the process down. I would shoot
his drawings onto video so we could see how the frames
progressed. This helped us see where he needed to make changes
or add extra frames and I learned to shoot the frames in the
correct order for forward movement! Once satisfied with the
pencil drawings, Darryl hand painted each and every cel, over
170!
Darryl Banks
moved on to fame in the comic book world. He is best known for
his work in the Green
Lantern, Volume 3. I went on to many other projects, fatherhood
and unfortunately, some difficult times. The project went on the
back burner, but from time to time I would design ideas for
animated backgrounds. Finally, within this past year, I was able
to find the time to finish this project started so long ago. The
number of hours in this short animation is staggering – maybe
over a thousand! Darryl’s cels were a great start but a ton of
work still needed to be done. I scanned his paintings into the
computer one by one and began the painstaking work of producing
this project one frame at a time. I soon found that I needed to
greatly expand on the number of frames that Darryl had drawn. I
manipulated his paintings to add more movement and increase the
overall number of frames. I created animated backgrounds and
merged all of the elements together. Most of this work was
performed in a Windows photoshop environment. Once sequences
were complete, I moved them to Apple Motion and Final Cut Pro.
The sound was added in Final Cut Pro. At some points I had eight
tracks of audio running simultaneously. In all, this thirty
second animation contains over 900 individual frames!
 I
don’t ever see becoming a full-time animation person. I’ll stick
to much less labor intensive productions such as shooting and
editing film and video. However, now that it’s finally
completed, I can sit back and enjoy. I hope that others viewing
The Lasso Kid will also find it fun. And if anyone asks me about
animation, I’ll tell them not to attempt it without the help of
a studio full of animators!
Greg Wolske
Producer/Director
Darryl Banks
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Darryl Banks is an African-American comic book
artist. He worked on one of the first
painted comic books, Cyberpunk, and teamed with the writer Mark
Ellis to revamp the long-running The Justice Machine series for
two publishers, Innovation and Millennium.
At Millennium, working with Mark Ellis, he
produced a critically acclaimed mini-series based on The Wild
Wild West TV series and what is considered to be the best comics
adaptation of Doc Savage with The Monarch of Armageddon.
Banks is best known for his run on Green
Lantern (Volume 3), which ran from issue 50 till 142 (though
there were many fill-ins). Along with co-creating Kyle Rayner,
he's responsible for designing costumes for Parallax, Grayven,
Fatality, and Dr. Light. He's been under the radar in recent
years, having not worked on any notable titles in some time. A
recurring character known as "Banks" is part of the cast of the
Outlanders novel series written by Mark Ellis, aka James Axler .
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