Caught somewhere between a graphic novel, animated short and a choose-your-own-adventure novel, “The Random Adventures of Brandon Generator” offers it’s audience something they probably haven’t seen before.

The genre-bending tale by Edgar Wright and Tommy Lee Edwards follows Brandon, a writer whose creative block has forced him into a hermit-like lifestyle.

Thankfully for Brandon, there’s a nearly endless supply of ideas available for him to incorporate into his stories. That’s where you come in.

Audience members are encouraged to submit their own writings, drawings and audio recordings to the website brandongenerator.com where select works will be incorporated into future episodes of Brandon’s story.

Admittedly, I was afraid a crowd-sourced story would be too gimmicky to be enjoyable, but it ends up being a clever, if random, conglomerate.

Brandon receives the contributions after passing out from an extreme caffeine crash. The coffee addict awakens to find his computer filled with prose, a doodle-covered legal pad and mysterious voices floating out of his voice recorder and answering machine.

He doesn’t know where any of it came from and in his quest to figure things out the rest of his world unravels into a surreal mess.

The works given to Brandon are littered throughout the second episode. They help shape the story’s setting and give things a distinct atmosphere though they don’t seem to drive the plot in any major way.

This is both a blessing and curse for ‘Generator’. It saves the writers from watching their story collapse in on itself from the weight of numerous user-generated submissions. But railroading the storyline keeps the audience from having any real impact on things. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be interesting to see what kind of awesomeness might come of having all of this creativity collide with each other in full force.

It’s an experiment. It may not be as experimental or risky as it could have been, but it’s still a step in a new direction. ‘Generator’ shows that we are far from done creating new ways to tell digital stories and it makes me really excited to see what comes next.

Not only is it ambitious but it’s also kind of noble, and it doesn’t even need to be. While the addition of audience submissions add an extra level to the presentation, there’s a lot of other content here to enjoy.

Brandon’s is a strange tale filled with haunting music and energetic art. Narration by Julian Barratt from “The Mighty Boosh” helps tie the whole package together.

It’s a compelling story about a man struggling with creativity, a theme that most of the contributors can probably relate to.

The digital tale already has two of four monthly episodes posted and access to them is completely free. There aren’t even really commercials. The entire production seems sponsored by Internet Explorer and some features on the site are only available through that browser.

This is an interesting way for Explorer to get its name out there (God knows they probably need it). I don’t even have an Internet Explorer shortcut on my desktop, but I found myself opening it so I didn’t miss anything ‘Generator’ had to offer. Not surprisingly, Explorer crashed often and refused to load the site. I chuckled a little, but then disappointedly switched over to Firefox.

I may not be able to get every feature that ‘Generator’ is offering. But what I’m getting is excellent. Watching Brandon’s struggle has actually helped me handle my own creative blocks.

I find myself encouraging my fellow artists and writers to get to the site, watch the episodes and contribute something. It’s a lot of fun and you’d be surprised how well it can help to get the creative juices flowing.

Seth Schroder can be reached at [email protected] or 851-2812