The problem is that nobody is interested in his story. Which is a shame. Great animator's passion project is a flop. But there have been plenty of shows, games, and movies that have flopped. Indie animation is no different.
imo he should try for a new series instead of continuing with this one
Basically, look into why the current one is performing poorly and make something that's improved.
He's a crazy talented guy, I think he could make a really stellar series at some point. If he paired with or got more help from a really strong writer, it'd probably make a world of difference.
It'd be easier to salvage and course correct then start over. New name, plenty of promos and info, public admission that the first attempt was a dud. Zeurel's big enough to get enough attention to warrant another chance.
That was so fricking boring I can't believe I watched 30 minutes of this. Why is it so fricking long? Why would you make this? That audio is so jank. Nails on a fricking chalkboard. I honestly can't believe one and a half million people actually watched the first episode to completion and didn't just shut it off after like a minute.
>I can't believe I watched 30 minutes of this. >Why is it so fricking long?
This.
If I ever animate a tv show I'd make it really short (7 minutes or less) and animate everything in flash/animate/toon boom.
I don't have time or budget for traditional 2D animation nor do I have patience to learn 3D.
Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
Even the simple animation of running looks like shit unless you do it frame by frame.
Most modern shows keep tweens for slides and other basic animation and break out the FBF for advanced stuff.
Also go with Toonboom, Adobe hasn't fixed Animate's brush strokes since they bought it from Macromedia.
Doesn't DC Super Hero Girls use rig animation? Not as good as trad animation, of course, but it seems perfectly serviceable to me. I'd rather settle for this quality than bust my ass off for years and waste thousands of dollars for something overly baroque that might not even take off.
Ive only ever animated by just drawing but Im pretty sure with puppets you dont have to redraw them as much. Just redrawing frames is easier though imo
Yeah. I foresee that the biggest time-saver would be the lack of a need to redraw not only characters, but virtually most assets in a scene.
Ive only ever animated by just drawing but Im pretty sure with puppets you dont have to redraw them as much. Just redrawing frames is easier though imo
>How much easier and faster is puppet/flash animation compared to traditional frame-by-frame?
>Faster
It's supremely faster, just do the math, with 2D trad animation you have to draw 24/12/8/6 new frames every second while with Flash you only draw once and then move the puppet around.
TLDR: It's thousands of times faster.
>Easier
Even non-artists can animate in flash, just download a puppet and have some fun animating.
It's the same for 3D but guess which one is easier.
Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
Even the simple animation of running looks like shit unless you do it frame by frame.
Most modern shows keep tweens for slides and other basic animation and break out the FBF for advanced stuff.
Also go with Toonboom, Adobe hasn't fixed Animate's brush strokes since they bought it from Macromedia.
>Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
I've worked with 2D puppets for almost 10 years and this is accurate, but making it look good can be done with experience and skill. The biggest issue with puppet animation is when you are the lead animator - in todays industry you often work with puppet animators who have no fricking idea how animation works, they're just random illustrators pulled from the street. I even had one that couldn't even draw.
>Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
This could be just as much applicable to music and writing for modern (or frick it, MOST) western cartoons in general, probably to an even greater degree.
The crux lies in accessability. Traditional animation is very hard and requires much discipline, while the tools for puppet animation (and 3D animation) are more accessable to mediocre people. Same goes for writing, no high bar of entry since any literate person can write some shit.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I think it lies more in effort, the tools are only as good as the artist makes them and all. It's also heavily dependent on your specific tastes, as for example these two songs from even some shitty 90's baby show with equally crappy CG appeal much more to me than pretty much anything out of HB:
>Not even furries?
Just because it has anthro characters doesn't mean it has furry appeal. Frick's sake, the show has only 45 uploads on e621, and 24 of those are Tyneen.
I wouldn't say it's the character designs alone, it's also the visual style of the series overall. It just doesn't lend itself well to making characters that are conventionally attractive. Furry artists that could've latched on to this show aren't "seeing the vision" as it were.
>I wouldn't say it's the character designs alone
>it's also the visual style of the series overall. It just doesn't lend itself well to making characters that are conventionally attractive
That is true. As the years went by Shrike's design changed alot, arguably became more professional and less Newgrounds edgy, but he also became more ugly.
There's a principle in animation called "appeal" it's one of the 12 principles of animation developed by legendary Disney animators decades ago.
Animators in 1930s already knew about it, think about Betty Boop sex appeal. >Picrel is from the 1940s.
When animators talk about appeal they generally mean cute or just cool, but sex appeal is also part of it.
10 months ago
Anonymous
bad faith argument
10 months ago
Anonymous
>bad faith argument
I don't mind being wrong, it's always nice to learn, what is the counter argument for that?
Sex doesn't sell?
Humans aren't hopeless coomers?
My teachers (professional animators) lied to me?
Please write a counter argument.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I am too tired to argue against someone who's in bad faith but you can see the argument as to why things are different right now in this thread.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I am too tired to argue against someone who's in bad faith
So you don't have one and it's just making excuses?
Okay then go take some rest. >You can see the argument as to why things are different right now in this thread.
They aren't different right now because we're talking about human nature, not trends or tropes.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I dont have an argument so I will just say I cant be fricked
>I don't wanna read what's already been said in the thread about this very specific subject because I'm arguing in bad faith
ok frick off
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I dont have an argument so I will just say I cant be fricked
10 months ago
Anonymous
Ikr? Many such cases
[...] >I don't wanna read what's already been said in the thread about this very specific subject because I'm arguing in bad faith
ok frick off
>frick off
Again with the excuses?
Anon I'm an animator and I know what I'm talking about, at least more than a random Cinemaphile shitposter like you.
I also read the thread and I'm pretty sure the other anons aren't animators either just by how nonsensical their comments are.
I'm still giving you the benefit of doubt that you actually know what you're talking about since we can always learn more, and I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong, as long as you actually write something to counter it.
The other arguments aren't convincing me either.
Anyway have a good night of rest and peace out.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Animators in 1930s already knew about it, think about Betty Boop sex appeal.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>90% of everything is shit
In the case of things like music and writing in western animation, it's more 98%. It's that bad.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Appeal is the word often used, but charm is another way to think about it, it's possible to create an "ugly" character if you manage to imbue in it a charming quality that people pick up on. It's like the charisma stat of a design lol. Think the Invader Zim art style.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I think appeal boils down to you can make characters: >cute >cool >sexy >scary
You're almost always better off with conventionally attractive designs. But even 'ugly' or 'plain' characters can be charming with other good visual qualities to offset what's less appealing.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Matt Groening made fantastic characters and they check none of those criteria
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Matt Groening made fantastic characters
By “Matt Groening”, you really mean David Silverman and David X Cohen. Matt can’t write for shit on his own without it lapsing into “Republicans bad”
>in todays industry you often work with puppet animators who have no fricking idea how animation works >they're just random illustrators pulled from the street. >I even had one that couldn't even draw.
Isn't that how Rebecca Sugar and that non-binary troon (Shera reboot/Nimona) got their start in animation?
As someone who dabbled with both, puppeting is a lot faster and easier when you get your character rigs set up, especially when you're working with a team. I still prefer to animate frame by frame because I'm too lazy to set up rigs (ironic, I know) and traditional is a lot more simple in most cases and less prone to technical issues.
afaik furries never start or sustain fandoms, they are parasites, they will not be interested in anything that is not extremely popular, your video will need to make 10 million per episode for them to get interested
>afaik furries never start or sustain fandoms, they are parasites >they will not be interested in anything that is not extremely popular
True >your video will need to make 10 million per episode for them to get interested
Not true
They're the only autists that get interested in obscure media from decades ago and spend money on it, everyone else forgot about it.
>Not even furries?
Just because it has anthro characters doesn't mean it has furry appeal. Frick's sake, the show has only 45 uploads on e621, and 24 of those are Tyneen.
I wouldn't say it's the character designs alone, it's also the visual style of the series overall. It just doesn't lend itself well to making characters that are conventionally attractive. Furry artists that could've latched on to this show aren't "seeing the vision" as it were.
>it's also the visual style of the series overall. It just doesn't lend itself well to making characters that are conventionally attractive
That is true. As the years went by Shrike's design changed alot, arguably became more professional and less Newgrounds edgy, but he also became more ugly.
I wouldn't go as heavy-handed but I think you're right on this, somewhat. The designs are very elaborate. But those extra elements add a lot of flair, so I'm not sure.
[...]
[...]
[...] >Do as you must
She's kind of cute (now with color)
That's a female lizard. I assume Zeurel is operating on the logic that they don't need breasts therefore she doesn't have any. The problem is that breasts make everything better, even if it doesn't make sense.
Dude just needs to slim down his designs HEAVILY if he still wants to make an animated web series with a skeleton crew and no budget. If he insists on not using a mixture of rigged puppets with frame-by-frame animation like how RoTMNT or Monkie Kid handle it, then this is the only solution that isn't just him giving up and going the motion comic route.
Like, does he think we NEED to see every single joint on his DinoMommy for us to like her? We understand her cape is tattered without that extra hole detail. We get that she has shackles without those little details. We don't NEED to see her collar bone, the bottom of her feet don't NEED a color separation. He could speed up the cleaning process significantly by have a simple belt instead of this elaborate Tron design. He could slim the eye detail and just make it so the bottom half of the eye has that flesh-droop instead of both the top and bottom-- and he could re-use the red of the outfit for that eye-droop just to simplify it even more.
Maybe Zeurel hates this, maybe he thinks this is destroying his style or butchering his design. But at least this is much more doable on a skeleton team.
Feels more rugged, they resemble the type of shorts you wear in blue collar work or during camping. The tights don't communicate this in any way. They look too posh.
I wouldn't go as heavy-handed but I think you're right on this, somewhat. The designs are very elaborate. But those extra elements add a lot of flair, so I'm not sure.
Should've puts breasts on the dinosaur. I'm just saiyan.
I could draw her with petite breasts
[...]
[...] She and the cat chick should swap chests tbh.
[...]
Do as you must
>Do as you must
She's kind of cute (now with color)
He should take a page out of Venture Brothers and just do very limited animation. That show has very simple animation, even the action scenes have simple animation and it doesn't suddenly switch into sakuga mode during a Brock fight. And yet, despite the high amount of holds and few keyposes a scene might have, people still say it's a gorgeous cartoon.
I notice Zeurel has this kinda Bob Clampetty style where he does a crazy anticipation for every word of dialogue. He'll also do the Milt Kahl thing of having a character shake their head back and forth for a lot of the acting. He could trim a lot of that down and just have a character go from pose to pose and still keep his complex designs.
Or just split up his episodes into parts.
Its harder to get a new viewer to watch a 30 minute video vs a 10 minute video.
Especially with the tiktok generation used to watching like 30 second clips
The thing about the internet is that frequency matters
It's better to spam six 5-minute shorts than a 30 minute movie
I understand him though because he seems to be committed to doing things "right", if he needs 30 minutes he'll do 30 minutes. In the end the market decides and sadly there are time-tested rules for survival in the market.
Really amazing work, though. I hope he gets picked up somewhere nice
Should have slapped on a pair of big ole hooters for the normal audience. Also rounded most shapes and given her a space themed china dress with slits high enough to make viewers ask if she has underwear or not.
Or made the thing a queer guy for the furgays. Just add a bulge 0w0.
Genuinely thought it was a guy at a glance. Should have either gave her breasts, made her look more human, or made it a guy since I'm pretty sure gays and women like masculine lizardfolk.
idiot, if you want to make your costly ambitions a full-time job you need financial support
If you make your show and no one's watching then any and all chances of furthering your ambitions goes down the drain because now you won't have the resources to keep your show going
It's the artist cycle. Spend lots of time making something you think is great (because otherwise you wouldn't finish it), carry it over the finish line, watch as it gets an underwhelming reception, then get depressed and feel like an impostor, then try to pick up the pieces and try again. Being an artist isn't easy. I wish I was as confident as Squidward.
Do what I do. Find a void that needs to be filled and fill it with your version of it. Plenty of stuff people want more of but haven't found any. The tricky thing is aligning it with your interest. So something you wish you had more of as well.
You're talking about niching down in the market.
Basic advice and it's pretty good but artists tend to be moronic business wise so thank you for writing this here.
The only reason there's so much starving artists is because artists only care about drawing, most of them don't learn about the money side of it.
There isn't many entrepreneurs that know how to draw either.
Going by recent successes like Helluva Boss, MAW Superman, etc. they want frickable character designs in a story with some sweet action scenes, solid soundtracks, and characters with at least a bit of depth.
No, there's animu that has hot character designs but doesn't make a lasting impact because people want a bit more than that.
"Make it visually appealing" is crucial, but not the only crucial element.
10 months ago
Anonymous
So I watched it. I had no idea what this was before this thread. I concede that a few gags/bits of dialogue could have been cut. There's a lot of talking although it's accompanied with a lot of great character acting. This is some high production shit. Now you could say this is boring or whatever but other shit I have seen wss not only animated much worse but also plain unwatchable. This seemed good to me. Animation was great, characters are nice, I had a big laugh near the end as well which is rare for comedy tbh. I also wanna frick the dinosaur and the assassin chick but the problem here is that they're not overtly sexual designs and that's pretty much what it all boils down to in modern media. Characters need to be teasing about sex or be very sexual or whatever. I cannot in all honesty compare this to other web series and find flaws in it that aren't much worse in those other things. The only thing that chances is that there's a male lead and female characters aren't constantly teasing and being sexy and there's no shipping bait either which is pretty much the only thing that modern audiences want.
I am sorry for the guy who made this but on the other hand it made me glad that it didn't cost me 75k dollars to learn how things work
10 months ago
Anonymous
Animesnob made some good videos about writing anime but the lessons also apply to cartoons.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I don't watch youtubers sorry
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Animesnob made some good videos about writing anime
Is he a professional anime writer? cartoon writer? no? frick off. >But the lessons also apply to cartoons.
No they don't unless you're "Man of Action" ofc.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Is he a professional anime writer? cartoon writer?
Given what both produce these days that would be a mark against him.
>they want frickable character designs >could've stopped right here
100% this. The only reason most people watch Helluvaboss is because Loona is sexy.
10 months ago
Anonymous
It's also the only reason why people obsessed over Steven Universe and The Owl House. People just want to ship cute characters, they didn't give a shit about the story.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>It's also the only reason why people obsessed over Steven Universe and The Owl House. >People just want to ship cute characters, they didn't give a shit about the story.
Tis is true and it's kinda weird to me since I don't care for ships but those 2 had fandoms that only talk abot this.
It's the same for Miraculous Ladybug, 99.9% of it is shipping and the rest is memes.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Also ATLA and Korra.
All that cool worldbuilding, cool fights and people only talk about "Zutara" and "Korrasami" for fricks sake.
10 months ago
Anonymous
nah atla was good and it happened before global brainrot
10 months ago
Anonymous
>it happened before global brainrot
ATLA is good but I'm talking about its fandom.
It happened right when global brainrot started.
If you were in the fandom back in 2008 you'd know what I'm talking about.
10 months ago
Anonymous
The discussion on Cinemaphile is 100% waifu shit and the general internet discourse isn't much different
there were two Pantheon threads that went straight off the catalog, that show is a masterpiece and nobody gives a frick and it got cancelled right away
people just want loose characters acting like bawds, teasing about sex, sex sex sex. It's all so one-note. I have no idea how anyone could expect audiences to want anything else.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>people just want loose characters acting like bawds, teasing about sex, sex sex sex.
All of my main characters are male so I may have screwed myself over. But I wouldn't put it past the much smaller "husbando" community to see something in them. That's not what the show is about anyway.
10 months ago
Anonymous
If this is a comedy with male characters that wouldn't work in gay porn I would abandon all hope that anyone will give a shit
I hope I'm wrong, though, good luck
10 months ago
Anonymous
They've got big muscles, only because I thought it added to the comedy. Later I realized some people might see it differently, but even then I think I'm being optimistic that anyone outside of my team would care about it in the first place. Maybe I'll consider it a badge of honor if they get Rule 34'd.
There's a lot of other people out there who have a much better idea of what they're doing, that produced a cartoon that failed to get recognized, so I need to keep my reality in check.
Thank you anon.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Fundamentally, the math goes like this: the weirder the shit that people jack off to, the more popular the show. They make weird porn of the Simpsons because the Simpsons are ultra popular. Same with Sonic. The characters aren't sexual, at least not in the videogames, but the sheer popularity makes so that deranged autists will latch onto them and pay for commissions where the characters are turned into toilets and other insane shit. But on smaller numbers, things get more streamlined: the characters need to be frickable in traditional, mass-appealing ways. If men, they need to be vaguely twinky or prone to what you'd imagine gay porn is about. If they're female they need to be big-hipped and sexually confident or match one of the 5 anime waifu types. Yes, Cinemaphile may have taught you that they want to frick anything, but that's not really true because everyone is making the same designs over and over - for a good reason.
I am also half drunk but yeah, basically if you can't imagine your characters fricking each other in the butthole in a way that is appealing to internet coomers I would expect nothing at all. I don't wanna demoralize you, though, in the end as you said making finished things is its own reward. The only part I don't get is putting any hope in the public.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I never looked at it that way.
When I first learned about that, I assumed it was just people trying to be edgy for shock. I was surprised to find out people actually jerk off to them.
It's hard for me to imagine my characters doing that, because I created them and I know that the relationships aren't sexual. But I've ran into porn of characters with similar body builds from other shows that weren't intended to be sexualized by their writers either. I'm sure at least a dozen people on this planet would want to see my characters frick, but that dozen might have trouble finding out that my show actually exists.
Don't worry anon, I have no hope, but I'm gonna finish it anyway, because it's been a lot of fun so far.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>porn of characters with similar body builds from other shows that weren't intended to be sexualized
were the shows really popular, like The Simpsons? As I said, by the law of sheer numbers you get the super fricked up stuff projected onto these commonplace shows. Autism is like a canvas, the biggest thing you put on it will create its horrors
10 months ago
Anonymous
The show wasn't nearly as popular, might be considered semi-obscure. But I think it had at least 500 entries that were either sexualized pictures or sexualized fanfics.
And yeah I've seen the autistic stuff you're talking about. I've gone down the Pokémon rabbit hole out of curiosity, which is one of the cleanest, family friendly franchises to ever exist, and... my dear god.
10 months ago
Anonymous
haha yeah imagine wanting to frick a Liepard that's just crazy haha
10 months ago
Anonymous
But yes, in short, you gotta hope that the coomer public will want to see your characters frick. If they do, your show will make it. They will commission porn of your beloved characters doing lurid things and other people will watch the show because of that, and they will make you famous by word of mouth. I am convinced that many vidya companies commission porn so that people get to know about the game while browsing porn, they see these characters getting fricked by horses and they go maybe I'll check the game
Don't mind me though, I get very cynical when I'm at my third beer
10 months ago
Anonymous
Don't worry your cynicism is appreciated, this is the stuff people need to hear. That's one way to get attention from something that people wouldn't otherwise care about.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>That's one way to get attention
When I talk about this I mean it with a sense of deep depression and hopelessness but if you spin it that way, sure, the world is your oyster
being depressed or excited about these facts is what makes the difference between a failed artist alcoholic and a marketing savvy successful person
10 months ago
Anonymous
I didn't mean to spin it into a positive, I meant I can see why other people would do that, which is pretty desperate all things considered. I'm not going to do that.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I ask creators about this because I have my own things but whenever I think about putting them out there I just think "why bother". Last time I felt a shred of motivation again to work on something bigger, AI and another more personal thing happened that completely wrecked my will to continue.
People always say "do it you b***h" but they will never understand what it's like to work on something and get nothing in return while someone who's got nothing to say and a tenth of the skills gets praise and money for awful shit that checks the one box and activates the neuron. I don't like talking to other creators about this because it feels like I'm crabbing but I genuinely wanna know if anyone felt like this and defeated this or found proof that real work still matters.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>they will never understand what it's like to work on something and get nothing in return while someone who's got nothing to say and a tenth of the skills gets praise and money for awful shit that checks the one box and activates the neuron.
You're focusing on the wrong things, skills never matter past a certain point.
All you need is networking/nepotism to be a hit.
If you don't have that then you need to advertise the shit out of your product or a lot of luck in case you're relying on word of mouth.
Skill is something that only creators care about, not even their audience care that much.
It's depressing but that's reality.
>found proof that real work still matters.
Again, you're focusing your energy on the wrong things and "real work" don't really matter.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I am convinced that many vidya companies commission porn so that people get to know about the game while browsing porn
It's funny because a lot of people only know about RWBY because there's a frickton of porn of it.
The subr*ddit "r/nsfwrwby" is bigger than "r/rwby" even...
10 months ago
Anonymous
I am 100% convinced it happens with way bigger shit. In the end, what does it cost? Give a few grand to some guy to make a high quality porn animation of the thing. People look at the porn, see the thing, check the game, buy it. It's a legit ad campaign
10 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah if you think about it, just the "virality" of sharing pr0n on the net is a really good reason for companies to commission a few popular nsfw artists with millions of followers on social media.
I'm pretty frickin sure someone leaked that Blizzard did that OW.
I did hear about that too.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I'm pretty frickin sure someone leaked that Blizzard did that OW.
10 months ago
Anonymous
What does OW stand for? Overwatch? My money's on that. I was thinking of Overwatch and the Witcher first and foremost
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Same with Sonic. The characters aren't sexual
LMAO
10 months ago
Anonymous
I said "at least not in the videogames" and you willfully ignored that bit
10 months ago
Anonymous
Even in-game Rouge had titty pshyics
10 months ago
Anonymous
listen, titty physics aren't what I"m talking about >moving goalposts
no, this is about characters. street fighter chicks? they were always sexy. what I am talking about is character - characters today act sexually like nowhere before.
Disney movies in 1990 were about as willing to acknowledge sex (not sexuality) as they are now. The difference is that they were attractive then.
We've traded attractive characters for a willingness to acknowledge that gay people exist. Having both would have been easy, and better.
>Disney movies in 1990 were about as willing to acknowledge sex (not sexuality) as they are now
Disney is Disney though. I specified over my rant that I am talking about mid-sized productions, like web productions. although the gap is nearing between the two
it's just weird. I think all of this shit boils down to sex - not even healthy sex but sexual degeneracy. I once talked to my therapist about how I hate that the art world is so dominated by porn and he said something like "it's scary how fast it's growing", I think enormous masses of people are addicted to jerking off, me included sadly 'cause I'm a depraved individual myself but at least I fight against it
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I think enormous masses of people are addicted to jerking off, me included sadly 'cause I'm a depraved individual myself but at least I fight against it
Even some non-human animals jerk off anon.
Masturbation is natural, and it's just a biological cope for why you didn't reproduce (again)
Just let go of unnatural moralism and nofap BS. >Insert coomer meme here
Embrace the way of the coom lmao
10 months ago
Anonymous
>on-human animals jerk off anon
in captivity
10 months ago
Anonymous
I won't even say that masturbation is bad or something. I think - as you said - it's a natural thing. You don't have a mate, you jerk off. But the state of things today is obsessive about it. It may be not wrong morally, but it's a symptom that there's something wrong. In my case I dislike society and I parted myself from it. I know that many are in this state and they have embraced this state but I refuse. It may be natural, but it's natural like feeling sick. It's not healthy.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>the state of things today is obsessive about it. >it's a symptom that there's something wrong. >it's natural like feeling sick. It's not healthy.
I understand where you're coming from, I personally disagree but I do get your point.
Have a nice day anon, I'm gonna watch Sonic Prime season 2.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I'm gonna think about Sisu once the booze wears off.
-
10 months ago
Anonymous
I'm right and you're wrong
10 months ago
Anonymous
you have never created anything and never will
10 months ago
Anonymous
You're a b***h and I'm the Chad
10 months ago
Anonymous
>I said "at least not in the videogames"
My bad anon, but the games are sexual too.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>that show is a masterpiece
Is it? I went into one of those threads and didnt seem very interesting
10 months ago
Anonymous
Watch it. It's such a breath of fresh air compared to anything I've seen in decades. Fantastic writing, characters that are real people and not just puppets, no predictable boring tropey shit.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>people just want loose characters acting like bawds, teasing about sex, sex sex sex.
Reproduction is in the base of Maslow pyramid of needs.
"Aroaces" have either a mental illness or just low libido.
Even homosexuals are horny all the time.
Sex sells's the absolute truth, everyone is horny.
We're great apes bio programmed to breed.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I know that sex sells, I'm not up in arms against this fact per se. The problem is that nowadays ONLY sex sells.
10 months ago
Anonymous
The problem is that a lot of mainstream stuff is in denial about sex appeal. We have to get it anywhere we can, and a lot of that stuff leaves a lot to be desired. It is what it is.
10 months ago
Anonymous
This is bullshit. If you're hinting about Western characters being ugly queer people, that's still about sex. It's just a validation of a very powerful and vocal community's sexual identity. There's this strange idea that LGBT is anti-sex, no they're not, they just want the women to look like butch lesbians because THAT's what appeals to them. They wanna ship trans or trans-looking characters and other stuff like that and they will talk about this stuff nonstop. "Shipping" is about sex, it's not about characters or story. In one way or the other, almost all mid-sized entertainment made today is about sex, shipping, validating people's sexual identity, it all revolves around sex. I don't watch blockbuster movies so I don't know, maybe they're still about explosions and snarky quips, but as far as smaller fish go, having this sexual foundation is a requirement, it's not something that enhances sales. This is what irks me, I like pretty girls, I have a sexuality, but I still have other things in me and it seems like these days nobody cares about anything else. I fricking seethe every time a show I love get cancelled or a project I like goes on "indefinite hiatus" because nobody gives a shit 'cause there's no shipping bait and sex as the fulcrum. I hate this cumbrain public so fricking much.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Ugly is ugly, nobody wants ugly, queer or not. I've seen more gay men lusting over the cute Clark of MAWS than I saw show any interest in the ugly gay Grubhub shite in Strange World.
People want attractive characters, and going "well it's still catering to sex, even if everyone's fricking hideous" is missing the point to a staggering degree.
10 months ago
Anonymous
This is not about ugly or "appeal" and your comment is in bad faith. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Characters were way more conventionally attractive in older media, but there was none of the obsessive focus on sex and teasing you have today. Take Steven Universe, there's CONSTANT teasing about sex and the characters act sexual very often. In older shows you had pretty girls but they were pretty because - as you said, why wouldn't you draw a pretty girl? Characters now are ugly but they tease and act sexual all the time. This is true for every single show except preschooler shows.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Disney movies in 1990 were about as willing to acknowledge sex (not sexuality) as they are now. The difference is that they were attractive then.
We've traded attractive characters for a willingness to acknowledge that gay people exist. Having both would have been easy, and better.
10 months ago
Anonymous
There's no disagreement about sex appeal, the disagreement is about what is and isn't sexy and who should sex appeal to.
One side has a very narrow view form over the last 50 years of pop culture and other side say there's sex appeal in everything for everyone who wants to seek it, and not just big blonde hair and balloon breasts, and chiseled hairless dudes
10 months ago
Anonymous
>The only reason most people watch Helluvaboss is because Loona is sexy.
They even make fun of this on the show like picrel.
>Going by recent successes like Helluva Boss, MAW Superman, etc. they want frickable character designs in a story with some sweet action scenes
You forgot to say that fujos want UWU bois that could be either bisexual or gay.
Hell there's plenty of women that say superman is a supergay and lois lane is a FTM troon.
Basically MAWs is Voltron but straight/Yaoilite
Superman is pretty damn straight. Jimmy might not be, but nobody gives a shit about Jimmy's love life.
MAWS is a show that kept the core of the characters and their relationships, giving a paint-job facelift and modernizing it for the current generation of viewers. Okay Jimmy's black and Lois has some Korean ancestry. It's still very clearly Jimmy and Lois, with some modern quirks (Lois is a "tomboy" by modern standards in this, but in the 40s she was grabbing a tommy gun from mobsters and returning fire... that's core Lois Lane being maintained). You can tick the diversity boxes, make a solid story, and even keep the core elements of an older IP. It's all perfectly doable.
The secret is to not suck.
>they want frickable character designs in a story with some sweet action scenes, solid soundtracks, and characters with at least a bit of depth.
From what I watched it only has one/two of those (frickable characters/action scenes) nailed while has frickall in the other aspects.
>MAW Superman >Frickable
LMFAO, even Mashbrown Motel is better than that pile of shit. It’s just Voltron 3.0 (2.0 being She-ra). Plus they are going to reveal that version of Lois as a lesbian eventually because you can’t have a non-culture war cartoon, tv show or movie in 2023.
Anything that was popular but then stopped. You don’t copy the thing but what made it popular. It’s vague on purpose. I don’t want to give my ideas away.
From my experiences and discussing new series with people, a lot just want content that isn't tainted by reality. They want escapism that doesn't try dragging them back to real life
However, doing the above will lose you the twitter crowd and if you choose something that CAN catch the twitter crowd, you will get a lot of free advertising. However you'd also effectively be selling your soul and live the rest of your artist career under the microscope and any false move will get you canceled.
Dunno but Meatcanyon made a whole ass animated series (Monster Lab) without any drama or complaints.
Same goes for good old Sexualobster back in the day when he made Angry Dog
>No complaints
He was complaining before that his audience wasn't really into Monster Lab. It was a pretty shitty series and I think it cut into his ego that people only wanted more parodies rather than anything original from him.
maybe so, but he soldiered on and finished the job smoothly.
One season fully made, each episode has 1M+ views, no nervous breakdowns, no hiatus, no kickstarter to finish it, he just sat down and made it happen
>no nervous breakdowns
This is the thing creators really need to learn.
The more that you put your PERSONALITY in front of your ART, the more that people will judge it as NOT a work of art but instead focus like the human's feelings behind it instead and then it just becomes this cringe nonprofessional pityparty thing even IF the art was good enough to stand on its own.
Hopefully Viv is learning this
they're not putting themselves into it; they're putting themselves in front of it, and it is distracting
i want to read your comic or enjoy your animation as it is on its own, without hearing your sob story or how you're embarrassed by this part or going to have a nice day if i don't like it
>Make dogshit cartoon what appeals to no one >It doesnt sell
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Maybe wrap the show up in 28 episodes or something and then based on the quality and fan reception move onto my next project or secure funding for another season? You expect people to cough up their own money to be drip fed content forever?
If he did that he'd be in a Harry Partridge scenario where he can't even put 30 minutes of his space adventure show out in a fricking decade. Say what you want about the quality but I'd say there's something really respectable about the fact he put his money where his mouth is and took the leap to get shit done.
No matter how good your animation is, there is always the chance of your story and worldbuilding simply not being liked
That's why you must start a project aware that it will probably fail and that you will need to move on to something more marketable, be ready to animate 3 episodes(otherwise everybody will think you are just a ADHD kid) and then frick off to something new, the vast majority of all creators even the sucessful ones fail on their first projects
I kinda liked the show... but yes, you need some attractive characters in there to build a fanbase.
Oh and for the love of frick, don't go with a soundtrack that screams "I shoved a guitar into the hands of one of my friends."
There's a few things you can put into a show to make it popular but I would say >bait >funny >charming >short(consumable) > Compelling story arcs (hard) > Compelling character arcs (easy)
If you can do this, I think you'll be successful a lot of the time. A lot of animators (and cartoonist) really wanna focus on animation/quality when, in all honesty, people don't care as much about sakuga as animators do. People would unironically watch hundreds of episodes of an animatic if it fulfilled the rest well enough.
Also there's just so many western indie cartoonist and animators who like fairly ugly characters & settings (like OPs) so even though it is well animated it's trying to hit an old like 90s vibe that I don't think works anymore because kids aren't really forced to sit in front of a TV and watch whatever show is on their limited channels; I don't have to watch AHHH real monsters with its ugly ass big lipped stickbug frickers, I can go watch cute cat character who might be a lesbian idk. YOU might have been into that style, but it didn't stick with a lot of people, and it takes a lot to produce great animation so the investment for what'll be hitting a niche is hard.
Like running down the list OPs thing fails on bait, comedy is fairly subjective so w/e, is long af (30 minutes), and isn't super compelling. Even then though it could still be successful. For something like this, the best option to achieve success would probably have been to start it off as smaller projects (smaller animations, comics, art in general) and let it garner more of a fanbase BEFORE hopping onto something so big. Like an example of this to me is lackadaisycats and viziepop. I don't think either are all too compelling by themselves, but they have years and years of built up internet culture and hype to springboard their project off of and using that leverage gave them ALOT of power.
I wish them success ultimately, being an animator is a pain, but they have a tough road.
>There's a few things you can put into a show to make it popular but I would say >>bait
(consumable) >> Compelling story arcs (hard) >> Compelling character arcs (easy)
Let's be real here, the real list is this:
>BREEDABLE CHARACTER DESIGNS >LGBTQ+ (MOSTLY LESBIANS) >COLORFUL >ROMANCE (MAIN OR SUBPLOT) >SEXUAL TENSION >MUH SAD STORY >LE EVIL MEN (OPTIONAL) >SIMPLE STORYLINE TO APPEAL TO KIDS >SHORT (YOU GOT THAT ONE RIGHT) >SHIPPING BAIT EVERYWHERE ( YOU SAID BAIT BUT NOT SHIPPING)
You don't need compelling story arcs, characters arcs, worldbuilding or any of that professional writing crap.
All you need is to bait your fanbase with ships, specially between women.
Zeurel just needs to do some studying on lower budgeted animation and how to effectively cut corners. He wants to do more than polished animation, he wants to deliver theatrical-quality shorts on a one-man crew.
Monkey Wrench fans aren't going to hate the show because he decides to use more holds, less keyposes, and a few tweens here and there. He does not need to have an individual pose for every single word of dialogue.
>So muuch cool and well made shit gets this treatment but make a 2 second porn loop and you swim in cash
"Sex sells" is a rule in marketing for a reason.
You either put shipping (straight or not) or SEXO in your web comic, web animation or indie game or you don't make money at all.
The first episode had 15 rough animators with Zeurel being the lead clean-up dude and a few assistants. I have no idea if these are the full credits for the second episode, but if they are, then he did most of the animation for the second episode.
frick man I would actually donate for this but I barely have money to eat
I'm producing a pilot with $10k and going in with the expectations that nobody will give a shit. I think it's best to set yourself up for disappointment, so if anything comes out of it will be a welcome surprise. Just accept it, focus on production so you're satisfied with your own work when it comes out.
It's easy to get stuck in your own head and I'm guilty of this too. You have this amazing idea, you love the setting and characters, and feel everyone else is going to love it too, and producing it brings you so much job. So how could it possibly fail?
Serious talk: have you ever had a period of bitterness/resentment? Between people's tastes and behavior toward creators, AI and "frick artists", social media, algorithms, cancel culture and sensibility police, seeing where the money goes, how do you keep this will to put things out there?
>AI
Ai can't animate so this doesn't worry me >frick artists
Bucket crabs >social media
Avoid it as much as possible >cancel culture and sensibility police
I used the word moron in my last vid, and none of my VAs gave a shit.
That said, I keep the will because I find it fun. Something something DMC# my soul drives me and all that gay shit.
So you've never felt like this? You never had a moment where you thought "why the frick do I even bother?"
Is this your first project? I don't mean sarcastically
10 months ago
Anonymous
No, I've had short bouts of that feeling. But it usually passes. The serotonin from seeing a finished work outweighs the negative thoughts.
10 months ago
Anonymous
What does finishing work have to do with publishing it? You could make stuff for yourself. Not trying to convince you, I wanna get out of this rut
As a an indie animator with like 15 total fans, I can understand the feeling of not getting the bang for the buck. At the same time, I'd feel worse about not finishing the story I have in mind, so that drives me forward. Also helps that I have a aerospace software job that helps pay my VAs
I'm producing a pilot with $10k and going in with the expectations that nobody will give a shit. I think it's best to set yourself up for disappointment, so if anything comes out of it will be a welcome surprise. Just accept it, focus on production so you're satisfied with your own work when it comes out.
It's easy to get stuck in your own head and I'm guilty of this too. You have this amazing idea, you love the setting and characters, and feel everyone else is going to love it too, and producing it brings you so much job. So how could it possibly fail?
Probably a year from now. Going to drop a trailer later this year, it's gonna be fun.
frick man I would actually donate for this but I barely have money to eat
[...]
Serious talk: have you ever had a period of bitterness/resentment? Between people's tastes and behavior toward creators, AI and "frick artists", social media, algorithms, cancel culture and sensibility police, seeing where the money goes, how do you keep this will to put things out there?
I did when I was younger, but I've grown up and accepted that there's nothing I really do about it. All I can do is put my best foot forward with my best intentions. I just want to make something fun and character driven, not looking to change the world or change any minds. We need escapism from everything you mention now, more than ever, and I hope I can deliver that for a little bit.
I was looking foward to this, I long for a good show about a space mercenary team going on adventures.
Oh well, here's hope Starbarians does a good job at that.
Animation has never been profitable on it's own anon.
Even big stations like Cartoon Network or Nick or Disney didn't make money from the actual cartoon, they made money from toys and other such merch. Same goes for anime. Anime doesn't make money but manga does, they're literally just 24 minute ads for the paper back version. It's just a fact of life.
>Anime doesn't make money but manga does, they're literally just 24 minute ads for the hotglue figurines and loneliness pillows
fify but you're right
where's that image where the anime guy says "we can't make what we want, we need to cater to the obsessive fans"
really sad because the sweatshop animators, both the japs that do it and the weebs that work in offshore studios, are the obsessive fans that were willing to do it for pennies to begin with. but instead we have directors with sky high egos who think the world MUST witness their original trite and will commandeer his two hundred slaves to his ego boosting whims. most of them are flops for good reason.
https://i.imgur.com/bBaUobh.png
Is indie animation only profitable if it's fujobait at this point? Is it really over?
creators need to recognize that they live in a society, their personal tastes may not be held by the majority, and reality hits you hard when you don't have sweatshop workers and a budget bestowed from above to work with. I suggest that writers field test their ideas with a smaller audience in a medium where they get to move fast, eg. webcomics.
Those shows are unironcally more remembered because they had merch. The story stuck with kids long after the TV turned off because they had toys to play with.
There were hundreds of flyover cartoons with little to no remembrance from the last 2 decades because they had no merch.
>brings up the show that had Twitter queers imbued into it to try and counter the lack of modern merch argument
Are you that autistic anon from up in the thread that pulls out bad faith arguments where it doesn't make any fricking sense? Because that's what it sounds like.
I will admit the internet Fandom culture was a bit of a trade with actual physical merch but Steven Universe isn't even older than 20 yet, it's relatively fresh compared to things like HeMan, TMNT, and Rainbow Brite, MLP.
Old toy cartoons had enough staying power to get reboots (or attempts) because the toys stayed popular.
SymBionic Titan would have been a better argument.
>Are you that autistic anon from up in the thread that pulls out bad faith arguments
Seeing as this is the first time I triggered an anon ITT I'd say no. It's just hilarious to me how fast SU died after it stopped putting out new content.
I rarely, if ever saw merch for the show in stores even during its heyday.
Could be a regional thing. I saw tons of the shit in every mall.
The main character is ugly. Even Earthworm Jim looked better than him. Most other characters looked okay but I didn't think any were good. Though the animation was very fluid.
Regarding the episode plot the beard guy has no motivation to protect the bird guy when turning him in is much more profitable than protecting him from other bounty hunters. The main character has even less reason since he's the one who has to fight the bounty hunters and the bird guy constantly annoys him. The plot would have been better if he was trying to claim the full bounty, and that's why he fought all the bounty hunters and endured the bird being annoying.
The series plot was weak as it briefly mentioned the assassin was killing people for some reason, then had an episode that didn't build on it in any way. I'm not going to watch a show if the main plot doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
>profitable
Well yeah, it needs to have SOME kind of draw to attract an increasing customer/viewerbase.
I love Zeurel's work, but unfortunately, it's gotta be a passion project and not a full blown OVA like he's got money to blow. I'd happily watch it in "motion comic" with the occasional animated scenes.
Moneky Wrench failed because it was boring and unfunny. The action and character designs are great. But good grief the writing needs some improvements.
The spacesuit cat is the only appealing character design in this image. If he scrapped everything else and made it the main character this likely would have done better.
can you stupid cumbrains stop disguising "I wanna coom to this" with "appeal"? Are you ashamed or what? Just say that you only care about what you can jerk off to, we're on Cinemaphile here there's no need to say euphemisms like "NSFW" and "appeal"
It makes you think that such a description didn't make him popular even tho everyone and their mother wanna frick that skeleton villain from Undertale.
Character design really make or break a show popularity.
The designs look complicated to animate and I'll agree they aren't very appealing/attractive with exception of the little cats in the space suit. They look too goofy for something serious too.
Just from the look of it I can tell the astronaut cats are NOT the leads. Watching it they are not the leads. But if they HAD BEEN it would have gotten more eyeballs. Why? Because they are cute, people love cats, they'd look great on keychains and stuff.
One thing I'll say is that he complains about "how little attention" the animation got, despite the fact that other creators would kill for the attention that either of the two episodes he released got.
Dude is b***hing that he didn't make the next "Helluva Boss" but he should be happy he didn't make the next "Under the Influencer".
>"only 1.5 million views!? woe is me, no one cares, I should kill myself!"
what a histrionic c**t
To be fair, a failed business venture is a failed business venture. There aren't very many shorts as polished as those two eps so the amount of workload input vs the returns probably has to sting.
Especially if he knows in the back of his head that just saying "frick it" and pumping out half ass horny shorts would get x5 the views and prolly net x3 the money. It'll always suck when what you want to make just ends up blowing up in your face. His shorts performed well, just not well enough to make it worth all the work in the end.
Maybe its because I'm pessimistic at heart, but I don't understand how the amount attention that he got blindsided him the way it seemed to.
Did he expect to get 10mil views on each video and have his patreon numbers double?
I don't know, I do sympathize with him, and his animation is fantastic, but the way his post reads you'd think he got hundreds of views instead of hundreds of thousands.
Do artists really expect art to be profitable if they work really hard on it?
Think of it this way, he's has plenty of significantly lower effort, less expensive videos more than triple his passion projects latest episode. An episode which itself saw its viewer retention drop to just 30% of the previous episode and didn't even max out his own subscriber number.
He prolly wasn't expecting 10 million, but at least 1 probably would've been a reasonable expectation. And then when you take into consideration future projections, he's probably thinking about how 2 years of his life and 75K in funds might theoretically under preform again (~sub 200k). I think that would frick most people up idk.
I've been in his situation before, it's shitty. Even more so when you're somewhat used to success and people seemingly caring about the work you've put out before.
I believe this thing with calling everyone a sellout is so you can justify supporting actual sellouts. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.
It's a common thing, e.g. I'm openly supporting corrupt people because politicians are all corrupt anyway.
I think it's really funny how no matter what, you're always a soulless sellout unless you make porn for $$$. Then everyone says "BASED" and forgets about the whole selling out discourse.
That's not even this though. This entire thread is people being mad at Zeruel because he's made a cartoon and can't afford to keep doing it the same way. He'll have to change the way he does it and he's explained it all very simply in plain English. And for no reason everybodys mad
It's about dismissing the guy as a whiner because he's made something that he likes instead of pandering and it's failing, so it's a way on putting the blame on him for doing something that he actually believed in. It's the same reason why people start talking shit if you say you prefer to make original content instead of cynically hopping on trends because being a cynical sellout is actually comforting to the general public now. It's like they have a knee-jerk rejection of anything made in earnest and HAVE to paint the maker as an butthole in some way.
>pander to: >to provide or furnish (a person or people) with something that satisfies their low desires or that appeals to their prejudices or fears >"Those newspapers pander to the public's lowest desires: greed and sex."
That's a great post. I reckon most people here hate themselves so much that they interpret every post they read through that lens. So you get Zeurels post here that's very matter of fact and straight forwards but once it's gone in their head it comes out to them as an angry whingefest lasting out at the world.
>just make the characters appealing (sexy)
eye of the beholder, frick you.
there's no reason why an indie cartoon should cost that much. people have forgotten what Hannah Barbera perfected years ago and made tv animation possible, simplify character design & animation.
The shit Indie people wanna do cannot be achievable with the HB method
Also Helluva Boss propped up a new set of standards with them constantly animating characters with Hellish designs that are a nightmare to animate
But it lowered by necessity due to the surrounding circumstances of the time (the most notable of which being the nuclear fallout-tier effects of 'United States v. Paramount''s resolution)
Maybe he needs more views and more money to continue paying any animators he hired but that's not the way he phrased it. He's already got way, WAY more views than 99% of all creative shit that gets made by anyone ever. Getting that many views only to whine and backhandedly suicide bait about it comes across as entitled as shit.
>He's already got way, WAY more views than 99% of all creative shit that gets made by anyone ever.
This isn't 2006 dude, 1 million views is like barely average now
>1 million views is like barely average now
It is for animation. You're not getting 10s of millions unless you're >Making a Music video >A major film corporation >A Pakistani content farm
That sounds like a personal problem. 30 minutes animated episodes below $100k sounds too good to be true honestly, but you could make 10 minute animations with a voice cast and everything for just less than what a McDonalds wagie makes in a week.
If this is truly your passion project, go the Harry Partridge route and take months, or years to finish your project stress-free.
People go in with these super fluid animation ideas for their indie projects, which I think is unnecessary.
Take a note from other low budget shows that still looked great, learn the techniques they used and have episodes produced at a much lower rate. Anime is full of them. You'll still get your story.
If your idea kicks off, then you can improve the animation.
I'd prefer doing shorter cartoons. Update more often, keep people from forgetting about you and you'll learn what works and what doesn't after each short rather everything after a large cartoon where it's too late to adjust.
the dude is not complaining that hell furries are more popular, he's demoralized by the diminishing returns on his passion project. if only the promise of independant animation was actually worth shit, instead it's the biggest example of trend chasing.
>It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
I find it funny how he hasn't given his work a second look and realise why people aren't watching it.
Nobody is gonna watch a yet another cartoon that is space themed and takes heavily after Cowboy Bebop but heavily neutered for kids. Why would anyone watch this when anyone can watch the superior Cowboy Bebop that feels more fun and inventive than this generic kids cable-mandated cartoon?
He just needs to be more original rather than being derivative as frick.
It's not even the waifus that are required to carry the show. All you literally have to do is make a show with a convincing setting with a good story to follow along with it. That show has nothing going on for it, because it's just two wacky characters going on space adventures on wacky planets which is something that has been done tons of times with previous kids cartoons.
>heavily neutered for kids >kids cable-mandated cartoon
What the frick are you talking about?
It quite literally has the traits of a generic kids cartoon
>Humor being more slapstick, as well the action overall >dialogue and tone being lighthearted >Furries everywhere, to a point where the show itself feels like Internet OCs: The show. The furries themselves aren't too particularly inspired or fit in the overall space/extra-terrestrial theme of the show. >Extremely cliched jokes, and design tropes which are often seen in kids shows. >Overall bright and cartoony, which by itself isn't bad but doesn't do the show justice.
This guy honestly has no clue in what he's even trying to make for. He might have a better success in pitching the show to a cable tv executive, than trying to get that gain traction on internet. Hell, kids on internet would rather watch cartoons made for adults or teenagers, mainly anime, than watch a cartoon catered to them.
Hasbhe ever tried making an original series or worked in the industry before or is it all shorts and fanimations? If it's his first he really should have gone with something simpler to start with.
>more original rather than being derivative as frick. >All you literally have to do is make a show with a convincing setting with a good story to follow along with it.
If the success of HB is of any indication, to hell with even those aspects. Hell, there's much, MUCH better alternatives to that show in stuff like Lupin the 3rd and Golgo 13, and it still managed to gather a decently sizable following nonetheless.
I hate to say it but HB is unique, there really aren't that many alternatives if you want something with that similar aesthetic at that level of visual quality. Past a certain age it feels derivative but for a current 13 year old it probably looks and feels fresh.
>there really aren't that many alternatives if you want something with that similar aesthetic at that level of visual quality.
Maybe in the west, at least.
>HB
Do you mean Helluva Boss or the entire catalog of Hanna-Barbera?
Because I thought you meant the latter and how even on a budget of bubblegum and a shoestring they somehow cranked out successful cartoons
That's because it literally did something original. There's barely any shows that have hell as a setting, and demons being the main part of the show. And plus, you have tone, plot/setting and characters that are aimed at a specific audience which gives the show a proper identity and something interesting to offer. The waifus are just a cherry on the top.
>That's because it literally did something original.
not really?
10 months ago
Anonymous
>random chingchong show a billion years ago
frick off
10 months ago
Anonymous
>created by the Devilman guy >'random chingchong show'
lol
lmao
10 months ago
Anonymous
Wrong board
stay there chink
10 months ago
Anonymous
It is though. What you're showing here is just literally yokais and a witch as a protag, in a Japanese setting.
Seems pretty different enough to Hazbin Hotel, which is way much more western based.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>It is though.
Is kinda is, yet it also isn't. Boss' premise, at its core, is almost just a somewhat modified rendition of Enma's premise. Admittedly, I could say that's still unique by western animation standards.
>witch
Demon, though yeah he looks like a witch in this case.
Wrong board
stay there chink
haha, no
10 months ago
Anonymous
is it subbed?
10 months ago
Anonymous
From what I recall, yeah.
To be honest, I'm kinda surprised that both of Vizie's shows haven't caught on in Japan considering these things. I mean, I don't expect them to reach UT/DR levels of popularity, but still.
10 months ago
Anonymous
there is big following for all types of animation in Japan, but it needs to be translated first
>There's barely any shows that have hell as a setting >Superjail >Jimmy Two-Shoes >Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell >Hooray for Hell >The Good Place
You're not even trying
>humor being more slapstick
Original Tom and Jerry shorts were for adults. >dialogue and tone being lighthearted
King of the Hill is lighthearted >show itself feels like Internet OCs >Original Cartoon on the internet has Original Characters >Extremely cliched jokes
Such as? >but doesn't do the show justice
In what way? Your critiques are vapid and frankly, moronic, and I say this as someone who isn't even a huge fan of the show. Apparently you think something needs to be >FRICK FRICK FRICK PENIS PENIS DUDE SEX LMAO
from start to finish to be "adult". You literally made no reference to the actual content of the short, just hollow traits that superficially appear childish to you.
more like troons and pathetic single white millennial women in their 30s/40s took over the whole industry so only gay/troony yaoi shit can be common there.
Clearly has a lot of work put into it but ep1 lacks any sort of hook. Characters aren't very appealing in looks nor personality. Pacing is off, writing is average. Animation is high effort but not always the most appropriate.
Ep2 is better but the damage was already done.
Probably to some degree
As boring as the show is I do actually watch for the characters It's a shame about the animation cut since my favourite characters are going to be a main feature of episode three
I wonder if he got notified of this thread and saw the Tyneen erotica
Maybe we're gonna see a scene where Ty kisses Kara in the future. The unsophisticated plebeians want the ships, give them the ships... it's a sacrifice you gotta take... Dew it haha
>How can now you even imagine
first off, nice sentence ESL
secondly, it's called being fricking reasonable.
There's nothing about a 30 minute ep that can't be split up into two or more episodes. ESPECIALLY in fricking Monkey Wrench.
I say why not just all in and make a 72-90 minute movie? If you are going to spend the time making 20-30 minute long episodes, why not put all that effort into making a movie? Just focus on making one really good beautiful story instead of trying to stretch it out into a series.
Zeurel can scale back the animation all he wants, that isn't going to increase the number of fans. The scripts and voice acting just kind of suck. I see Monkey Wrench and I'm expecting fun, snappy cartoon writing like Earthworm Jim, The Tick, or Sam & Max. Instead, I get really lame dialogue with slow timing and cliché jokes like, "AND THE TINY CUTE THING WITH A BABY VOICE IS AGGRESSIVE AND ANGRY ALL THE TIME".
And even if he did fix the scripts, the voice actors haven't demonstrated good comedic timing. They would probably butcher any good jokes Zeurel DID write out. I don't know, the animation was the only draw of the whole product. Without it, I actually see interest in his series going down.
All you need is coombait characters, doesn't matter if the show is unfunny or moronic (see helluva boss). The problem with Monkey Wrench is that it's boring and unfunny, with no frickable characters too
I don't know why no one bothered to post the show at least, guess everyone's said all they've wanted to say about the show:
seem alright, it sure is a cartoon, did he really need to make this mumbling thing the main character?
I can't imagine being so endlessly amused by a Jarjar binks type of chara to give him most of the lines...
>Jar Jar Binks
I always compared Shrike with Earthworm Jim, but holy shit he really is like a more competent bounty hunter Jar Jar Binks. God I hate his disgusting fingernails
>Vash the Stampede
Yeah I can see it, red clothing, spiky hair, wacky gunslinger. Based on Zeurels earlier iterations, Shrike also probably still has a dark backstory.
I'll shoot the messenger because he wants to spread his AIDS far and wide. And no, he is not right. All the successes of the past didn't have fujoshit in them. Cartoons went to hell because of it. Instead of giving people entertainment and animation to look at they put gaybait, lesbobait and pedobait in it and call it a day.
And how the hell is fujobait supposed to make a cartoon that isn't selling merchandise profitable.
>All the successes of the past didn't have fujoshit in them.
What about the current ones? Do you have eyes to see? Mentioning facts and talking about them isn't going to "spread the AIDS"
Fanservice and appealing characters have always being a thing, Betty Boop was old timey coomer bait, what you call "fujobait" Is just fanservice for a particular audience who enjoy creating fandoms around certain characters or ships but un practice Is just the old true of "sex sells", just not sex that appeals to you in particular.
But that's fricking wrong, let out it this way: you have Undertale sex not because the characters are "sexual" but because they're appealing. You think "I have the sex, so that's the appeal" but it's actually "I have the appeal, so people want to frick it".
10 months ago
Anonymous
Are you implying that Undertale didn't ride the whole LGBT shit extremely hard?
10 months ago
Anonymous
I think you're confusing the actual contents of the game with what the community spun out of it.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Oh cmon anon, don't be disingenuous.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Main character is a they/them but it's not made into a big deal, and then there was a dinosaur girl with a crush on a fish girl, did I miss anything else? If you reaaaally want to stretch it you could argue that some characters are non-binary or some shit, but then again most of them are goofy cartoon monsters.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>there's this and that and that and that too and that, but it didn't cater to that public haha
Anon you're being disingenuous. Stop
10 months ago
Anonymous
Undertale happened almost 10 years ago
10 months ago
Anonymous
Undertale's main appeal was in the writing, the unique gameplay, and an aspect even these indie cartoons still woefully neglect: the soundtrack.
What will the runtime be and what mood are you going for?
>Fujo
You keep using that word...
Fujos are mostly repulsive women who get off to yaoi and yuri.
>All the successes of the past didn't have fujoshit in them.
What about the current ones? Do you have eyes to see? Mentioning facts and talking about them isn't going to "spread the AIDS"
Here's the facts. Children, the large target demographic, have tuned out because cartoons are dull and ugly. Your "modern successes" of Owl House and She-Ra are only "successful" among what is currently running. The only audience currently is the tiny group that likes that crap. Everyone else has been driven away. Successes my ass. Yeah, real brand builders of the calibre of the Transformers.
Fanservice and appealing characters have always being a thing, Betty Boop was old timey coomer bait, what you call "fujobait" Is just fanservice for a particular audience who enjoy creating fandoms around certain characters or ships but un practice Is just the old true of "sex sells", just not sex that appeals to you in particular.
That "particular audience" isn't spending money and what appeals to it drives away all other audiences.
>You post like guy, how embarrasing
Nah he’s right, Owl House and She-ra through a financial lens were failures because kids didn’t watch them whereas stuff like Modern Spongebob and Teen Titans Go is successful because they go deep in that gross out shit. Fujogays aren’t a long lasting audience, eventually they’ll dump your show the moment another cute boy character comes along. Plus you wouldn’t want them anyways, they are extremely toxic and get into fights with the crew behind shows the moment something “bad” goes wrong
Spongebob and TTG are succesfull like pawpatrol Is, the pre-school market has nothing to do with this, pre-teens and tenés don't buy total, they buy merch, and you don't have merch numbers. You say they're a failure, but I don't know by what metric or with what sources.
>You say they're a failure, but I don't know by what metric or with what sources.
Because they had consistent low viewership and weren’t giving their respective companies (Disney and Dreamworks) as much money as their bigger IPs. The young adult market isn’t a good financial investment because most of them are broke due to crippling amounts of student debt and other reasons. Part of the reason why Owl House got cancelled is because not only did Disney think it didn’t fit their brand, but because it simply wasn’t bringing in enough revenue. Kids weren’t enjoying it and the adults who did watch it didn’t have money in their pockets. You can’t have a cartoon nowadays that doesn’t primarily market itself. That’s the reason why all of these Fujobait shows fail in the first place despite coomers and lesbos thinking otherwise.
10 months ago
Anonymous
She Ra streamed, you don't even know what numbers it made, and succesfully made it's four seasons when the average show does in two.
10 months ago
Anonymous
The original She-Ra almost had twice as many episodes as the reboot and sold far more toys. Plus Netflix has a moronic way of counting shows as “seasons” so that doesn’t arguably make it a success. Little girls weren’t buying the toys and it’s primary audience were grown women who can’t afford basic products without forking over loans
10 months ago
Anonymous
The original She-Ra wasn't for teens, it was for pre schoolers to the point it have a moral of the day and was made in a day where you had to made twice as many episodes for syndication.
>Owl House and She-ra are made by fojos or for fujos >fights with the crew behind shows the moment something “bad” goes wrong
You're conflating fujos with shippergays who are always cancer, and progressive/puritygays who hate fujos.
Spongebob and TTG are succesfull like pawpatrol Is, the pre-school market has nothing to do with this, pre-teens and tenés don't buy total, they buy merch, and you don't have merch numbers. You say they're a failure, but I don't know by what metric or with what sources.
Mattel made a She-Ra line in 2020 that bombed so hard it was cancelled after the first wave. Steven Universe got some building block sets that nobody bought.
>Children, the large target demographic, have tuned out because cartoons are dull and ugly.
Children have tuned out because they're raised on pajeet youtube poop and clicker videogames and have the attention span of a goldfish. They are physically unable to follow 5 seconds of dialogue and I'm not even sure if they understand what's going on at any time.
Or maybe kids don't want to watch some plain-clothed, rigid-animated self-insert talking about the creator's personal issues in a mundane environment.
Show them some "toy commercials" and see how they pay attention to it.
>Show them some "toy commercials" and see how they pay attention to it.
They don't. You're massively out of touch. Past pre-schooler age they don't give a shit because they play videogames.
>Artist makes unremarkable DeviantOC peepeepoopoo show that is way too long >Gets meager reception and views plummet by the 2nd episode >"HOW CAN THIS BE!!!" :O
I assume he rolled the straight-man role of that kid into the big beard guy, but it still feels like the main character group lacks a third straight man now. It's just a back and forth between Earthworm Sanchez and Fatbeard, it lacks a third component to mix things up every once in a while.
[...]
I think the kid was only added as a way to tie them into the OC tournament, and might be someone else’s character alongside the girl, I can’t remember as it’s been almost 11 years since I saw that video and looked into it. Also in Ghost Egg the two toys the bird guy were playing with was Spoiler and Black Ace
What ever happened to that girl with the purple and robo arm? Wish I had saved his old concept of her but she looking great as the third crew member.
10 months ago
Anonymous
With some digging she’s apparently still around under the name “Lariat”, he seems to have given her a number of redesigns- some of them giving her the red hair of the boy
https://twitter.com/Zeurel/status/701950818446999552?s=20
https://twitter.com/Zeurel/status/1168217187187773445?s=20
10 months ago
Anonymous
Ngl i like her purple hair better than her red hair.
10 months ago
Anonymous
She seems to be the successor of the boy and girl from the Civil War OCT animation. Also this reference from his Newgrounds has the girl
10 months ago
Anonymous
And the boy
10 months ago
Anonymous
John Bob?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Cute. I like the Invader Zim pack. What does he look like in show?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Seems he merged the characters
i THINK this is her design now
10 months ago
Anonymous
God this design of BB is so much better than the fricking ugly boxhead he is now. Looks easier to animate too because he's just more organic.
10 months ago
Anonymous
that arm shape looks like a nightmare to animate
10 months ago
Anonymous
I imagine, but I think he’s got a lot of experience drawing robot limbs so he would probably figure out an easy way to do it.
John Bob?
Bob John?
10 months ago
Anonymous
He won that walking city tournament didn't he?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Oh, he did, not sure if there’s any leftover stories/comics/animations from then since he deleted his DA account, seems that some parts of OCTs unfortunately end up becoming a sort of lost media.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Oh, Lariat took part in that one, so maybe the reason she isn’t part of Monkey Wrench is because she’s still wrapped up with how that OCT ended, or because a background detail in Ep1 in Monkey Wrench implies that humans are being hunted to extinction for some reason.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Ngl when I first saw that thumbnail I thought that was Leela
kek
10 months ago
Anonymous
She seems to be the successor of the boy and girl from the Civil War OCT animation. Also this reference from his Newgrounds has the girl
And the boy
Does this guy have some kind of robotic limb fetish?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Anon, you don't know what actual robolimb fetish looks like. If he has it, it's super tame.
10 months ago
Anonymous
All I know is if every fricking character has a missing limb replaced by robot parts I start to get suspicious. Of course he's not going to use the really creepy stuff in his toddler cartoon.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I think he's just doing it for flavor. He seems to like complicated characters and cyborg stuff helps to make things look sci-fi. I've seen a whole bunch of prosthetic/acromotophilia related art and it's got a specific bent to it that gives it away. It's like a foot fetish; you can have someone draw lots of characters barefoot but it means nothing.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>you can have someone draw lots of characters barefoot >but it means nothing
Not sure I buy that either. At best they're just closeted. At worst it's like that one time I noticed an artist just happened to draw lots of similar images of puckered anuses from this very specific angle and then I found the alt account and it was all scat. All artists are sick fricks you just have to find their specific thing.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>that one time I noticed an artist just happened to draw lots of similar images of puckered anuses from this very specific angle
Hmm, I can see how that could be a red flag. However, you might want to concede that bare feet are not quite on the same level as puckered buttholes. I think that's a bit more on the nose, no pun intended
10 months ago
Anonymous
Consider: robot arms look cool >t. Anon who used to draw a lot of cyborgs or robots
10 months ago
Anonymous
i THINK this is her design now
10 months ago
Anonymous
where does he publish comics?
10 months ago
Anonymous
This is from his Patreon discord. it really is a shame to say it but all the fun bits about his characters that make them appealing are sadly locked away from casual fans and are sort of kept as "in jokes" what won't do him any favours seeing how he wants his fanbase to grow.
I assume he rolled the straight-man role of that kid into the big beard guy, but it still feels like the main character group lacks a third straight man now. It's just a back and forth between Earthworm Sanchez and Fatbeard, it lacks a third component to mix things up every once in a while.
I think the kid was only added as a way to tie them into the OC tournament, and might be someone else’s character alongside the girl, I can’t remember as it’s been almost 11 years since I saw that video and looked into it. Also in Ghost Egg the two toys the bird guy were playing with was Spoiler and Black Ace
Newgrounds is web animators only safe bet, everything else either go bankrupt and frick over animation somehow, newgrounds is still the same after +20 years.
I bet Civil War: Down to Earth would unironically have gotten more attention than these cartoons if it was released recently with his new animation style.
Its a lot faster paced, more chaotic, has more 'meme-able' moments/characters, more lore to discuss, and the main characters have better more fun voices.
It was part of an Original Character Tournament iirc, the story was made for the competitors and their creators had to figure out how to fit their’s in, Law of Talos even had the creator of the one of the characters themselves get sucked into the setting.
I dont remember much about that time, but I thought that cartoon was made after the OC tournament arc? Thats why they have a trophy at the beginning, isn't it? I dunno
As someone who wants to make an animated series in the future I definitely feel the fear of my story and characters just not being appealing to an audience
Personally I really liked the pilot and it was pretty sad to see that it wasn't as popular, it took about a year for it to get the same amount of views that Punch Punch Forever got in 3 days.
Before PPF came out, Speedo did a lot of art of the characters. You don't have to do an animation first. Illustrations and comics are great ways to test the waters. Then your only concern would be in anything related to it being an animation.
you will have to pander for the money
corporate woke suits or horny toon nerds
AND ALSO make a good story
I don't know why so many moron anons think having disgusting characters should get them some sympathy points, you can create all the dumbshit characters on your own dime, not mine.
>As someone who wants to make an animated series in the future I definitely feel the fear of my story and characters just not being appealing to an audience
Then you already lost, with this mentality you will never be satisfied and even you suceed you will be too scared of ruining the first project "legacy" by making a bad one, you must be ready for the audience not caring for your first project and be ready to move to the next one before even starting.
You indie artists have ridiculous expectations, Walt Disney first projects all failed, Stan Lee first superheroes all failed, Stephen King first novels all failed, Lovecraft first novels are pretty much forgotten
You are not better than any those guys, you are less talented and less experienced, so your first project will probably fail, try your best over and over and pray that this one will be lucky
what you said is not false, but ti takes a a lot of delusion and faith to take on a large project, having cynics telling you "yer just gonna fail" isn't encouraging nor helpful... anyone who listens to such council will unlikely ever try
Frick the public. Work in marketing. I was making €800 a week working on random gigs during the coof. I think the era where you can get through people is over
I mean... having looked up the show just now, there is a severe lack of waifus and husbandos
The problem is that nobody is interested in his story. Which is a shame. Great animator's passion project is a flop. But there have been plenty of shows, games, and movies that have flopped. Indie animation is no different.
imo he should try for a new series instead of continuing with this one
Basically, look into why the current one is performing poorly and make something that's improved.
He's a crazy talented guy, I think he could make a really stellar series at some point. If he paired with or got more help from a really strong writer, it'd probably make a world of difference.
It'd be easier to salvage and course correct then start over. New name, plenty of promos and info, public admission that the first attempt was a dud. Zeurel's big enough to get enough attention to warrant another chance.
That was so fricking boring I can't believe I watched 30 minutes of this. Why is it so fricking long? Why would you make this? That audio is so jank. Nails on a fricking chalkboard. I honestly can't believe one and a half million people actually watched the first episode to completion and didn't just shut it off after like a minute.
Second episode is way better (and shorter).
>I can't believe I watched 30 minutes of this. >Why is it so fricking long?
This.
If I ever animate a tv show I'd make it really short (7 minutes or less) and animate everything in flash/animate/toon boom.
I don't have time or budget for traditional 2D animation nor do I have patience to learn 3D.
t. Animator
>If I ever animate a tv show
>Indie TV Show that I own not freelance/contract.
How much easier and faster is puppet/flash animation compared to traditional frame-by-frame? Been looking into animation.
Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
Even the simple animation of running looks like shit unless you do it frame by frame.
Most modern shows keep tweens for slides and other basic animation and break out the FBF for advanced stuff.
Also go with Toonboom, Adobe hasn't fixed Animate's brush strokes since they bought it from Macromedia.
Doesn't DC Super Hero Girls use rig animation? Not as good as trad animation, of course, but it seems perfectly serviceable to me. I'd rather settle for this quality than bust my ass off for years and waste thousands of dollars for something overly baroque that might not even take off.
Yeah. I foresee that the biggest time-saver would be the lack of a need to redraw not only characters, but virtually most assets in a scene.
>Doesn't DC Super Hero Girls use rig animation?
Yes and it looks like shit.
Really? Picrel looks great to me.
man that star sapphire design is bad
Ive only ever animated by just drawing but Im pretty sure with puppets you dont have to redraw them as much. Just redrawing frames is easier though imo
>How much easier and faster is puppet/flash animation compared to traditional frame-by-frame?
>Faster
It's supremely faster, just do the math, with 2D trad animation you have to draw 24/12/8/6 new frames every second while with Flash you only draw once and then move the puppet around.
TLDR: It's thousands of times faster.
>Easier
Even non-artists can animate in flash, just download a puppet and have some fun animating.
It's the same for 3D but guess which one is easier.
>with 2D trad animation you have to draw 24/12/8/6 new frames every second
Even if you use limited animation and only draw a new hand, arm or whatever body part you're still drawing something new every other frame.
>Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
I've worked with 2D puppets for almost 10 years and this is accurate, but making it look good can be done with experience and skill. The biggest issue with puppet animation is when you are the lead animator - in todays industry you often work with puppet animators who have no fricking idea how animation works, they're just random illustrators pulled from the street. I even had one that couldn't even draw.
>Easy to look crappy, hard to look good
This could be just as much applicable to music and writing for modern (or frick it, MOST) western cartoons in general, probably to an even greater degree.
The crux lies in accessability. Traditional animation is very hard and requires much discipline, while the tools for puppet animation (and 3D animation) are more accessable to mediocre people. Same goes for writing, no high bar of entry since any literate person can write some shit.
I think it lies more in effort, the tools are only as good as the artist makes them and all. It's also heavily dependent on your specific tastes, as for example these two songs from even some shitty 90's baby show with equally crappy CG appeal much more to me than pretty much anything out of HB:
90% of everything is shit so yeah.
>I wouldn't say it's the character designs alone
There's a principle in animation called "appeal" it's one of the 12 principles of animation developed by legendary Disney animators decades ago.
Animators in 1930s already knew about it, think about Betty Boop sex appeal.
>Picrel is from the 1940s.
When animators talk about appeal they generally mean cute or just cool, but sex appeal is also part of it.
bad faith argument
>bad faith argument
I don't mind being wrong, it's always nice to learn, what is the counter argument for that?
Sex doesn't sell?
Humans aren't hopeless coomers?
My teachers (professional animators) lied to me?
Please write a counter argument.
I am too tired to argue against someone who's in bad faith but you can see the argument as to why things are different right now in this thread.
>I am too tired to argue against someone who's in bad faith
So you don't have one and it's just making excuses?
Okay then go take some rest.
>You can see the argument as to why things are different right now in this thread.
They aren't different right now because we're talking about human nature, not trends or tropes.
>I don't wanna read what's already been said in the thread about this very specific subject because I'm arguing in bad faith
ok frick off
>I dont have an argument so I will just say I cant be fricked
Ikr? Many such cases
>frick off
Again with the excuses?
Anon I'm an animator and I know what I'm talking about, at least more than a random Cinemaphile shitposter like you.
I also read the thread and I'm pretty sure the other anons aren't animators either just by how nonsensical their comments are.
I'm still giving you the benefit of doubt that you actually know what you're talking about since we can always learn more, and I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong, as long as you actually write something to counter it.
The other arguments aren't convincing me either.
Anyway have a good night of rest and peace out.
>Animators in 1930s already knew about it, think about Betty Boop sex appeal.
>90% of everything is shit
In the case of things like music and writing in western animation, it's more 98%. It's that bad.
Appeal is the word often used, but charm is another way to think about it, it's possible to create an "ugly" character if you manage to imbue in it a charming quality that people pick up on. It's like the charisma stat of a design lol. Think the Invader Zim art style.
I think appeal boils down to you can make characters:
>cute
>cool
>sexy
>scary
You're almost always better off with conventionally attractive designs. But even 'ugly' or 'plain' characters can be charming with other good visual qualities to offset what's less appealing.
Matt Groening made fantastic characters and they check none of those criteria
>Matt Groening made fantastic characters
By “Matt Groening”, you really mean David Silverman and David X Cohen. Matt can’t write for shit on his own without it lapsing into “Republicans bad”
>in todays industry you often work with puppet animators who have no fricking idea how animation works
>they're just random illustrators pulled from the street.
>I even had one that couldn't even draw.
Isn't that how Rebecca Sugar and that non-binary troon (Shera reboot/Nimona) got their start in animation?
If that's the case they are the exception.
pretty sure that was just being israeli
Sucrose was able to draw and animate before getting an actual gig. Don't know nor care about the Shera-troony.
>troon
speak english
As someone who dabbled with both, puppeting is a lot faster and easier when you get your character rigs set up, especially when you're working with a team. I still prefer to animate frame by frame because I'm too lazy to set up rigs (ironic, I know) and traditional is a lot more simple in most cases and less prone to technical issues.
I like how he portrayed Zim and Gir here.
His older animations have so much charm to them
It sucks when an artist has to realize that their passion project is only interesting to them.
It literally doesn't matter what you do anymore unless you check a few specific boxes
It's not about fujos you moron, Monkey Wrench just appeals to absolutely no one.
>It's not about fujos
>Monkey Wrench just appeals to absolutely no one.
>Should've puts breasts on the dinosaur.
>She's hotter flat
Not even furries?
They're rich and can fund any show.
Vivziepop struck gold with her shows being appealing to both fujos and furries.
afaik furries never start or sustain fandoms, they are parasites, they will not be interested in anything that is not extremely popular, your video will need to make 10 million per episode for them to get interested
>afaik furries never start or sustain fandoms, they are parasites
>they will not be interested in anything that is not extremely popular
True
>your video will need to make 10 million per episode for them to get interested
Not true
They're the only autists that get interested in obscure media from decades ago and spend money on it, everyone else forgot about it.
>Not even furries
Not even Scritch and Scratch could sustain the gay fatgay furgays
Why don't furries like cats?
>Not even furries?
Just because it has anthro characters doesn't mean it has furry appeal. Frick's sake, the show has only 45 uploads on e621, and 24 of those are Tyneen.
I wouldn't say it's the character designs alone, it's also the visual style of the series overall. It just doesn't lend itself well to making characters that are conventionally attractive. Furry artists that could've latched on to this show aren't "seeing the vision" as it were.
>it's also the visual style of the series overall. It just doesn't lend itself well to making characters that are conventionally attractive
That is true. As the years went by Shrike's design changed alot, arguably became more professional and less Newgrounds edgy, but he also became more ugly.
I still would
I think he looks great in the short. He's very expressive.
>became more ugly
You're on crack if you think anything is more ugly than that pic
So he's not a monkey? Why the frick is it called Monkey Wrench then?
Because a monkey wrench is a useful multi-tool. They have nothing to do with an actual monkey.
Man, I miss his old 00s style
Wish he never detonated his DA account. There was so much good stuff on there
Should've puts breasts on the dinosaur. I'm just saiyan.
She's hotter flat
That's a niche taste. He wanted views. Should've put breasts on the dinosaur.
She and the cat chick should swap chests tbh.
Do as you must
Erm... erotic?
Nice. I should draw them lezzing it up a bit...
BASED
I made an edit anon
hot.
I owe you my kidney
Now we're talkin'
Extremely, actually based
That's a man anon
Cinemaphile would have no problem with that if 'certain' threads are of any indication...
That's a female lizard. I assume Zeurel is operating on the logic that they don't need breasts therefore she doesn't have any. The problem is that breasts make everything better, even if it doesn't make sense.
>The problem is that breasts make everything better,
Eh, it depends. Her design's ugly enough to need them though.
Her design is fine. She just needs huge fricking breasts.
>Her design is fine.
Not really.
>The problem is that breasts make everything better, even if it doesn't make sense.
Even on guys?
Of course!
Alright 'cause I agree! They often get the shit end of the stick in terms of chests anyways.
>Even on guys?
That only works if she's bottom-heavy like most dragon characters in media. It's a lot more jarring on a more overt anthro body.
>keep the musclegirl flat but make the whips wider
NNNGHHHH
More like the general midsection haha
you made me think of Tyneen doing the preggo test reveal meme
Sauce?
my imagination?
I'm kind of wondering what she'd look like with huge breasts.
I could draw her with petite breasts
The other chick had breasts and it still didn't help much.
Did "the other chick" even have more than one line?
Dude just needs to slim down his designs HEAVILY if he still wants to make an animated web series with a skeleton crew and no budget. If he insists on not using a mixture of rigged puppets with frame-by-frame animation like how RoTMNT or Monkie Kid handle it, then this is the only solution that isn't just him giving up and going the motion comic route.
Like, does he think we NEED to see every single joint on his DinoMommy for us to like her? We understand her cape is tattered without that extra hole detail. We get that she has shackles without those little details. We don't NEED to see her collar bone, the bottom of her feet don't NEED a color separation. He could speed up the cleaning process significantly by have a simple belt instead of this elaborate Tron design. He could slim the eye detail and just make it so the bottom half of the eye has that flesh-droop instead of both the top and bottom-- and he could re-use the red of the outfit for that eye-droop just to simplify it even more.
Maybe Zeurel hates this, maybe he thinks this is destroying his style or butchering his design. But at least this is much more doable on a skeleton team.
Mostly good, but I think I'd leave the folded pant collars alone. That's a detail that communicates personality enough that it's worth keeping.
Excuse my autism, but what personality does it communicate?
Feels more rugged, they resemble the type of shorts you wear in blue collar work or during camping. The tights don't communicate this in any way. They look too posh.
I wonder what they smell like when she takes them off at the end of the day
You straight up cocomelon'd her
I wouldn't go as heavy-handed but I think you're right on this, somewhat. The designs are very elaborate. But those extra elements add a lot of flair, so I'm not sure.
>Do as you must
She's kind of cute (now with color)
just make it a beanmouth while you're at it
I prefer your simplified take
He should take a page out of Venture Brothers and just do very limited animation. That show has very simple animation, even the action scenes have simple animation and it doesn't suddenly switch into sakuga mode during a Brock fight. And yet, despite the high amount of holds and few keyposes a scene might have, people still say it's a gorgeous cartoon.
I notice Zeurel has this kinda Bob Clampetty style where he does a crazy anticipation for every word of dialogue. He'll also do the Milt Kahl thing of having a character shake their head back and forth for a lot of the acting. He could trim a lot of that down and just have a character go from pose to pose and still keep his complex designs.
tldr; TV animation is simple for a reason.
Honesty he should just do shorter episodes
Or just split up his episodes into parts.
Its harder to get a new viewer to watch a 30 minute video vs a 10 minute video.
Especially with the tiktok generation used to watching like 30 second clips
The thing about the internet is that frequency matters
It's better to spam six 5-minute shorts than a 30 minute movie
I understand him though because he seems to be committed to doing things "right", if he needs 30 minutes he'll do 30 minutes. In the end the market decides and sadly there are time-tested rules for survival in the market.
Really amazing work, though. I hope he gets picked up somewhere nice
Should have slapped on a pair of big ole hooters for the normal audience. Also rounded most shapes and given her a space themed china dress with slits high enough to make viewers ask if she has underwear or not.
Or made the thing a queer guy for the furgays. Just add a bulge 0w0.
>the normal audience.
They would've liked a regular sexy human woman instead. I know I would.
Same
I think she's meant to be a Hork-Bajir.
Ohh! Very nice catch, anon.
Genuinely thought it was a guy at a glance. Should have either gave her breasts, made her look more human, or made it a guy since I'm pretty sure gays and women like masculine lizardfolk.
Or give her a slightly less anthro design
Also far left looks terrible
Doesn’t seem like he has a lot of “ambition” when all he cares about is people watching his work
He needed people to watch so he could make money to produce more episodes.
Imagine sinking all that time and money into something nobody cared about. It's not like he made a profit from it. Nothing but losses and apathy.
They'll never know how it feels, because they'll never make anything.
idiot, if you want to make your costly ambitions a full-time job you need financial support
If you make your show and no one's watching then any and all chances of furthering your ambitions goes down the drain because now you won't have the resources to keep your show going
If no one likes what you make, and it can't even sell for the same reason, then why bother making it at all?
Dipshit.
I only feel somewhat bad for him because on one hand a lot off effort went into it, but on the other hand the show is just boring.
It's the artist cycle. Spend lots of time making something you think is great (because otherwise you wouldn't finish it), carry it over the finish line, watch as it gets an underwhelming reception, then get depressed and feel like an impostor, then try to pick up the pieces and try again. Being an artist isn't easy. I wish I was as confident as Squidward.
Do what I do. Find a void that needs to be filled and fill it with your version of it. Plenty of stuff people want more of but haven't found any. The tricky thing is aligning it with your interest. So something you wish you had more of as well.
You're talking about niching down in the market.
Basic advice and it's pretty good but artists tend to be moronic business wise so thank you for writing this here.
The only reason there's so much starving artists is because artists only care about drawing, most of them don't learn about the money side of it.
There isn't many entrepreneurs that know how to draw either.
this is why people have managers
>this is why people have managers
No it's not, specially artists.
Okay, what do people want in art right now?
Going by recent successes like Helluva Boss, MAW Superman, etc. they want frickable character designs in a story with some sweet action scenes, solid soundtracks, and characters with at least a bit of depth.
Sounds good, I just need time to make some animation to fill that criteria.
>they want frickable character designs
could've stopped right here
No, there's animu that has hot character designs but doesn't make a lasting impact because people want a bit more than that.
"Make it visually appealing" is crucial, but not the only crucial element.
So I watched it. I had no idea what this was before this thread. I concede that a few gags/bits of dialogue could have been cut. There's a lot of talking although it's accompanied with a lot of great character acting. This is some high production shit. Now you could say this is boring or whatever but other shit I have seen wss not only animated much worse but also plain unwatchable. This seemed good to me. Animation was great, characters are nice, I had a big laugh near the end as well which is rare for comedy tbh. I also wanna frick the dinosaur and the assassin chick but the problem here is that they're not overtly sexual designs and that's pretty much what it all boils down to in modern media. Characters need to be teasing about sex or be very sexual or whatever. I cannot in all honesty compare this to other web series and find flaws in it that aren't much worse in those other things. The only thing that chances is that there's a male lead and female characters aren't constantly teasing and being sexy and there's no shipping bait either which is pretty much the only thing that modern audiences want.
I am sorry for the guy who made this but on the other hand it made me glad that it didn't cost me 75k dollars to learn how things work
Animesnob made some good videos about writing anime but the lessons also apply to cartoons.
I don't watch youtubers sorry
>Animesnob made some good videos about writing anime
Is he a professional anime writer? cartoon writer? no? frick off.
>But the lessons also apply to cartoons.
No they don't unless you're "Man of Action" ofc.
>Is he a professional anime writer? cartoon writer?
Given what both produce these days that would be a mark against him.
wasn't this guy a pedo or something
That's Digibro
>they want frickable character designs
>could've stopped right here
100% this. The only reason most people watch Helluvaboss is because Loona is sexy.
It's also the only reason why people obsessed over Steven Universe and The Owl House. People just want to ship cute characters, they didn't give a shit about the story.
>It's also the only reason why people obsessed over Steven Universe and The Owl House. >People just want to ship cute characters, they didn't give a shit about the story.
Tis is true and it's kinda weird to me since I don't care for ships but those 2 had fandoms that only talk abot this.
It's the same for Miraculous Ladybug, 99.9% of it is shipping and the rest is memes.
Also ATLA and Korra.
All that cool worldbuilding, cool fights and people only talk about "Zutara" and "Korrasami" for fricks sake.
nah atla was good and it happened before global brainrot
>it happened before global brainrot
ATLA is good but I'm talking about its fandom.
It happened right when global brainrot started.
If you were in the fandom back in 2008 you'd know what I'm talking about.
The discussion on Cinemaphile is 100% waifu shit and the general internet discourse isn't much different
there were two Pantheon threads that went straight off the catalog, that show is a masterpiece and nobody gives a frick and it got cancelled right away
people just want loose characters acting like bawds, teasing about sex, sex sex sex. It's all so one-note. I have no idea how anyone could expect audiences to want anything else.
>people just want loose characters acting like bawds, teasing about sex, sex sex sex.
All of my main characters are male so I may have screwed myself over. But I wouldn't put it past the much smaller "husbando" community to see something in them. That's not what the show is about anyway.
If this is a comedy with male characters that wouldn't work in gay porn I would abandon all hope that anyone will give a shit
I hope I'm wrong, though, good luck
They've got big muscles, only because I thought it added to the comedy. Later I realized some people might see it differently, but even then I think I'm being optimistic that anyone outside of my team would care about it in the first place. Maybe I'll consider it a badge of honor if they get Rule 34'd.
There's a lot of other people out there who have a much better idea of what they're doing, that produced a cartoon that failed to get recognized, so I need to keep my reality in check.
Thank you anon.
Fundamentally, the math goes like this: the weirder the shit that people jack off to, the more popular the show. They make weird porn of the Simpsons because the Simpsons are ultra popular. Same with Sonic. The characters aren't sexual, at least not in the videogames, but the sheer popularity makes so that deranged autists will latch onto them and pay for commissions where the characters are turned into toilets and other insane shit. But on smaller numbers, things get more streamlined: the characters need to be frickable in traditional, mass-appealing ways. If men, they need to be vaguely twinky or prone to what you'd imagine gay porn is about. If they're female they need to be big-hipped and sexually confident or match one of the 5 anime waifu types. Yes, Cinemaphile may have taught you that they want to frick anything, but that's not really true because everyone is making the same designs over and over - for a good reason.
I am also half drunk but yeah, basically if you can't imagine your characters fricking each other in the butthole in a way that is appealing to internet coomers I would expect nothing at all. I don't wanna demoralize you, though, in the end as you said making finished things is its own reward. The only part I don't get is putting any hope in the public.
I never looked at it that way.
When I first learned about that, I assumed it was just people trying to be edgy for shock. I was surprised to find out people actually jerk off to them.
It's hard for me to imagine my characters doing that, because I created them and I know that the relationships aren't sexual. But I've ran into porn of characters with similar body builds from other shows that weren't intended to be sexualized by their writers either. I'm sure at least a dozen people on this planet would want to see my characters frick, but that dozen might have trouble finding out that my show actually exists.
Don't worry anon, I have no hope, but I'm gonna finish it anyway, because it's been a lot of fun so far.
>porn of characters with similar body builds from other shows that weren't intended to be sexualized
were the shows really popular, like The Simpsons? As I said, by the law of sheer numbers you get the super fricked up stuff projected onto these commonplace shows. Autism is like a canvas, the biggest thing you put on it will create its horrors
The show wasn't nearly as popular, might be considered semi-obscure. But I think it had at least 500 entries that were either sexualized pictures or sexualized fanfics.
And yeah I've seen the autistic stuff you're talking about. I've gone down the Pokémon rabbit hole out of curiosity, which is one of the cleanest, family friendly franchises to ever exist, and... my dear god.
haha yeah imagine wanting to frick a Liepard that's just crazy haha
But yes, in short, you gotta hope that the coomer public will want to see your characters frick. If they do, your show will make it. They will commission porn of your beloved characters doing lurid things and other people will watch the show because of that, and they will make you famous by word of mouth. I am convinced that many vidya companies commission porn so that people get to know about the game while browsing porn, they see these characters getting fricked by horses and they go maybe I'll check the game
Don't mind me though, I get very cynical when I'm at my third beer
Don't worry your cynicism is appreciated, this is the stuff people need to hear. That's one way to get attention from something that people wouldn't otherwise care about.
>That's one way to get attention
When I talk about this I mean it with a sense of deep depression and hopelessness but if you spin it that way, sure, the world is your oyster
being depressed or excited about these facts is what makes the difference between a failed artist alcoholic and a marketing savvy successful person
I didn't mean to spin it into a positive, I meant I can see why other people would do that, which is pretty desperate all things considered. I'm not going to do that.
I ask creators about this because I have my own things but whenever I think about putting them out there I just think "why bother". Last time I felt a shred of motivation again to work on something bigger, AI and another more personal thing happened that completely wrecked my will to continue.
People always say "do it you b***h" but they will never understand what it's like to work on something and get nothing in return while someone who's got nothing to say and a tenth of the skills gets praise and money for awful shit that checks the one box and activates the neuron. I don't like talking to other creators about this because it feels like I'm crabbing but I genuinely wanna know if anyone felt like this and defeated this or found proof that real work still matters.
>they will never understand what it's like to work on something and get nothing in return while someone who's got nothing to say and a tenth of the skills gets praise and money for awful shit that checks the one box and activates the neuron.
You're focusing on the wrong things, skills never matter past a certain point.
All you need is networking/nepotism to be a hit.
If you don't have that then you need to advertise the shit out of your product or a lot of luck in case you're relying on word of mouth.
Skill is something that only creators care about, not even their audience care that much.
It's depressing but that's reality.
>found proof that real work still matters.
Again, you're focusing your energy on the wrong things and "real work" don't really matter.
>I am convinced that many vidya companies commission porn so that people get to know about the game while browsing porn
It's funny because a lot of people only know about RWBY because there's a frickton of porn of it.
The subr*ddit "r/nsfwrwby" is bigger than "r/rwby" even...
I am 100% convinced it happens with way bigger shit. In the end, what does it cost? Give a few grand to some guy to make a high quality porn animation of the thing. People look at the porn, see the thing, check the game, buy it. It's a legit ad campaign
Yeah if you think about it, just the "virality" of sharing pr0n on the net is a really good reason for companies to commission a few popular nsfw artists with millions of followers on social media.
I did hear about that too.
I'm pretty frickin sure someone leaked that Blizzard did that OW.
What does OW stand for? Overwatch? My money's on that. I was thinking of Overwatch and the Witcher first and foremost
>Same with Sonic. The characters aren't sexual
LMAO
I said "at least not in the videogames" and you willfully ignored that bit
Even in-game Rouge had titty pshyics
listen, titty physics aren't what I"m talking about
>moving goalposts
no, this is about characters. street fighter chicks? they were always sexy. what I am talking about is character - characters today act sexually like nowhere before.
>Disney movies in 1990 were about as willing to acknowledge sex (not sexuality) as they are now
Disney is Disney though. I specified over my rant that I am talking about mid-sized productions, like web productions. although the gap is nearing between the two
it's just weird. I think all of this shit boils down to sex - not even healthy sex but sexual degeneracy. I once talked to my therapist about how I hate that the art world is so dominated by porn and he said something like "it's scary how fast it's growing", I think enormous masses of people are addicted to jerking off, me included sadly 'cause I'm a depraved individual myself but at least I fight against it
>I think enormous masses of people are addicted to jerking off, me included sadly 'cause I'm a depraved individual myself but at least I fight against it
Even some non-human animals jerk off anon.
Masturbation is natural, and it's just a biological cope for why you didn't reproduce (again)
Just let go of unnatural moralism and nofap BS.
>Insert coomer meme here
Embrace the way of the coom lmao
>on-human animals jerk off anon
in captivity
I won't even say that masturbation is bad or something. I think - as you said - it's a natural thing. You don't have a mate, you jerk off. But the state of things today is obsessive about it. It may be not wrong morally, but it's a symptom that there's something wrong. In my case I dislike society and I parted myself from it. I know that many are in this state and they have embraced this state but I refuse. It may be natural, but it's natural like feeling sick. It's not healthy.
>the state of things today is obsessive about it.
>it's a symptom that there's something wrong.
>it's natural like feeling sick. It's not healthy.
I understand where you're coming from, I personally disagree but I do get your point.
Have a nice day anon, I'm gonna watch Sonic Prime season 2.
I'm gonna think about Sisu once the booze wears off.
-
I'm right and you're wrong
you have never created anything and never will
You're a b***h and I'm the Chad
>I said "at least not in the videogames"
My bad anon, but the games are sexual too.
>that show is a masterpiece
Is it? I went into one of those threads and didnt seem very interesting
Watch it. It's such a breath of fresh air compared to anything I've seen in decades. Fantastic writing, characters that are real people and not just puppets, no predictable boring tropey shit.
>people just want loose characters acting like bawds, teasing about sex, sex sex sex.
Reproduction is in the base of Maslow pyramid of needs.
"Aroaces" have either a mental illness or just low libido.
Even homosexuals are horny all the time.
Sex sells's the absolute truth, everyone is horny.
We're great apes bio programmed to breed.
I know that sex sells, I'm not up in arms against this fact per se. The problem is that nowadays ONLY sex sells.
The problem is that a lot of mainstream stuff is in denial about sex appeal. We have to get it anywhere we can, and a lot of that stuff leaves a lot to be desired. It is what it is.
This is bullshit. If you're hinting about Western characters being ugly queer people, that's still about sex. It's just a validation of a very powerful and vocal community's sexual identity. There's this strange idea that LGBT is anti-sex, no they're not, they just want the women to look like butch lesbians because THAT's what appeals to them. They wanna ship trans or trans-looking characters and other stuff like that and they will talk about this stuff nonstop. "Shipping" is about sex, it's not about characters or story. In one way or the other, almost all mid-sized entertainment made today is about sex, shipping, validating people's sexual identity, it all revolves around sex. I don't watch blockbuster movies so I don't know, maybe they're still about explosions and snarky quips, but as far as smaller fish go, having this sexual foundation is a requirement, it's not something that enhances sales. This is what irks me, I like pretty girls, I have a sexuality, but I still have other things in me and it seems like these days nobody cares about anything else. I fricking seethe every time a show I love get cancelled or a project I like goes on "indefinite hiatus" because nobody gives a shit 'cause there's no shipping bait and sex as the fulcrum. I hate this cumbrain public so fricking much.
Ugly is ugly, nobody wants ugly, queer or not. I've seen more gay men lusting over the cute Clark of MAWS than I saw show any interest in the ugly gay Grubhub shite in Strange World.
People want attractive characters, and going "well it's still catering to sex, even if everyone's fricking hideous" is missing the point to a staggering degree.
This is not about ugly or "appeal" and your comment is in bad faith. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Characters were way more conventionally attractive in older media, but there was none of the obsessive focus on sex and teasing you have today. Take Steven Universe, there's CONSTANT teasing about sex and the characters act sexual very often. In older shows you had pretty girls but they were pretty because - as you said, why wouldn't you draw a pretty girl? Characters now are ugly but they tease and act sexual all the time. This is true for every single show except preschooler shows.
Disney movies in 1990 were about as willing to acknowledge sex (not sexuality) as they are now. The difference is that they were attractive then.
We've traded attractive characters for a willingness to acknowledge that gay people exist. Having both would have been easy, and better.
There's no disagreement about sex appeal, the disagreement is about what is and isn't sexy and who should sex appeal to.
One side has a very narrow view form over the last 50 years of pop culture and other side say there's sex appeal in everything for everyone who wants to seek it, and not just big blonde hair and balloon breasts, and chiseled hairless dudes
>The only reason most people watch Helluvaboss is because Loona is sexy.
They even make fun of this on the show like picrel.
>they want frickable character designs
>could've stopped right here
Me and Luz Lane from adventures with Supes.
>Going by recent successes like Helluva Boss, MAW Superman, etc. they want frickable character designs in a story with some sweet action scenes
You forgot to say that fujos want UWU bois that could be either bisexual or gay.
Hell there's plenty of women that say superman is a supergay and lois lane is a FTM troon.
Basically MAWs is Voltron but straight/Yaoilite
I think I'd actually stop giving him money if he made any trans characters
Superman is pretty damn straight. Jimmy might not be, but nobody gives a shit about Jimmy's love life.
MAWS is a show that kept the core of the characters and their relationships, giving a paint-job facelift and modernizing it for the current generation of viewers. Okay Jimmy's black and Lois has some Korean ancestry. It's still very clearly Jimmy and Lois, with some modern quirks (Lois is a "tomboy" by modern standards in this, but in the 40s she was grabbing a tommy gun from mobsters and returning fire... that's core Lois Lane being maintained). You can tick the diversity boxes, make a solid story, and even keep the core elements of an older IP. It's all perfectly doable.
The secret is to not suck.
Skibidi Toilet got all of that but frickable characters so you are mostly right
>they want frickable character designs in a story with some sweet action scenes, solid soundtracks, and characters with at least a bit of depth.
From what I watched it only has one/two of those (frickable characters/action scenes) nailed while has frickall in the other aspects.
*they only have
*while have
Monkey Wrench very much lacks for frickable characters, yes.
>frickable character designs
>sweet action scenes
>solid soundtracks
>characters with at least a bit of depth
I feel like they figured out how to do this a long damn time ago.
forgot Pic
We keep letting the puritans have power and have to rediscover the obvious.
>MAW Superman
>Frickable
LMFAO, even Mashbrown Motel is better than that pile of shit. It’s just Voltron 3.0 (2.0 being She-ra). Plus they are going to reveal that version of Lois as a lesbian eventually because you can’t have a non-culture war cartoon, tv show or movie in 2023.
>The SJWs are gonna make Lois gay!
rare original w/o partisan edit
Anything that was popular but then stopped. You don’t copy the thing but what made it popular. It’s vague on purpose. I don’t want to give my ideas away.
That depends on what audience you're looking for.
From my experiences and discussing new series with people, a lot just want content that isn't tainted by reality. They want escapism that doesn't try dragging them back to real life
However, doing the above will lose you the twitter crowd and if you choose something that CAN catch the twitter crowd, you will get a lot of free advertising. However you'd also effectively be selling your soul and live the rest of your artist career under the microscope and any false move will get you canceled.
if you don't pander to troons the only way for anyone to care is porn. I have not found a shred of evidence that it's any different
Dunno but Meatcanyon made a whole ass animated series (Monster Lab) without any drama or complaints.
Same goes for good old Sexualobster back in the day when he made Angry Dog
>No complaints
He was complaining before that his audience wasn't really into Monster Lab. It was a pretty shitty series and I think it cut into his ego that people only wanted more parodies rather than anything original from him.
maybe so, but he soldiered on and finished the job smoothly.
One season fully made, each episode has 1M+ views, no nervous breakdowns, no hiatus, no kickstarter to finish it, he just sat down and made it happen
>no nervous breakdowns
This is the thing creators really need to learn.
The more that you put your PERSONALITY in front of your ART, the more that people will judge it as NOT a work of art but instead focus like the human's feelings behind it instead and then it just becomes this cringe nonprofessional pityparty thing even IF the art was good enough to stand on its own.
Hopefully Viv is learning this
and voihon
I don't want to discourage artists from putting themselves into their art
they're not putting themselves into it; they're putting themselves in front of it, and it is distracting
i want to read your comic or enjoy your animation as it is on its own, without hearing your sob story or how you're embarrassed by this part or going to have a nice day if i don't like it
Good art transcends its author.
>Hopefully Viv is learning this
Viv is notorious for not taking criticism of any kind and labeling anyone who dislikes her work as a homophobic troll
>labeling anyone who dislikes her work as a homophobic troll
isn't this a certified winning strategy
Monster Lab animation is no where near as ambitious as Monkey Wrench, moronic comparison
>Make dogshit cartoon what appeals to no one
>It doesnt sell
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
>$75k per episode
Mama mia
What kind of budget would you have gone with?
Maybe wrap the show up in 28 episodes or something and then based on the quality and fan reception move onto my next project or secure funding for another season? You expect people to cough up their own money to be drip fed content forever?
That's not the question I was asking.
Oh I am sorry I meant to say something reasonable or at the very least $75k less than him
papa pia
baby got the diarrrHHHEA
If he was smart he'd do all the animation himself. Thats 60k gone right fricking there.
If he did that he'd be in a Harry Partridge scenario where he can't even put 30 minutes of his space adventure show out in a fricking decade. Say what you want about the quality but I'd say there's something really respectable about the fact he put his money where his mouth is and took the leap to get shit done.
Indie animators needs to realize one thing
No matter how good your animation is, there is always the chance of your story and worldbuilding simply not being liked
That's why you must start a project aware that it will probably fail and that you will need to move on to something more marketable, be ready to animate 3 episodes(otherwise everybody will think you are just a ADHD kid) and then frick off to something new, the vast majority of all creators even the sucessful ones fail on their first projects
I just don't think cool character design and smooth animation can save a boring plot. I wanted to like it but could not watch it in ita entirety
>smooth animation
It was jumpy as hell.
I kinda liked the show... but yes, you need some attractive characters in there to build a fanbase.
Oh and for the love of frick, don't go with a soundtrack that screams "I shoved a guitar into the hands of one of my friends."
There's a few things you can put into a show to make it popular but I would say
>bait
>funny
>charming
>short(consumable)
> Compelling story arcs (hard)
> Compelling character arcs (easy)
If you can do this, I think you'll be successful a lot of the time. A lot of animators (and cartoonist) really wanna focus on animation/quality when, in all honesty, people don't care as much about sakuga as animators do. People would unironically watch hundreds of episodes of an animatic if it fulfilled the rest well enough.
Also there's just so many western indie cartoonist and animators who like fairly ugly characters & settings (like OPs) so even though it is well animated it's trying to hit an old like 90s vibe that I don't think works anymore because kids aren't really forced to sit in front of a TV and watch whatever show is on their limited channels; I don't have to watch AHHH real monsters with its ugly ass big lipped stickbug frickers, I can go watch cute cat character who might be a lesbian idk. YOU might have been into that style, but it didn't stick with a lot of people, and it takes a lot to produce great animation so the investment for what'll be hitting a niche is hard.
Like running down the list OPs thing fails on bait, comedy is fairly subjective so w/e, is long af (30 minutes), and isn't super compelling. Even then though it could still be successful. For something like this, the best option to achieve success would probably have been to start it off as smaller projects (smaller animations, comics, art in general) and let it garner more of a fanbase BEFORE hopping onto something so big. Like an example of this to me is lackadaisycats and viziepop. I don't think either are all too compelling by themselves, but they have years and years of built up internet culture and hype to springboard their project off of and using that leverage gave them ALOT of power.
I wish them success ultimately, being an animator is a pain, but they have a tough road.
bait of what?
>There's a few things you can put into a show to make it popular but I would say
>>bait
(consumable)
>> Compelling story arcs (hard)
>> Compelling character arcs (easy)
Let's be real here, the real list is this:
>BREEDABLE CHARACTER DESIGNS
>LGBTQ+ (MOSTLY LESBIANS)
>COLORFUL
>ROMANCE (MAIN OR SUBPLOT)
>SEXUAL TENSION
>MUH SAD STORY
>LE EVIL MEN (OPTIONAL)
>SIMPLE STORYLINE TO APPEAL TO KIDS
>SHORT (YOU GOT THAT ONE RIGHT)
>SHIPPING BAIT EVERYWHERE ( YOU SAID BAIT BUT NOT SHIPPING)
You don't need compelling story arcs, characters arcs, worldbuilding or any of that professional writing crap.
All you need is to bait your fanbase with ships, specially between women.
fujobait can be good if well writen, unfortunately we have yet to see an example of that
Shame, I really like Monkey Wrench. Sad that this has happened.
Zeurel just needs to do some studying on lower budgeted animation and how to effectively cut corners. He wants to do more than polished animation, he wants to deliver theatrical-quality shorts on a one-man crew.
Monkey Wrench fans aren't going to hate the show because he decides to use more holds, less keyposes, and a few tweens here and there. He does not need to have an individual pose for every single word of dialogue.
That episode was fricking impressive, it looked like a theatre release. He did all the animation?
No, he has a hired team. A single dude isn't producing animation like that in less than a year.
such a shame, really
So muuch cool and well made shit gets this treatment but make a 2 second porn loop and you swim in cash
audiences deserve nothing
>So muuch cool and well made shit gets this treatment but make a 2 second porn loop and you swim in cash
"Sex sells" is a rule in marketing for a reason.
You either put shipping (straight or not) or SEXO in your web comic, web animation or indie game or you don't make money at all.
How did the toilet sfm vids make it then?
...That's a really good question. How did Ski Babidi Toilet catch on?
Indian propaganda to try to make children fear toilets and bring back shitting in the streets as respectful
GMOD's eternal presence + kids scrolling through Shorts all day long eventually finding it
GMOD still winning
The first episode had 15 rough animators with Zeurel being the lead clean-up dude and a few assistants. I have no idea if these are the full credits for the second episode, but if they are, then he did most of the animation for the second episode.
frick man I would actually donate for this but I barely have money to eat
Serious talk: have you ever had a period of bitterness/resentment? Between people's tastes and behavior toward creators, AI and "frick artists", social media, algorithms, cancel culture and sensibility police, seeing where the money goes, how do you keep this will to put things out there?
>AI
Ai can't animate so this doesn't worry me
>frick artists
Bucket crabs
>social media
Avoid it as much as possible
>cancel culture and sensibility police
I used the word moron in my last vid, and none of my VAs gave a shit.
That said, I keep the will because I find it fun. Something something DMC# my soul drives me and all that gay shit.
So you've never felt like this? You never had a moment where you thought "why the frick do I even bother?"
Is this your first project? I don't mean sarcastically
No, I've had short bouts of that feeling. But it usually passes. The serotonin from seeing a finished work outweighs the negative thoughts.
What does finishing work have to do with publishing it? You could make stuff for yourself. Not trying to convince you, I wanna get out of this rut
>Ai can't animate
Yet.
Ever. At least not anything more complex than Aqua Teen shit, at which point you're better off doing it by hand.
please don't feed him
Don't scare me like that, you little shit.
As a an indie animator with like 15 total fans, I can understand the feeling of not getting the bang for the buck. At the same time, I'd feel worse about not finishing the story I have in mind, so that drives me forward.
Also helps that I have a aerospace software job that helps pay my VAs
>15 total fans
>aerospace software job
your show is SFW furry?
My show has cartoon animals, but I wouldn't consider it anymore "furry" than Ren and Stimpy or Tom and Jerry.
>My show has cartoon animals, but
kek
fits like a puzzle
how many furries do you know personally? Heard the field is chock full
None. You on the other hand seem very well versed on the topic.
nta but tom & jerry isnt really furry.
>aerospace software job
>your show is SFW furry?
This is comedy gold, and it's funny how stereotypical your filthy rich furry is.
Can we see your animations?
I'm producing a pilot with $10k and going in with the expectations that nobody will give a shit. I think it's best to set yourself up for disappointment, so if anything comes out of it will be a welcome surprise. Just accept it, focus on production so you're satisfied with your own work when it comes out.
It's easy to get stuck in your own head and I'm guilty of this too. You have this amazing idea, you love the setting and characters, and feel everyone else is going to love it too, and producing it brings you so much job. So how could it possibly fail?
when is this coming out?
Probably a year from now. Going to drop a trailer later this year, it's gonna be fun.
I did when I was younger, but I've grown up and accepted that there's nothing I really do about it. All I can do is put my best foot forward with my best intentions. I just want to make something fun and character driven, not looking to change the world or change any minds. We need escapism from everything you mention now, more than ever, and I hope I can deliver that for a little bit.
I was looking foward to this, I long for a good show about a space mercenary team going on adventures.
Oh well, here's hope Starbarians does a good job at that.
Animation has never been profitable on it's own anon.
Even big stations like Cartoon Network or Nick or Disney didn't make money from the actual cartoon, they made money from toys and other such merch. Same goes for anime. Anime doesn't make money but manga does, they're literally just 24 minute ads for the paper back version. It's just a fact of life.
>Anime doesn't make money but manga does, they're literally just 24 minute ads for the hotglue figurines and loneliness pillows
fify but you're right
where's that image where the anime guy says "we can't make what we want, we need to cater to the obsessive fans"
really sad because the sweatshop animators, both the japs that do it and the weebs that work in offshore studios, are the obsessive fans that were willing to do it for pennies to begin with. but instead we have directors with sky high egos who think the world MUST witness their original trite and will commandeer his two hundred slaves to his ego boosting whims. most of them are flops for good reason.
creators need to recognize that they live in a society, their personal tastes may not be held by the majority, and reality hits you hard when you don't have sweatshop workers and a budget bestowed from above to work with. I suggest that writers field test their ideas with a smaller audience in a medium where they get to move fast, eg. webcomics.
Remember when every cartoon from the 80s was a glorified toy commercial? Good times...
Those shows are unironcally more remembered because they had merch. The story stuck with kids long after the TV turned off because they had toys to play with.
There were hundreds of flyover cartoons with little to no remembrance from the last 2 decades because they had no merch.
Tell that to SU. It had a steady shitload of merch since season 1 and now nobody talks about it nor gives a shit.
>brings up the show that had Twitter queers imbued into it to try and counter the lack of modern merch argument
Are you that autistic anon from up in the thread that pulls out bad faith arguments where it doesn't make any fricking sense? Because that's what it sounds like.
I will admit the internet Fandom culture was a bit of a trade with actual physical merch but Steven Universe isn't even older than 20 yet, it's relatively fresh compared to things like HeMan, TMNT, and Rainbow Brite, MLP.
Old toy cartoons had enough staying power to get reboots (or attempts) because the toys stayed popular.
SymBionic Titan would have been a better argument.
>Are you that autistic anon from up in the thread that pulls out bad faith arguments
Seeing as this is the first time I triggered an anon ITT I'd say no. It's just hilarious to me how fast SU died after it stopped putting out new content.
Could be a regional thing. I saw tons of the shit in every mall.
I rarely, if ever saw merch for the show in stores even during its heyday.
What indie animation even is there but gay demon workplace cartoon?
My thoughts on ep 1.
The main character is ugly. Even Earthworm Jim looked better than him. Most other characters looked okay but I didn't think any were good. Though the animation was very fluid.
Regarding the episode plot the beard guy has no motivation to protect the bird guy when turning him in is much more profitable than protecting him from other bounty hunters. The main character has even less reason since he's the one who has to fight the bounty hunters and the bird guy constantly annoys him. The plot would have been better if he was trying to claim the full bounty, and that's why he fought all the bounty hunters and endured the bird being annoying.
The series plot was weak as it briefly mentioned the assassin was killing people for some reason, then had an episode that didn't build on it in any way. I'm not going to watch a show if the main plot doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
>Cinemaphile thinks they know better
I have 300k subs as a youtube animator and i've given up on youtube and making a game to put on steam instead.
what was your channel?
>Cinemaphile thinks they know better
Of course we do.
We're the COOMsumers of the product the animator created and we consumed similar and popular stuff to compare it to.
>profitable
Well yeah, it needs to have SOME kind of draw to attract an increasing customer/viewerbase.
I love Zeurel's work, but unfortunately, it's gotta be a passion project and not a full blown OVA like he's got money to blow. I'd happily watch it in "motion comic" with the occasional animated scenes.
Moneky Wrench failed because it was boring and unfunny. The action and character designs are great. But good grief the writing needs some improvements.
>why is shit like Hackbin successful
appeal to the pretentious edgelord internet niche who believe they're too good for a disney movie.
The spacesuit cat is the only appealing character design in this image. If he scrapped everything else and made it the main character this likely would have done better.
can you stupid cumbrains stop disguising "I wanna coom to this" with "appeal"? Are you ashamed or what? Just say that you only care about what you can jerk off to, we're on Cinemaphile here there's no need to say euphemisms like "NSFW" and "appeal"
Are you fricked in the head? I'm saying the exact opposite.
I never watched that cartoon, but from looking at the characters, there's only 1 that I wanna frick so the anons talking abou sex are right.
is it the dinosaur or the bunny-cat
>is it the dinosaur or the bunny-cat
I guess it's the bunny-cat? It does look like a cat.
The dino isn't bad either but it's not my taste.
Her name's Cara(?) so I assume she's a caracal.
more like paraplap
>skeleton with one blue eye
awwwww shieeet
>skeleton with one blue eye
It makes you think that such a description didn't make him popular even tho everyone and their mother wanna frick that skeleton villain from Undertale.
Character design really make or break a show popularity.
The designs look complicated to animate and I'll agree they aren't very appealing/attractive with exception of the little cats in the space suit. They look too goofy for something serious too.
Just from the look of it I can tell the astronaut cats are NOT the leads. Watching it they are not the leads. But if they HAD BEEN it would have gotten more eyeballs. Why? Because they are cute, people love cats, they'd look great on keychains and stuff.
ugly shits
no fapping or shipping potential
pass
The right side is solid an appealing in one way or the other. The monkeys and birds on the left? Not so much.
I hate Joel for giving him so much attention bc now he has to put skeleton bait in to keep people
The skeleton guy looks dumb in this sci-fi setting I agree.
Is he really supposed to be a living skeleton or just a alien that resembles one though?
That's one of my main issues with the show, the worldbuilding was clearly just Zeurel drawing random shit and calling them "aliens"
One thing I'll say is that he complains about "how little attention" the animation got, despite the fact that other creators would kill for the attention that either of the two episodes he released got.
Dude is b***hing that he didn't make the next "Helluva Boss" but he should be happy he didn't make the next "Under the Influencer".
To be fair, a failed business venture is a failed business venture. There aren't very many shorts as polished as those two eps so the amount of workload input vs the returns probably has to sting.
Especially if he knows in the back of his head that just saying "frick it" and pumping out half ass horny shorts would get x5 the views and prolly net x3 the money. It'll always suck when what you want to make just ends up blowing up in your face. His shorts performed well, just not well enough to make it worth all the work in the end.
Maybe its because I'm pessimistic at heart, but I don't understand how the amount attention that he got blindsided him the way it seemed to.
Did he expect to get 10mil views on each video and have his patreon numbers double?
I don't know, I do sympathize with him, and his animation is fantastic, but the way his post reads you'd think he got hundreds of views instead of hundreds of thousands.
Do artists really expect art to be profitable if they work really hard on it?
Think of it this way, he's has plenty of significantly lower effort, less expensive videos more than triple his passion projects latest episode. An episode which itself saw its viewer retention drop to just 30% of the previous episode and didn't even max out his own subscriber number.
He prolly wasn't expecting 10 million, but at least 1 probably would've been a reasonable expectation. And then when you take into consideration future projections, he's probably thinking about how 2 years of his life and 75K in funds might theoretically under preform again (~sub 200k). I think that would frick most people up idk.
I've been in his situation before, it's shitty. Even more so when you're somewhat used to success and people seemingly caring about the work you've put out before.
He's saying he can't afford to keep making them. Why are people who have never done anything mad?
I believe this thing with calling everyone a sellout is so you can justify supporting actual sellouts. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.
It's a common thing, e.g. I'm openly supporting corrupt people because politicians are all corrupt anyway.
I think it's really funny how no matter what, you're always a soulless sellout unless you make porn for $$$. Then everyone says "BASED" and forgets about the whole selling out discourse.
That's not even this though. This entire thread is people being mad at Zeruel because he's made a cartoon and can't afford to keep doing it the same way. He'll have to change the way he does it and he's explained it all very simply in plain English. And for no reason everybodys mad
It's about dismissing the guy as a whiner because he's made something that he likes instead of pandering and it's failing, so it's a way on putting the blame on him for doing something that he actually believed in. It's the same reason why people start talking shit if you say you prefer to make original content instead of cynically hopping on trends because being a cynical sellout is actually comforting to the general public now. It's like they have a knee-jerk rejection of anything made in earnest and HAVE to paint the maker as an butthole in some way.
.... he pandered to himself??
>pander to:
>to provide or furnish (a person or people) with something that satisfies their low desires or that appeals to their prejudices or fears
>"Those newspapers pander to the public's lowest desires: greed and sex."
That's a great post. I reckon most people here hate themselves so much that they interpret every post they read through that lens. So you get Zeurels post here that's very matter of fact and straight forwards but once it's gone in their head it comes out to them as an angry whingefest lasting out at the world.
>just make the characters appealing (sexy)
eye of the beholder, frick you.
there's no reason why an indie cartoon should cost that much. people have forgotten what Hannah Barbera perfected years ago and made tv animation possible, simplify character design & animation.
H&B toons looked like fricking shit
yet more people watched them
Standards have grown since the 60's
practices shouldn't, especially when HB's whole thing was content under budget and that's what indieshit is.
Well, yes and no.
The shit Indie people wanna do cannot be achievable with the HB method
Also Helluva Boss propped up a new set of standards with them constantly animating characters with Hellish designs that are a nightmare to animate
Hanna Barbera lowered the standards of cartoons, though.
But it lowered by necessity due to the surrounding circumstances of the time (the most notable of which being the nuclear fallout-tier effects of 'United States v. Paramount''s resolution)
>"only 1.5 million views!? woe is me, no one cares, I should kill myself!"
what a histrionic c**t
isn't 1.5mil pretty shit for something that took this much work? It's views, not dollars
Maybe he needs more views and more money to continue paying any animators he hired but that's not the way he phrased it. He's already got way, WAY more views than 99% of all creative shit that gets made by anyone ever. Getting that many views only to whine and backhandedly suicide bait about it comes across as entitled as shit.
>He's already got way, WAY more views than 99% of all creative shit that gets made by anyone ever.
This isn't 2006 dude, 1 million views is like barely average now
>1 million views is like barely average now
It is for animation. You're not getting 10s of millions unless you're
>Making a Music video
>A major film corporation
>A Pakistani content farm
Well now you see the problem
1.5 million is nothing on Youtube especially given the costs of animation
This thread got me thinking, what ever happened to that blacksad “lookalike”?
It's a pretty bad sign when I Google up the show's name and it gets so few hits, that it barely shows up on the search results.
That sounds like a personal problem. 30 minutes animated episodes below $100k sounds too good to be true honestly, but you could make 10 minute animations with a voice cast and everything for just less than what a McDonalds wagie makes in a week.
If this is truly your passion project, go the Harry Partridge route and take months, or years to finish your project stress-free.
>take months, or years to finish your project stress-free.
The only stress is not dying before you complete it.
People go in with these super fluid animation ideas for their indie projects, which I think is unnecessary.
Take a note from other low budget shows that still looked great, learn the techniques they used and have episodes produced at a much lower rate. Anime is full of them. You'll still get your story.
If your idea kicks off, then you can improve the animation.
I'd prefer doing shorter cartoons. Update more often, keep people from forgetting about you and you'll learn what works and what doesn't after each short rather everything after a large cartoon where it's too late to adjust.
the dude is not complaining that hell furries are more popular, he's demoralized by the diminishing returns on his passion project. if only the promise of independant animation was actually worth shit, instead it's the biggest example of trend chasing.
Just make shit that people want to watch. Zeurel failed at that.
>Just make shit that people want to watch
that kills my creativity boner.
Either you make something you want to watch, or you make something most people want to watch.
then draw what you want to draw, don't expect ppl to pay for it tho
>It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Right on
Damn that's a bummer.
He was a dumbass for expecting people to migrate to his second channel just to check out the cartoon
I find it funny how he hasn't given his work a second look and realise why people aren't watching it.
Nobody is gonna watch a yet another cartoon that is space themed and takes heavily after Cowboy Bebop but heavily neutered for kids. Why would anyone watch this when anyone can watch the superior Cowboy Bebop that feels more fun and inventive than this generic kids cable-mandated cartoon?
>Cowboy Bebop exists so you can't make anything like that
that's a really stupid reasoning
unironically it's just lack of shipping/waifu bait
sorry this is a thread of actual intelligent discussion, maybe you guys have a venture bros thread to frick off to?
He just needs to be more original rather than being derivative as frick.
It's not even the waifus that are required to carry the show. All you literally have to do is make a show with a convincing setting with a good story to follow along with it. That show has nothing going on for it, because it's just two wacky characters going on space adventures on wacky planets which is something that has been done tons of times with previous kids cartoons.
It quite literally has the traits of a generic kids cartoon
>Humor being more slapstick, as well the action overall
>dialogue and tone being lighthearted
>Furries everywhere, to a point where the show itself feels like Internet OCs: The show. The furries themselves aren't too particularly inspired or fit in the overall space/extra-terrestrial theme of the show.
>Extremely cliched jokes, and design tropes which are often seen in kids shows.
>Overall bright and cartoony, which by itself isn't bad but doesn't do the show justice.
This guy honestly has no clue in what he's even trying to make for. He might have a better success in pitching the show to a cable tv executive, than trying to get that gain traction on internet. Hell, kids on internet would rather watch cartoons made for adults or teenagers, mainly anime, than watch a cartoon catered to them.
Hasbhe ever tried making an original series or worked in the industry before or is it all shorts and fanimations? If it's his first he really should have gone with something simpler to start with.
>more original rather than being derivative as frick.
>All you literally have to do is make a show with a convincing setting with a good story to follow along with it.
If the success of HB is of any indication, to hell with even those aspects. Hell, there's much, MUCH better alternatives to that show in stuff like Lupin the 3rd and Golgo 13, and it still managed to gather a decently sizable following nonetheless.
I hate to say it but HB is unique, there really aren't that many alternatives if you want something with that similar aesthetic at that level of visual quality. Past a certain age it feels derivative but for a current 13 year old it probably looks and feels fresh.
>there really aren't that many alternatives if you want something with that similar aesthetic at that level of visual quality.
Maybe in the west, at least.
>HB
Do you mean Helluva Boss or the entire catalog of Hanna-Barbera?
Because I thought you meant the latter and how even on a budget of bubblegum and a shoestring they somehow cranked out successful cartoons
>If the success of HB is of any indication
That's because it literally did something original. There's barely any shows that have hell as a setting, and demons being the main part of the show. And plus, you have tone, plot/setting and characters that are aimed at a specific audience which gives the show a proper identity and something interesting to offer. The waifus are just a cherry on the top.
>That's because it literally did something original.
not really?
>random chingchong show a billion years ago
frick off
>created by the Devilman guy
>'random chingchong show'
lol
lmao
Wrong board
stay there chink
It is though. What you're showing here is just literally yokais and a witch as a protag, in a Japanese setting.
Seems pretty different enough to Hazbin Hotel, which is way much more western based.
>It is though.
Is kinda is, yet it also isn't. Boss' premise, at its core, is almost just a somewhat modified rendition of Enma's premise. Admittedly, I could say that's still unique by western animation standards.
>witch
Demon, though yeah he looks like a witch in this case.
haha, no
is it subbed?
From what I recall, yeah.
To be honest, I'm kinda surprised that both of Vizie's shows haven't caught on in Japan considering these things. I mean, I don't expect them to reach UT/DR levels of popularity, but still.
there is big following for all types of animation in Japan, but it needs to be translated first
fwir HH does have an official Jap dub..
>There's barely any shows that have hell as a setting
>Superjail
>Jimmy Two-Shoes
>Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell
>Hooray for Hell
>The Good Place
You're not even trying
>humor being more slapstick
Original Tom and Jerry shorts were for adults.
>dialogue and tone being lighthearted
King of the Hill is lighthearted
>show itself feels like Internet OCs
>Original Cartoon on the internet has Original Characters
>Extremely cliched jokes
Such as?
>but doesn't do the show justice
In what way? Your critiques are vapid and frankly, moronic, and I say this as someone who isn't even a huge fan of the show. Apparently you think something needs to be
>FRICK FRICK FRICK PENIS PENIS DUDE SEX LMAO
from start to finish to be "adult". You literally made no reference to the actual content of the short, just hollow traits that superficially appear childish to you.
>heavily neutered for kids
>kids cable-mandated cartoon
What the frick are you talking about?
aw I forgot the little flair on the spikes
there are so many little details
bonus
Bless you anon for the good food
I love her colors
noice
more like troons and pathetic single white millennial women in their 30s/40s took over the whole industry so only gay/troony yaoi shit can be common there.
she's got a really nice body ngl
Clearly has a lot of work put into it but ep1 lacks any sort of hook. Characters aren't very appealing in looks nor personality. Pacing is off, writing is average. Animation is high effort but not always the most appropriate.
Ep2 is better but the damage was already done.
If i was some overrich millionaire i would fund a bunch of indie cartoons.
Has he tried kickstarter or anything?
He funds his stuff via Patreon and the occasional plush
I'm not sure why he hasn't leant more into merch like stickers or shirts yet
kickstarter is useless if you're actually "indie". At this level of money it's all hype campaigns for products that are funded by third parties
I wonder why there arent any bored millionaires funding indie cartoons and artists. Are they spending it all on hookers, blow, and ferraris?
I know that some comissioners spend shit ton of money on furry porn though.....
People with money are raised to be money-oriented. They don't fund shit out of passion, they fund things that will make them money.
Because they're too busy lobbying
they collect art
it's sophisticated and doubles as tax shelter
Update from Zeurel's patreon
I think this is just gonna spell death for it. The main strength of this show is the animation.
Probably to some degree
As boring as the show is I do actually watch for the characters
It's a shame about the animation cut since my favourite characters are going to be a main feature of episode three
I hope
Maybe we're gonna see a scene where Ty kisses Kara in the future. The unsophisticated plebeians want the ships, give them the ships... it's a sacrifice you gotta take... Dew it haha
zeurel did reblog this so I can only hope for the best
I hope so. It's rare when the canon ship is the perfect ship.
>"sign my pecs"
Alright, the og design's okay in my book now for that.
>sign my breasts!
I wonder if he got notified of this thread and saw the Tyneen erotica
Ok, real question— why would any indie venture go for such LONG EPISODES????
Not even fricking TV, with it's infinite budget is that long. Shows are 21 minutes.
Go for 3 minutes an ep, 5 minutes max and just break up the shit.
Creative types can be too ambitious for their own good. This is why the business guys are there to keep them in check.
I assume this would be the reasoning behind it.
Because they want to make it that long. How can now you even imagine having ambition.
>How can now you even imagine
first off, nice sentence ESL
secondly, it's called being fricking reasonable.
There's nothing about a 30 minute ep that can't be split up into two or more episodes. ESPECIALLY in fricking Monkey Wrench.
I say why not just all in and make a 72-90 minute movie? If you are going to spend the time making 20-30 minute long episodes, why not put all that effort into making a movie? Just focus on making one really good beautiful story instead of trying to stretch it out into a series.
>make plushes of these two ugly fricks instead of the 1000x more marketable cat in spacesuit
lol
lmao even
I'll have one Kara dakimakura, please
And those look really good.
He's actually making Scritch and Scratch ones soon, I've heard he posted previews on his Patreon
I'm going to rhuge these plushies when given the chance
Just make your show about little girls fighting demons with sexy side characters, is not that hard
>little girls
not in the west, very problematic
Zeurel can scale back the animation all he wants, that isn't going to increase the number of fans. The scripts and voice acting just kind of suck. I see Monkey Wrench and I'm expecting fun, snappy cartoon writing like Earthworm Jim, The Tick, or Sam & Max. Instead, I get really lame dialogue with slow timing and cliché jokes like, "AND THE TINY CUTE THING WITH A BABY VOICE IS AGGRESSIVE AND ANGRY ALL THE TIME".
And even if he did fix the scripts, the voice actors haven't demonstrated good comedic timing. They would probably butcher any good jokes Zeurel DID write out. I don't know, the animation was the only draw of the whole product. Without it, I actually see interest in his series going down.
All you need is coombait characters, doesn't matter if the show is unfunny or moronic (see helluva boss). The problem with Monkey Wrench is that it's boring and unfunny, with no frickable characters too
I don't know why no one bothered to post the show at least, guess everyone's said all they've wanted to say about the show:
seem alright, it sure is a cartoon, did he really need to make this mumbling thing the main character?
I can't imagine being so endlessly amused by a Jarjar binks type of chara to give him most of the lines...
>Jar Jar Binks
I always compared Shrike with Earthworm Jim, but holy shit he really is like a more competent bounty hunter Jar Jar Binks.
God I hate his disgusting fingernails
I actually like Shrike quite a bit, he's a cool character. Design-wise he reminds me of the guy from Trigun for some reason
>Vash the Stampede
Yeah I can see it, red clothing, spiky hair, wacky gunslinger. Based on Zeurels earlier iterations, Shrike also probably still has a dark backstory.
My series has fujobait AND waifus
based
You have made several obvious attempts to derail the thread, why the frick?
wut?
Mind sharing your fujobait with the class, anon?
Fujobait ruined anime. I hope you die.
OP is right, don't shoot the messenger
I'll shoot the messenger because he wants to spread his AIDS far and wide. And no, he is not right. All the successes of the past didn't have fujoshit in them. Cartoons went to hell because of it. Instead of giving people entertainment and animation to look at they put gaybait, lesbobait and pedobait in it and call it a day.
And how the hell is fujobait supposed to make a cartoon that isn't selling merchandise profitable.
>All the successes of the past didn't have fujoshit in them.
What about the current ones? Do you have eyes to see? Mentioning facts and talking about them isn't going to "spread the AIDS"
Fanservice and appealing characters have always being a thing, Betty Boop was old timey coomer bait, what you call "fujobait" Is just fanservice for a particular audience who enjoy creating fandoms around certain characters or ships but un practice Is just the old true of "sex sells", just not sex that appeals to you in particular.
>Fanservice and appealing characters have always being a thing
That's not up for debate, but see
But that's fricking wrong, let out it this way: you have Undertale sex not because the characters are "sexual" but because they're appealing. You think "I have the sex, so that's the appeal" but it's actually "I have the appeal, so people want to frick it".
Are you implying that Undertale didn't ride the whole LGBT shit extremely hard?
I think you're confusing the actual contents of the game with what the community spun out of it.
Oh cmon anon, don't be disingenuous.
Main character is a they/them but it's not made into a big deal, and then there was a dinosaur girl with a crush on a fish girl, did I miss anything else? If you reaaaally want to stretch it you could argue that some characters are non-binary or some shit, but then again most of them are goofy cartoon monsters.
>there's this and that and that and that too and that, but it didn't cater to that public haha
Anon you're being disingenuous. Stop
Undertale happened almost 10 years ago
Undertale's main appeal was in the writing, the unique gameplay, and an aspect even these indie cartoons still woefully neglect: the soundtrack.
>Fujo
You keep using that word...
What should my next animation be about, anons?
A simple premise with eye catching designs and obvious appeal for those that are hungry for more.
What will the runtime be and what mood are you going for?
Fujos are mostly repulsive women who get off to yaoi and yuri.
Here's the facts. Children, the large target demographic, have tuned out because cartoons are dull and ugly. Your "modern successes" of Owl House and She-Ra are only "successful" among what is currently running. The only audience currently is the tiny group that likes that crap. Everyone else has been driven away. Successes my ass. Yeah, real brand builders of the calibre of the Transformers.
That "particular audience" isn't spending money and what appeals to it drives away all other audiences.
You post like guy, how embarrasing
>You post like guy, how embarrasing
Nah he’s right, Owl House and She-ra through a financial lens were failures because kids didn’t watch them whereas stuff like Modern Spongebob and Teen Titans Go is successful because they go deep in that gross out shit. Fujogays aren’t a long lasting audience, eventually they’ll dump your show the moment another cute boy character comes along. Plus you wouldn’t want them anyways, they are extremely toxic and get into fights with the crew behind shows the moment something “bad” goes wrong
Spongebob and TTG are succesfull like pawpatrol Is, the pre-school market has nothing to do with this, pre-teens and tenés don't buy total, they buy merch, and you don't have merch numbers. You say they're a failure, but I don't know by what metric or with what sources.
>You say they're a failure, but I don't know by what metric or with what sources.
Because they had consistent low viewership and weren’t giving their respective companies (Disney and Dreamworks) as much money as their bigger IPs. The young adult market isn’t a good financial investment because most of them are broke due to crippling amounts of student debt and other reasons. Part of the reason why Owl House got cancelled is because not only did Disney think it didn’t fit their brand, but because it simply wasn’t bringing in enough revenue. Kids weren’t enjoying it and the adults who did watch it didn’t have money in their pockets. You can’t have a cartoon nowadays that doesn’t primarily market itself. That’s the reason why all of these Fujobait shows fail in the first place despite coomers and lesbos thinking otherwise.
She Ra streamed, you don't even know what numbers it made, and succesfully made it's four seasons when the average show does in two.
The original She-Ra almost had twice as many episodes as the reboot and sold far more toys. Plus Netflix has a moronic way of counting shows as “seasons” so that doesn’t arguably make it a success. Little girls weren’t buying the toys and it’s primary audience were grown women who can’t afford basic products without forking over loans
The original She-Ra wasn't for teens, it was for pre schoolers to the point it have a moral of the day and was made in a day where you had to made twice as many episodes for syndication.
>Owl House and She-ra are made by fojos or for fujos
>fights with the crew behind shows the moment something “bad” goes wrong
You're conflating fujos with shippergays who are always cancer, and progressive/puritygays who hate fujos.
You can't address what I'm saying.
Mattel made a She-Ra line in 2020 that bombed so hard it was cancelled after the first wave. Steven Universe got some building block sets that nobody bought.
>Children, the large target demographic, have tuned out because cartoons are dull and ugly.
Children have tuned out because they're raised on pajeet youtube poop and clicker videogames and have the attention span of a goldfish. They are physically unable to follow 5 seconds of dialogue and I'm not even sure if they understand what's going on at any time.
Or maybe kids don't want to watch some plain-clothed, rigid-animated self-insert talking about the creator's personal issues in a mundane environment.
Show them some "toy commercials" and see how they pay attention to it.
>Show them some "toy commercials" and see how they pay attention to it.
They don't. You're massively out of touch. Past pre-schooler age they don't give a shit because they play videogames.
>Artist makes unremarkable DeviantOC peepeepoopoo show that is way too long
>Gets meager reception and views plummet by the 2nd episode
>"HOW CAN THIS BE!!!" :O
Damn it really didn't do well?
I miss when he used to do OC tournaments, also miss his old Shrike design and voice.
What the hell I like this way more
It's edgy as frick, but it also has the non-sexual "appeal" everyone here keeps raving about.
Its way more raw but I like that. Plus the human kid adds to the dynamic that I think is missing from Monkey Wrench
I assume he rolled the straight-man role of that kid into the big beard guy, but it still feels like the main character group lacks a third straight man now. It's just a back and forth between Earthworm Sanchez and Fatbeard, it lacks a third component to mix things up every once in a while.
What ever happened to that girl with the purple and robo arm? Wish I had saved his old concept of her but she looking great as the third crew member.
With some digging she’s apparently still around under the name “Lariat”, he seems to have given her a number of redesigns- some of them giving her the red hair of the boy
https://twitter.com/Zeurel/status/701950818446999552?s=20
https://twitter.com/Zeurel/status/1168217187187773445?s=20
Ngl i like her purple hair better than her red hair.
She seems to be the successor of the boy and girl from the Civil War OCT animation. Also this reference from his Newgrounds has the girl
And the boy
John Bob?
Cute. I like the Invader Zim pack. What does he look like in show?
Seems he merged the characters
God this design of BB is so much better than the fricking ugly boxhead he is now. Looks easier to animate too because he's just more organic.
that arm shape looks like a nightmare to animate
I imagine, but I think he’s got a lot of experience drawing robot limbs so he would probably figure out an easy way to do it.
Bob John?
He won that walking city tournament didn't he?
Oh, he did, not sure if there’s any leftover stories/comics/animations from then since he deleted his DA account, seems that some parts of OCTs unfortunately end up becoming a sort of lost media.
Oh, Lariat took part in that one, so maybe the reason she isn’t part of Monkey Wrench is because she’s still wrapped up with how that OCT ended, or because a background detail in Ep1 in Monkey Wrench implies that humans are being hunted to extinction for some reason.
Ngl when I first saw that thumbnail I thought that was Leela
kek
Does this guy have some kind of robotic limb fetish?
Anon, you don't know what actual robolimb fetish looks like. If he has it, it's super tame.
All I know is if every fricking character has a missing limb replaced by robot parts I start to get suspicious. Of course he's not going to use the really creepy stuff in his toddler cartoon.
I think he's just doing it for flavor. He seems to like complicated characters and cyborg stuff helps to make things look sci-fi. I've seen a whole bunch of prosthetic/acromotophilia related art and it's got a specific bent to it that gives it away. It's like a foot fetish; you can have someone draw lots of characters barefoot but it means nothing.
>you can have someone draw lots of characters barefoot
>but it means nothing
Not sure I buy that either. At best they're just closeted. At worst it's like that one time I noticed an artist just happened to draw lots of similar images of puckered anuses from this very specific angle and then I found the alt account and it was all scat. All artists are sick fricks you just have to find their specific thing.
>that one time I noticed an artist just happened to draw lots of similar images of puckered anuses from this very specific angle
Hmm, I can see how that could be a red flag. However, you might want to concede that bare feet are not quite on the same level as puckered buttholes. I think that's a bit more on the nose, no pun intended
Consider: robot arms look cool
>t. Anon who used to draw a lot of cyborgs or robots
i THINK this is her design now
where does he publish comics?
This is from his Patreon discord. it really is a shame to say it but all the fun bits about his characters that make them appealing are sadly locked away from casual fans and are sort of kept as "in jokes" what won't do him any favours seeing how he wants his fanbase to grow.
I think the kid was only added as a way to tie them into the OC tournament, and might be someone else’s character alongside the girl, I can’t remember as it’s been almost 11 years since I saw that video and looked into it. Also in Ghost Egg the two toys the bird guy were playing with was Spoiler and Black Ace
where should i promote my indie cartoon?
Newgrounds
that site is still alive?
It actually had a bit of a revival after a bunch of sites started self-destructing themselves and they swooped in to give people are alternative.
Newgrounds is web animators only safe bet, everything else either go bankrupt and frick over animation somehow, newgrounds is still the same after +20 years.
I resent everything Hazbin hotel is but Monkey Wrench also looks like boring and disorganized crap.
Hi Zeurel! Bring these back so I can fund your fricking cartoon already!
>Create boring long-winded poopoo cartoon
>It's not financially viable
I bet Civil War: Down to Earth would unironically have gotten more attention than these cartoons if it was released recently with his new animation style.
Its a lot faster paced, more chaotic, has more 'meme-able' moments/characters, more lore to discuss, and the main characters have better more fun voices.
It was part of an Original Character Tournament iirc, the story was made for the competitors and their creators had to figure out how to fit their’s in, Law of Talos even had the creator of the one of the characters themselves get sucked into the setting.
I dont remember much about that time, but I thought that cartoon was made after the OC tournament arc? Thats why they have a trophy at the beginning, isn't it? I dunno
Or they were on their way back from a a different tournament and ended up in another one, I’m honestly not sure either.
As someone who wants to make an animated series in the future I definitely feel the fear of my story and characters just not being appealing to an audience
Personally I really liked the pilot and it was pretty sad to see that it wasn't as popular, it took about a year for it to get the same amount of views that Punch Punch Forever got in 3 days.
Before PPF came out, Speedo did a lot of art of the characters. You don't have to do an animation first. Illustrations and comics are great ways to test the waters. Then your only concern would be in anything related to it being an animation.
>Speedo
Speedo the guy who makes porn? Are you really going to glaze over this detail?
you will have to pander for the money
corporate woke suits or horny toon nerds
AND ALSO make a good story
I don't know why so many moron anons think having disgusting characters should get them some sympathy points, you can create all the dumbshit characters on your own dime, not mine.
>As someone who wants to make an animated series in the future I definitely feel the fear of my story and characters just not being appealing to an audience
Then you already lost, with this mentality you will never be satisfied and even you suceed you will be too scared of ruining the first project "legacy" by making a bad one, you must be ready for the audience not caring for your first project and be ready to move to the next one before even starting.
You indie artists have ridiculous expectations, Walt Disney first projects all failed, Stan Lee first superheroes all failed, Stephen King first novels all failed, Lovecraft first novels are pretty much forgotten
You are not better than any those guys, you are less talented and less experienced, so your first project will probably fail, try your best over and over and pray that this one will be lucky
a group of several "failed" series with 3 episodes each would be an interesting art gallery
what you said is not false, but ti takes a a lot of delusion and faith to take on a large project, having cynics telling you "yer just gonna fail" isn't encouraging nor helpful... anyone who listens to such council will unlikely ever try
Frick the public. Work in marketing. I was making €800 a week working on random gigs during the coof. I think the era where you can get through people is over