Are you fricking kidding? Good animation is about all MW has going for it. Why the frick would they move to puppet rigs? So they can tell their poorly written stories?
He's made mistakes. It's not worth obsessing over unless you are going to learn from them. I think the moral of this story is that if you want to make a cartoon, make it cheap.
Can I take the opportunity to spread this recent indie cartoon about kaiju bugs and a mantis lady who runs a human extermination business?
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiv07pYFma7k4jMsXSsOGv4xl4LyM_c-Y
Not my cartoon, I just think it's neat
Whoever made this show definitely knows there's a bugfricker audience, but they don't lean on that so much that it narrows down the show's appeal. I like the sexy bugs, my normie friends like the hook of the show and the worldbuilding.
Whoever made this show definitely knows there's a bugfricker audience, but they don't lean on that so much that it narrows down the show's appeal. I like the sexy bugs, my normie friends like the hook of the show and the worldbuilding.
I'm all for more nice insects in media, I'll check this out.
Not a fan of how only arachnids and hexapods are sapient in this and all other arthropods are non sapient. Hexapods and crustaceans I could get but arachnids are just so different.
lol. I could tell from episode chapter 1 that this guy is one of my own in more ways than one, but it's nice to see such stark confirmation. Too bad there's not more art of this.
Also, the setting reminds me of that one Goosebumps episode where a boy dreams of ants growing giant and taking over the world, and the twist at the end is that ants were always giant and the kid lives in one of their human-farms.
So he is starting to go full Ghostbusters 2016 in the >It's not MYYYY fault my work is failing, it's the fricking AUDIENCE that is to blame for not watching enough and giving me more money just because I'm here!!!!
People DO spread indie stuff around. Just not yours.
So he is starting to go full Ghostbusters 2016 in the >It's not MYYYY fault my work is failing, it's the fricking AUDIENCE that is to blame for not watching enough and giving me more money just because I'm here!!!!
That's some real entitled bullshit.
Somewhere along the lines creatives totally dropped all understanding of the concept of making something and if the audience likes it, they will support it. If they don't like it, they will not support it.
Now they seem to think that since they made a thing, people are Required to support it no matter what, no exceptions. Actually liking it is not even in question. They simply should support everything that is made based on the fact that someone spent time making it. That's not how any business, especially entertainment business works. Entertainment being the single worst corner of the job market that is the most cruel and souless towards creatives at destroying them if they failed to keep or grab public attention. It's please the audience or lose your shirt. That's pretty much it.
Actual free market business based entirely on customer discretion does not hand out participation trophies. You have to make a product that people would want to pay for. They are not under any obligation to automatically pay you no matter what you made or how many hours were spent making it. It's no one else's fault.
>You have to make a product that people would want to pay for.
Would people pay for shitposts? I usually like making those, and they take little effort on my part. (Despite thinking they're funny in my head.)
Yes, it's called being a joke writer on Family Guy. Pays about $2K per episode and on the average you get to write jokes for about 8ish episodes unless you are pretty good and you might be able to graduate up to 12 in a season.
It's not a fully livable wage, you need to work on at least 3 shows or do something else on the side to live in LA.
A standard writer makes about 4K per episode and usually only works on about 6-8 episodes per season. The top 3 writers can get upwards to 7-8K per episode but that's the best of them that have been around and know higher ups.
But yeah writing for tv pays shit. Normally they have to work on 3 or so shows a year and have side gigs writing columns for magazines/papers/periodicals, they teach writing courses, or they do rewrite gigs for book publishers.
Nobody just writes a single tv show as their main career. You just can't get more than $45K a year at best for it, and that's only during writing season which is about 5 months long at best. And you might not be brought back in next season, or the show ends etc.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I've posted enough times on here to know that I might land myself a few writing gigs. 🙂
>Actual free market business based entirely on customer discretion does not hand out participation trophies
That's pretty much the issue. The Participation Trophy generation cannot handle not being instantly successful just for trying. Zeurel is just another animator that thinks they SHOULD be successful because he made the thing, and that is the only bar for entry. There is no thought given to is it good or not. Just does it exist.
>Creatives fricked up
As a said creative, people don't understand how much the markets have changed over the years.
It used to be you'd make stuff, you'd find a community you knew had specific interests, you collaborated with artists that made stuff like yours, your ran your own web page and advertised on other people's web pages.
But now Google owns all search and discovery. They even own all the critique, and the hosting services if you're animating. And what do they promote? It's an intentional black box. First it's let's plays, then it's drama, then it's the most rancid identity politics they can suck you into. How why? You don't know and aren't supposed to know.
So you make something, and maybe it's got a niche or people would like it, but where 8s that audience? How do you find them? I don't fricking know. I've personally been hanging on to a small audience that likes my work, but I don't know where they're coming from or even what they like about it exactly. Like they can leave comments but there aren't really discussions or anything.
Seeing stuff like this is like seeing someone say, "Standard Oil rewards big winners. You have to be a good oil company if you want to use their railroads, it's simple business logic." But it's not, this is a vertically integrated monopoly market. Bad works often do well, good works seem to fail. I don't know why. I'm explicitly not supposed to know why, me knowing is against the ToS.
In the US, trusts are generally seen as a good thing, and judges are trained to understand that a monopoly, including one as cracked out as Google, can offer lower prices due to economies of scale.
Yes, really, that's been the prevailing assumption of us trust law since the 70's and it's part of the reason the country is having so many problems with people getting "left behind" by the economy and new market developments. It's hard to be an entrepreneur in a " go frick yourself" economic system like this.
I remember being taught about 1800s monopolies in school, and it's hard to believe that history is repeating itself.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
The companies learned from that history. Journalism and activism helped break the gilded age.
Look who owns information now, however. This stuff has been killing us for decades, but when all the information networks are monopolies, they purposefully avoid raising issues about what a problem they've become.
Adam Conover once talked about how the only topic his company killed for "Adam Ruins Everything" was his corporate monopoly episode. Just fricking canned it, because his company was at the time receiving scrutiny for an anti-competitive merger they were perfoming.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>anti-competitive merger
Of course there's a catch, frick my life...
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
It'll still break into lon run. It's just going to be a lot more brutal and involve morehardship, because that's what always happens when powerful people decide to close the fist. The delicate egg that is society breaks, and then their dumb asses aren't holding an egg, but rather the messy yolk slipping between their fingers.
Today, nobody seems to really trust the press and everyone assumes the tech companies are lying to them, which is creating avenues for cults and demagogues to grab the reins and create their own information spheres. If you can't trust the news and media companies, who's going to persuade you not to believe in categorically false ideals? These system will weaken as they destroy themselves and eventually we will get through.
Albeit as a runny yolk, and it's not going to be a fun time in history.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Albeit as a runny yolk, and it's not going to be a fun time in history.
Luckily I've retained my critical thinking skills, which is more than what I can say for most people around me.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Everybody is telling themselves that.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Shit, then I can at least... rely on diversifying who I hang out with?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I just mean humility is good. I think there's a saying that people who think of themselves as too smart to con are the easiest people to con.
More to the point. Predicting that things are going to get messy is also just a cynical take, and it might happen in ten years, or twenty, or maybe the neoliberals will finally kick the bucket and anti-trust law will come back after all. I don't actually know.
What I DO know is that Google 100% controls this market and everything in it, and while I agree that Monkey Wrench's writing is kind of a wet fart, as a fellow artist I get why Zureul is having a hard time reading the signs. It's because shit sometimes succeeds, and sometimes it fails, and the info networks are too controlled, too opaque, too useless. He's really close to his own work and thinks the writing is good, and everyone can probably think of something with shittier writing than Monkey Wrench that did huge numbers and enjoyed tons of undeserved fame.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Then the writing on the wall is clear: he's gotta start bringing out newer, smaller ideas.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
A man who could kill his own darlings like that wouldn't be spending thousands on characters like Beebs and Shrike.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Not really, it'll go through a "gigapause", much like IDFB. (Assuming Zeurel wants to work on a "filler" project.)
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I saying Beebs and Shrike might be the peak of Zureal's creative muscle. Sometimes you have an idea and it doesn't land, so even if YOU love the idea and it's your darling, you have to out it to bed and come up with new ideas.
But if you're looking at a character as underdeveloped as Beebs and saying, "Yeah, this is the idea I bet my mortgage on", you either have a fricking gambling problem or you are not full of great ideas.
Zureul is betting everything on Shrike and Beebs because this is what he's got - and even those frickers are just blatantly ripped off from Toonami. There are no other ideas.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
So he's got the opposite problem to Carrozza's problem?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Isn't Carozza going all in on his gay theater kid Detective Cat show
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Never heard of it
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
That's actually Charles Moss/Mossanimation who is making Detective Cat but now that you mention Carozza they do seem a bit similar...
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
glassy eyed automatons, never stopping to look around and THINK
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
It's better to do our own thinking, rather than letting search engines do all the thinking for us. (Unless it's searx.be, then it's alright.)
>Bad works often do well, good works seem to fail. I don't know why.
From what I've personally seen, it's because the bad artists know they can't compete so they compensate the skill issue by just making a bunch of "appeals to the algorithm" pieces, whether it's FOTM bullshit or it's a shitpost concerning [hot topic on internet currently] and they just rake in the lowest common denominator audience therefore more exposure and clout that they hope to translate into something monetary
However this approach is a double-edged sword. It may be something that benefits a shitty artist in the short term, but it's a terrible longterm plan. You end up not developing any real skill or work ethic from it because your audience sucks your dick on every thing you do so when the system changes again they're gonna be left in the dust except they don't have the skills to survive it and just fade away after a bit. They're just another speck in the internet wind. What they do is only ever looked back on as a "Oh yeah that happened" moment
Actually good artists that develop their skills, while being less relevant, have the element of perseverance. They may already be used to not always being in the spotlight/benefitting from algorithm shitposting so they spend more time just gitting gud. Even if they still don't reach some "peak" of success with their work they at least have the skill and work ethic to keep going regardless of what happens. Best case scenario, they get a cult following and are at least remembered fondly despite the setbacks. At least it's better than being remembered for being shit.
tl;dr bad works do well but only for so long, actually good works stand the test of time
I want you to know I'm not one of the dipshit who throws around catchphrases like "cope", but I honestly think this is just a coping sentiment.
Like yeah, maybe one day the kid from Ryan's Toy Review will overdose on fentanyl, but for years that kid's parents have been singing their way to the bank. They're doing shitty toys, shitty video games, whatever. All just from being what Youtube wanted, since YouTube is the only carrier now.
Sure, you can say, "Oh, this guy was only famous and made a bunch of money for one year", but it's common for careers to last only that long in the entertainment biz.
I'm not saying low quality artists are "better". Just that the moral high ground is a damn consolation prize when what you really wanted was to have your works seen by people.
I would not even bother with a moral high ground when it's entertainment in the first place. Everyone in the business is a Dog and Pony Show begging for attention. Most of it is shameless, lewd, or literally any other thing that can grab eyes from someone else for five minutes. At the most base level it is soulless and cruel. Some people only ever have a professional career for a single season and then never again, they fold right back into the normal working field since their five minutes of fame is up.
There is no point in ever trying to invent some moral high ground mindset to explain why someone else's show is succeeding and one's own is not.
I'm not going to completely disagree with you because in essence you are right, google owns the pipeline, and they do obviously control things to work in their favor. But I also think you give them more credit then they're due, and the black box is less of sinister shadow council that's puppet stringing every little move and more that they control a beast bigger then any group can reasonably manage and pushing trends to maximize views is priority, especially if its just a neutral entertainment viewing ground. I remember watching a matpat theory video where he actually WENT to google to talk to the guys their and no one new what the frick Skibidi Toilet was. Skibidi toiler has billions of views and hundreds of millions of people watching, and is constantly on top trending, yet they had no idea what the frick it was. If they really where keeping a tight finger on the pulse to drive people in a certain way, you'd thing they know what was getting views.
For neutral entertainment (Stuff people watch to pass time that isn't inflammatory, overtly political, or a very specific) I think its much more of catching the algorithm recommendations versus google preventing things from happening and pushing other things. Just ask anyone who watches YouTube, you catch one video of a certain theme or genre, you watch all of it, and suddenly you inundated with similar videos. So saying good things don't get popular and bad things do is reductive. Content farms wouldn't exist if their wasn't some genuine interest in the subject in question. Its that google doesn't really care, pushes shit people tend to watch, and only really step in when they get in trouble or get threatened by another corporation (see Alsagate or copyright bullshit).
They tune that algorithm in a variety of ways and have a lot of excuses about how they don't really control it. They DO occasionally go in and select content to succeed or fail if it catches staff notice for some reason. Pewdie as a case where they clearly promoted him intentionally, and LeafyIsHere as an example they intentionally destroyed.
But the fact is, whatever cold, calculating bullshit they use to promote content is, as far as market share is concerned, the ONLY way to be noticed. Their advertising is the same way, and I hate it. You give them money, tell them demographics you think might watch your stuff, and they they tell you nothing - you just get some metrics and are told thousands of people saw your content, but it doesn't really inform you of anything. Again, it's the only way. It USED to be you'd advertise on someone else's web page and knew exactly where your ads were, but those companies were eliminated, so now the Google way is pretty much the only one.
The Google way doesn't maximize viewer satisfaction, nor viewer happiness. It just maximizes certain quantifiable metrics they can harvest, sans deeper context. So when you make stuff and have to work in that ecosystem, you havea hard time knowing if you're an unfunny butthole nobody likes, if you're a creative genius who didn't do the right algorithm things, or if you're at some point in between. Your viewership numbers mean nothing. The system is there for your benefit. It's very hard to learn anything from what you can see these days.
>But I also think you give them more credit then they're due, and the black box is less of sinister shadow council
Google is a company redirecting a river away from farmers, leaving everything else to wither while it gains.
It doesn't need to be evil, it doesn't need to be a council of israelites all rubbing their hands while planning to destroy civilization: all it needs to be to do harm is to have a monopoly and only care about its own interest.
I'm going to rephrase this because I think people are coming off like Im simping for google. Yes google owns the video platform, the do most everything to make sure their on top. They will sabotage things they don't like and promote things they do. But in terms of getting people to actually view shit or know what's actually going to be big naturally (I.E NOT PUSHING SHIT) they really don't know. They'd be fricking JAZZED if Monkey Wrench popped 10 million an episode. They'd be happy as a clam if every animation series upstart did banger numbers.
>So when you make stuff and have to work in that ecosystem, you have a hard time knowing if you're an unfunny butthole nobody likes, if you're a creative genius who didn't do the right algorithm things, or if you're at some point in between. Your viewership numbers mean nothing. The system is there for your benefit. It's very hard to learn anything from what you can see these days.
At some point you you just hit a junction where you have to say to yourself "Hey, Im getting views some fricking how so something I'm doing MUST be working." or "You know I'm just not getting views I guess I just need to work on something else". You have the imposter effect when your shit gets big, or you can have any amount of copeium when it doesn't take off. Eventually you have to commit to something and stop acting unsure at both points. And while the current YouTube ecosystem isn't great, theirs not a single era in animation where you didn't have to work in a bullshit ecosystem.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
The difference between then and now, however, is that in the past you made Yogi Bear and Wacky Racers for PEOPLE. Now, you make who the frick knows what for a machine that measures how long it took the audience to click away, and that machine doesn't go, "Hey, this has potential, let's see where it goes". It just says, "based on my model of furries I say you're going to flop, as that's where I'm projecting your audience to be. Anyway here's thousands of recommendations for Minecraft conspiracy theories since your friend got you to watch that one."
It doesn't feel connected to anything anyone can 3xplain to you. There's a profit maximizing system, nobody knows 100% how it works, but there's only one company so it doesn't have to produce happy viewers anyway, and there you go.
Like if we were trying to figure out how much net happiness Monkey Wrench brought into the world compared to a Minecraft "50 things you didn't know" series, Monkey Wrench probably produces greater satisfaction even though it's boring, but Minecraft is safe and familiar, and you expect nothing from those videos, so you're more likely to zombie out on it. To Youtube any ad dollar is the same dollar, but to the creators and 3ven the viewers it's not optimal and you have a harder time understanding why you aren't being viewed.
They tune that algorithm in a variety of ways and have a lot of excuses about how they don't really control it. They DO occasionally go in and select content to succeed or fail if it catches staff notice for some reason. Pewdie as a case where they clearly promoted him intentionally, and LeafyIsHere as an example they intentionally destroyed.
But the fact is, whatever cold, calculating bullshit they use to promote content is, as far as market share is concerned, the ONLY way to be noticed. Their advertising is the same way, and I hate it. You give them money, tell them demographics you think might watch your stuff, and they they tell you nothing - you just get some metrics and are told thousands of people saw your content, but it doesn't really inform you of anything. Again, it's the only way. It USED to be you'd advertise on someone else's web page and knew exactly where your ads were, but those companies were eliminated, so now the Google way is pretty much the only one.
The Google way doesn't maximize viewer satisfaction, nor viewer happiness. It just maximizes certain quantifiable metrics they can harvest, sans deeper context. So when you make stuff and have to work in that ecosystem, you havea hard time knowing if you're an unfunny butthole nobody likes, if you're a creative genius who didn't do the right algorithm things, or if you're at some point in between. Your viewership numbers mean nothing. The system is there for your benefit. It's very hard to learn anything from what you can see these days.
>But I also think you give them more credit then they're due, and the black box is less of sinister shadow council
Google is a company redirecting a river away from farmers, leaving everything else to wither while it gains.
It doesn't need to be evil, it doesn't need to be a council of israelites all rubbing their hands while planning to destroy civilization: all it needs to be to do harm is to have a monopoly and only care about its own interest.
> you catch one video of a certain theme or genre, you watch all of it, and suddenly you inundated with similar videos.
Tell me about it. I have a friend who self-diagnosed herself with autism because she related to Instagram autism memes (seriously), so I watched one video on YouTube about autism diagnosis to dunk on her, but now my feed is absolutely bombed with autistic YouTuber e-celeb bullshit (which apparently exists. Imagine making your whole identity revolve around talking about being a moron).
Not everything has an audience. And most definitely not everything has a paying audience. Sometimes the work is just not great and no one is going to pay for it. It's not google's fault. It's not the audience's fault.
Thing is, entertainment doesn't work like standard oil or really any other type of industry. Entertainment is still completely subjective. People like it and it succeeds, or they do not like it and it fails. There is a pretty high failure rate that not many people know about. A great many big budget shows just never could attract an audience and failed. It's not the advertisers fault, they just did not make something people liked.
>but I don't know where they're coming from or even what they like about it exactly.
Studios have huge dedicated teams to study this exact thing. Figuring out trends and following what others have done is pretty much mandatory if you ever want to make money from entertainment.
Another main issue here is that Hanna Barbera and UPA discovered that audiences will accept limited or outright bad animation with poorly drawn characters and shitty backgrounds, if the story is still good and the characters entertaining. But the opposite does not work. No one will stick with a bad plot, boring characters that look immaculate. (People fricking loved South Park, Flintstones stayed on tv for 35 years) It's a visual medium but it is still a story being told here. People want the story most of all. Zeural is making another Thief and the Cobbler, wasting too much effort making a very bland and boring work, that looks really good. But it cannot keep anyone interested. They want an engaging story and funny characters at the end of the day and will accept shit visuals even if they complain about it.
>They want an engaging story and funny characters at the end of the day and will accept shit visuals even if they complain about it.
as shrimple as that. so many older youtube videos are essentially still image slideshows but are still hilarious because of the writing and voice acting, rough artwork/animation can also be charming if it has a lot of personality. monkey wrench has bad/boring writing and mediocre to outright annoying voice acting.
It's amazing how nothing you said is correct. Almost like you came in here to be a disingenuous butthole simply because you like to talk shit about someone's work.
This was pretty stupid, but it’s also from what I remember the last time he did that. And people who follow him called him out on it for not mentioning it in the first tweet. I think a good callout set him straight.
At least on social media he’s calmed down a bit, especially since he sold his plushies and got money on patreon. On his twitch streams he moans, but mostly just about other internet people and tv/movies. Which isn’t any different than your average Cinemaphile poster
I see so many people in the indie community act like this. They feel entitled to views/followers/money because they put in lots of effort, time and money. It makes me feel insane because there are so many creators who wish for just a crumb of the attention the big guys get.
I don't know how he doesn't feel embarrassed acting like this. The fact he blames his audience when they try their best is what drove me away from monkey wrench/zeurel.
Yeah
I'd kill to get even half of the viewership zeurel is currently getting but overall I'm still happy with my current numbers (a little over 1k views)
I'll just have to keep at it
I just don't understand why he won't try to compromise better. As anons have already stated, he needs to cut the runtime in half at the very least. There are also story and character issues that need to be addressed.
Well what did he expect? Monkey Wrench stars boring protagonists with no unique gimmicks to grow attached to, it follows a lame forgettable story, and its pacing makes me fall asleep. The animation quality is literally ALL it has going for it, and as it turns out that's the main thing sinking Zeurel deeper and deeper into bankruptcy. Maybe the guy should prioritize other aspects of his web cartoon instead of putting so many hours into making it pretty.
Alright to be fair to Zeurel the guys been around for over a decade and I'm certain people still look back fondly over his DeviantArt tournament days.
I can understand his frustration that even now he's having a hard time convincing people to support and watch his cartoon after the Ren & Stimpy but with babies idea fell through and that one webseries about cartoon characters playing Teamfortress 2 went nowhere
It definitely sucks seeing and being told that Indie is the future and the future is now old man and then getting left in the dust despite your tenure on the internet as an Animator. It's an Old Head believing the time is now from the very apparent evidence and then not being denied a seat at the Round Table
I kind of agree, but the painful lack of self-awareness is kinda souring the deal for me. Like your post mentioned, Zeurel was the bomb during the dA OC tourney days.
But that was a long-ass time ago, man. He's still lugging around those characters and plotlines. Still hoping THIS YEAR FOR SURE people will appreciate him and stop making bebop/earthworm jim comparisons.
Dude needs to let go if he wants this to work. Maybe not get a new creative identity, but at least do some experiments. See what sticks. Stop treating his highschool OCs like they're his magnum opus.
People told VivziePop to give up on her deviantART stylings too and made "better versions" en masse.
People jump to that decision for two main reasons. 1. They find it easy to chase trends, but trend chasing is rarely substantial 2. They want to directly control what an accomplished artist makes through constant online feedback, rather than the artist building from their lifelong passion
What exactly makes one an inferior artist from him anyway?
At the end of the day he mostly makes wacky goofy toons with big eyes and giant smiles. Not exactly the highest of art that is impossible to recreate.
I feel like he never dropped this elitist attitude either. And possibly the main reason he refuses to follow any suggestion or make any changes of any type to this series which is clearly not working out well right now. He will not accept lessers trying to inform him of a damn thing.
>I feel like he never dropped this elitist attitude either. And possibly the main reason he refuses to follow any suggestion or make any changes of any type to this series which is clearly not working out well right now. He will not accept lessers trying to inform him of a damn thing.
Yeah, he has no one to blame but himself yet all he does is blame others.
>Zeurel takes part in a Tournament on DeviatArt using his OC Spoiler >Spoiler was edgy as hell >His opponent is some guy who's existence has nearly been erased from the Internet >Zeurel makes his animation and the other guy does his thing but the other guy wins >Zeurel genuinely SEETHES over this and "quits" the Internet until he comes back
Now there's an argument to be made on Zeurels side. The other guy had originally been part of a previous Tournament and his opponent was at the time Popular artist Unknowns OC Karl, a statue pirate.
Karl was big, popular and there was an argument to made that because the other guy had previously fought Karl he had some clout and therefore won his fight with Zeurels Spoiler. I think even the other guy thought Zeurel should have won
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Wow
Even considering the circumstances, Zeurel was still being petty
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
That's such a deviantart situation. Everyone there (including me) stupid and petty enough to care about that due to being mostly kids and highschoolers.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
While people tend to call shitty artists entitled, which they can be, I've noticed the really good ones also act like children when they don't get what they want.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
> also act like children when they don't get what they want.
Same could be said for anons, tbh
He insists you like his dream idea that every cartoon creator has yet only a handful actually work out.
He refuses to accept that people aren't interested in his dream cartoon idea he's probably thought about for years before even starting the production of it and refuses to accept it and adapt.
Just look at Hannah and Barbera and the sheer amount of hit and misses they had. These indie uptight asswipes like Zeurel need to humble themselves.
i showed stuff like hazbin and digital circus to friends because i knew they would like it
didnt want to do the same with MW since it simply didnt click with me and its also super long
just thinking about the ghost egg joke makes me cringe
its like something from 2007
I'm gonna put my 2 cents into this
I'm not super articulated but still think its' important to discuss the issues.
This guy is a amazing animator, but he is terrible writer. He thinks that shoving colourful crayons into your eyes will ignore your ears listening to absolute snooze fest and make you ignore the odd pacing
And thing is he CAN do better but he doesn't want to listen. Almost EVERY take i heard was that he was just making boring stories and that he needs to write better or be better writer, that's it yet he keeps insisting that he is not wrong but that it's the public that doesn't understand
He doesn't want to change it to be appealing. He ironically tried so hard to make it look pretty by animation and technical skills that it became boring. Not soulless but more so soul is there but really dry. He is scared of changing his childhood ocs and making them fit better. Hell the fricking title Monkey wrench has no monkeys. Like what the frick are these two even supposed to be?
He wants everyone to see and get marketed to but in the end no one really cares other than his animator circlejerk.
Take the example Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss and Space King. All of them are flawed and not great but they have audience and humor that attracts x amount of people. I could show space king to most of my friends especially my best friend warhammer nerd and toy collector and we would all find it to some extend appealing. Even hazbin attracts specific tumblr girls and deviant art gays
Literally MM is so boring that you could put it as some small cartoon on nicktoons that would get canceled after two seasons and everyone would forget
Would you say that also describes the flaws of Romeo & Julliet: Sealed with a Kiss? Both MW and Sealed seem to be driven by pretty animation, but have flawed writing.
The entire show is just the big guy saying they're gonna do the job and they end up doing it. The writing needs rapport maybe the other characters can interject then they do the job
Sincerely, go frick yourself for bringing that innocent movie up literally out of nowhere just because you watched Schaff's review. I hate it when e-celebs slather their greasy hands over obscure stuff and attract autists to it. Did you think it made you look more intelligent or something?
Would you say that also describes the flaws of Romeo & Julliet: Sealed with a Kiss? Both MW and Sealed seem to be driven by pretty animation, but have flawed writing.
These guys have a point
Thing is, entertainment doesn't work like standard oil or really any other type of industry. Entertainment is still completely subjective. People like it and it succeeds, or they do not like it and it fails. There is a pretty high failure rate that not many people know about. A great many big budget shows just never could attract an audience and failed. It's not the advertisers fault, they just did not make something people liked.
>but I don't know where they're coming from or even what they like about it exactly.
Studios have huge dedicated teams to study this exact thing. Figuring out trends and following what others have done is pretty much mandatory if you ever want to make money from entertainment.
Another main issue here is that Hanna Barbera and UPA discovered that audiences will accept limited or outright bad animation with poorly drawn characters and shitty backgrounds, if the story is still good and the characters entertaining. But the opposite does not work. No one will stick with a bad plot, boring characters that look immaculate. (People fricking loved South Park, Flintstones stayed on tv for 35 years) It's a visual medium but it is still a story being told here. People want the story most of all. Zeural is making another Thief and the Cobbler, wasting too much effort making a very bland and boring work, that looks really good. But it cannot keep anyone interested. They want an engaging story and funny characters at the end of the day and will accept shit visuals even if they complain about it.
This guy figured it out. Watching a series is fully being drawn into the story, not the art. To the point where the art can be genuinely bad but as long as the story is interesting or funny, people will still love it and pay for it. No one sticks with a show because it looks pretty, they will stick with something because there is a mystery box they have to know the truth of, or there is a character that is just hilarious every time they are on screen.
Game of Thrones was an amazing huge budget, fricking beautiful to watch show with amazing visuals, but ten seconds after the story went south, the world abandoned that ship and the fandom evaporated.
I really like zeurel's animations. Shit even his still art looks like it could start moving at any moment. He's clearly very talented-
But the man can't write for shit. God damn hire a fricking writer or something because Monkey Wrench is awful and it didn't have to be
>make own thing >can do anything >make the most boring, safe, sanitized thing imaginable with the most unlikable MC with a horrible voice (that he made up 15 years ago and cant let go) and side characters possible.
It's a hard question.
>have a perfectly good youtube animation channel with a sizable sub count >promptly make a NEW channel for monkey wrench, with barely a fifth of the originals sub count
Why?
Why cut off 80% of your viewer base like that?
He made a lot of strange decisions but this one is probably the biggest and most foolish of them all.
There's a bunch of shit about how Youtube learns which of your subs aren't watching every video you release, and it gradually stops notifying them of everything you release because it really doesn't give a frick WHAT people are watching so long as they watch something.
A good way to reduce your viewership is to experiment and create variety. Youtube sees some people don't like every video, so they take those viewers away and focus them on something more consistently to their tastes.
Making the new channel was the wrong move, but using his old channel was also wrong. That's just how that site is.
Seriously I genuinely think that's the main thing that fricked it the most. A lot of people knew that upload and with it gone he got rid of a lot of potential fans. It's like if they deleted the Digital Circus video with millions of views and just made a seperate channel out of nowhere before the fanbase grew.
his stuff's better than hazbin hotel and helluva boss but it has no hook. we need animations for mentally ill little boys with mommy issue now. daddy issues have become too mainstream and it's fricking gross.
His indie cartoon is mediocre, boring, unfunny and gets little views and the creator (Zeurel) refuses to accept any constructive criticism or try a complete different approach or a brand new cartoon all together.
I pity him
He had the one in a lifetime opportunity to make his dream cartoon as he wanted it and no one is really into in it
It doesn't help that he killed it's traction by changing channels
As an artist this is some sort of personal hell, you can't even blame anyone else for how bad it's being received, it's his vision through and through and it failed badly
No wonder old farts in animation tell you to not get attached to your first idea
My opinion: he needs to stop making the show like it's tv-y7 and make it tv-14-tv-ma. It's already patreon funded so why not make it an adult cartoon. By adult I don't mean viziepop-tier adult or make it a swearfest by the way. I would also suggest he permanently retire annoying or cutesy characters like that annoying bird or those rock creatures.
He really needs to 180 the show or accept the obvious and try something different.
My criticism is to make it shorter, a lot of it just fall flat or would be better digested if about 5 minutes of dead air or stuff that doesn't work were cut
He really needs to prioritise what gets on the storyboard and know good cutout points to make it 10-15 minutes long, that alone would improve the experience without compromising his vision
I think the hope is still subconsciously that it gets picked up. Crowdfunding animation sucks tbh. It’s barely possible now, but you’re always barely scraping by, everyone works for far less than they would on a mainstream production, and tons of time needs to be dedicated to shilling and begging. When shit is funded by a network you can just do the work and get paid.
>mw needs to 180
This, the show feels like a chore to watch not a lot a lot of subtle nuances on what he's trying to go for not a bad watch after all it needs to be better script wise
>design a lanky ugly alien that looks like sonic the hedgehog and earthworm jim had a baby >give him a high pitch, nasally, fake hispanic accent >make him the star of your show >”why wont people watch my show? :(“
They have TONS of personality. I don't get the sense that Shrike has a firm personality. He's a nasaly comic relief guy, and if I had to choose one word to describe I guess it'd be "stupid", since that's kind of his core trait.
They’re incompetent villains. Their voices fit that role.
Shrike just feels inconsistent. One scene he’s an incompetent comic relief. The next he’s a cool competent hero.
They have TONS of personality. I don't get the sense that Shrike has a firm personality. He's a nasaly comic relief guy, and if I had to choose one word to describe I guess it'd be "stupid", since that's kind of his core trait.
I think its appearant that zeurels cartoon is just him showing off his animation skills and not focusing on making a good show which sucks cause that means animation is boring
Like come to think on it, let's not compare Elsagate to Monkeywrench. It's apples and oranges.
Let's compare Digital Circus to Monkey Wrench. Digital Circus is tighter and better written, but is it genuinely MILLIONS OF VIEWS better than Monkey Wrench? Is Digital Circus millions of views better than Felix Colgrave or Worthikids? I wish I could compare it to more animators but I struggle to think of anything else well known besides Hazbin, which is its own unrepeatable phenomenon.
Figuring out why stuff is popular has always been hard, but now we have only one system that decides this, using completely inhuman logic. I watched Digital Circus. It was okay. I will watch the next one, but I can see cracks in the script where maybe the series falls apart in episode 2 - or, maybe they tighten some stuff up and it gets better. It's not what I would call a shining example of what all animation should strive to be, but its viewership numbers seem to imply it is.
You can't learn from works that do succeed, is the other crazy thing. Talent and quality goes into stuff like Digital Circus and its staff are experienced, but if you gave that same staff a fresh channel and hid their identities, could they be successful a second time? I'm not sure any of them could tell you WHY they're doing well.
I mean there's this series called Bridge Kids that was languishing jn obscurity for years, and then all of the sudden now they're getting hundreds of thousands of views. It's a funny, dry sort of writing with minimalist animation, and it feels like it deserves to succeed. By why now and now last year? No fricking clue.
And again, I really do think Monkey Wrench is boring. I watched the first three episodes and I think I'm done, but if this were MY project and I loved it, I'd have no way of knowing if the problem is me, or if the problem is that my solitary source of promotion was designed by complete motherfrickers.
>I'm not sure any of them could tell you WHY they're doing well.
I know why, and it's because I'm subbed to Kevin Temmer. (Who worked at Blue Sky beforehand.)
Am I missing something? Monkey Wrench isn’t peak fiction, but I’d hesitate to call it boring. The character designs and interactions are fun and it’s got great action sequences. I personally enjoy the show.
The character interactions are my least favorite part of Monkey Wrench. None of them really strike any chords. A lot of characters are doing things just to advance the script, or for a gag, with no thought about what that says about them.
Like the dragon lady letting her payday go in the first episode because her rival, a nondescript ninja, showed up? Just establishes the dragon is not a serious bounty hunter, and she's not good at what she does. They killed that character in episode one for a one-off gag with no long term importance and I'll bet Zeurel didn't see anything wrong with doing that.
>this cartoon is kinda boring and the characters are grating and lame >OMG STOP BEING SO OVERLY HARSH YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS
if you do not want people to judge your work then just never release it.
I thought it was fine, personally, but I can't blame people for being uninterested based off the first two episodes. I do think the third was a decent improvement, but it goes to show the main duo really can't carry the show themselves. Could really use changes to their writing, and/or having other main cast characters they can interact with.
Yeah I have no clue man. I feel like they should of at least hinted at her existence by now or show her in some kind of subplot that will connect to Shrike and Beebs.
alright, I just watched the first episode and it felt like a whole lot of 'tell, don't show'. Feels like everything is described and nothing goes without some amount of dialogue to accompany it, even the jokes. With how well Zeurel animates surely there could've been more room for purely visual storytelling. Also I just didn't feel very compelled to care about any of the characters because most of them were just.. annoying. Except for kara, because she didn't say anything at all
"Show don't tell" is a vague soundbyte that gets thrown around way too much by people who can't properly articulate their criticisms.
Monkey Wrench's problem isn't that it's telling when it should be showing; the problem is that the script is bloated. The excess information contained in the dialogue doesn't need to be conveyed visually; it needs to be either trimmed down or else cut out entirely.
Whether you're telling stories verbally or visually, you have to understand what's worth saying and what's empty fluff that drags everything down.
yeah that describes my complaints with the show a lot better, there's just so much small talk over things that don't need to be said, or have already been said
>the problem is that the script is bloated. The excess information contained in the dialogue doesn't need to be conveyed visually; it needs to be either trimmed down or else cut out entirely.
Thank god other people noticed this. I'm actually working on rewriting a script for episode one cause the script has so much shit to cut/replace. I cut out 5 minutes already and hope to whittle it down to around 4 - 7 minutes long.
The Cowboy Bebop/Earthworm Jim idea really seems like something a high schooler in 2002 would have invented. But also moved on from by 05 at the very least.
THE PIZZA HE MAN
EAT IT
he has a pizza face
nepotism
>What was his problem?
Overanimating himself to the point of exhaustion, when MW would be perfectly fine with 10-minute episodes.
I respect his commitment to do episodes as long as he wants.
Hopefully he starts adapting to 2D rigging, because it would be significantly cheaper. (And speed production up significantly.)
Are you fricking kidding? Good animation is about all MW has going for it. Why the frick would they move to puppet rigs? So they can tell their poorly written stories?
it's cheaper
Right…by making the only good thing about it worse.
Galaxy brain maneuver there.
>I respect bad choices
oh wow
what's there to respect, you believe this guy is doing a pattion project don't you?
>Overanimating himself to the point of exhaustion
I don't see any evidence of this. More like, "overanimating to the point where it isn't affordable"
Ahhh, that's the wording I was looking for.
I'f they dont change anything it should be shorter
Being openly salty for the world to see and making himself look like a bitter moron
On the other hand, it's a kekworthy sight to behold.
He's made mistakes. It's not worth obsessing over unless you are going to learn from them. I think the moral of this story is that if you want to make a cartoon, make it cheap.
>if you want to make a cartoon, make it cheap.
Roger Ramjet taught me that 😉
His show failed and he's in debt
This is skin-crawling cringe, holy shit dude
The likebaiting is painfully obvious, too.
People DO spread indie stuff around. Just not yours.
Can I take the opportunity to spread this recent indie cartoon about kaiju bugs and a mantis lady who runs a human extermination business?
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiv07pYFma7k4jMsXSsOGv4xl4LyM_c-Y
Not my cartoon, I just think it's neat
please marry me, anon
>her arms turning into breasts
That had to be intentional
Whoever made this show definitely knows there's a bugfricker audience, but they don't lean on that so much that it narrows down the show's appeal. I like the sexy bugs, my normie friends like the hook of the show and the worldbuilding.
Now I'm hooked, you've officially acquired a new fan 🙂
I'm all for more nice insects in media, I'll check this out.
>nice
Well... Depends on whether you're a macrovolute or a human
I've only just started watching this and there's clearly so much autistic passion in this that it's practically edutainment
Sauce on picrel?
Google image search turns up nothing.
Not a fan of how only arachnids and hexapods are sapient in this and all other arthropods are non sapient. Hexapods and crustaceans I could get but arachnids are just so different.
Snails not being sapient makes me sad.
lol. I could tell from episode chapter 1 that this guy is one of my own in more ways than one, but it's nice to see such stark confirmation. Too bad there's not more art of this.
Also, the setting reminds me of that one Goosebumps episode where a boy dreams of ants growing giant and taking over the world, and the twist at the end is that ants were always giant and the kid lives in one of their human-farms.
I don't get any of this, why are the cows fricked up?
Literally all he has to do is make this shit shorter
Cutting down to 7-10 mins would save so much fricking money.
That's exactly what I'm saying, especially since the whole thing's extremely bloated.
So he is starting to go full Ghostbusters 2016 in the
>It's not MYYYY fault my work is failing, it's the fricking AUDIENCE that is to blame for not watching enough and giving me more money just because I'm here!!!!
That's some real entitled bullshit.
Somewhere along the lines creatives totally dropped all understanding of the concept of making something and if the audience likes it, they will support it. If they don't like it, they will not support it.
Now they seem to think that since they made a thing, people are Required to support it no matter what, no exceptions. Actually liking it is not even in question. They simply should support everything that is made based on the fact that someone spent time making it. That's not how any business, especially entertainment business works. Entertainment being the single worst corner of the job market that is the most cruel and souless towards creatives at destroying them if they failed to keep or grab public attention. It's please the audience or lose your shirt. That's pretty much it.
Actual free market business based entirely on customer discretion does not hand out participation trophies. You have to make a product that people would want to pay for. They are not under any obligation to automatically pay you no matter what you made or how many hours were spent making it. It's no one else's fault.
Exactly
>You have to make a product that people would want to pay for.
Would people pay for shitposts? I usually like making those, and they take little effort on my part. (Despite thinking they're funny in my head.)
Yes, but for the rare few people that shitpost big. Like frickhuge accounts on twitter that exist to frick with celebrities.
>accounts on twitter that exist to frick with celebrities.
topkek, i'd pay top dollar for more of that
Yes, it's called being a joke writer on Family Guy. Pays about $2K per episode and on the average you get to write jokes for about 8ish episodes unless you are pretty good and you might be able to graduate up to 12 in a season.
It's not a fully livable wage, you need to work on at least 3 shows or do something else on the side to live in LA.
>do something else on the side to live in LA.
I can fill Zone's place, so that might get me decent cash.
Wait
Do writers on Family Guy really make that little?
That would only be like 40k a year right?
>40k a year
Yikes, that's practically pennies...
A standard writer makes about 4K per episode and usually only works on about 6-8 episodes per season. The top 3 writers can get upwards to 7-8K per episode but that's the best of them that have been around and know higher ups.
But yeah writing for tv pays shit. Normally they have to work on 3 or so shows a year and have side gigs writing columns for magazines/papers/periodicals, they teach writing courses, or they do rewrite gigs for book publishers.
Nobody just writes a single tv show as their main career. You just can't get more than $45K a year at best for it, and that's only during writing season which is about 5 months long at best. And you might not be brought back in next season, or the show ends etc.
I've posted enough times on here to know that I might land myself a few writing gigs. 🙂
>$2k and episode
>can write on 8-12 episodes a season
That’s not 40k
Yep.
Monkey Wrench is just okay. He may work really hard on the animation but everything else, like the designs and writing, aren't good.
A modern-day Phil Nibbelink? Noted.
>Actual free market business based entirely on customer discretion does not hand out participation trophies
That's pretty much the issue. The Participation Trophy generation cannot handle not being instantly successful just for trying. Zeurel is just another animator that thinks they SHOULD be successful because he made the thing, and that is the only bar for entry. There is no thought given to is it good or not. Just does it exist.
>Creatives fricked up
As a said creative, people don't understand how much the markets have changed over the years.
It used to be you'd make stuff, you'd find a community you knew had specific interests, you collaborated with artists that made stuff like yours, your ran your own web page and advertised on other people's web pages.
But now Google owns all search and discovery. They even own all the critique, and the hosting services if you're animating. And what do they promote? It's an intentional black box. First it's let's plays, then it's drama, then it's the most rancid identity politics they can suck you into. How why? You don't know and aren't supposed to know.
So you make something, and maybe it's got a niche or people would like it, but where 8s that audience? How do you find them? I don't fricking know. I've personally been hanging on to a small audience that likes my work, but I don't know where they're coming from or even what they like about it exactly. Like they can leave comments but there aren't really discussions or anything.
Seeing stuff like this is like seeing someone say, "Standard Oil rewards big winners. You have to be a good oil company if you want to use their railroads, it's simple business logic." But it's not, this is a vertically integrated monopoly market. Bad works often do well, good works seem to fail. I don't know why. I'm explicitly not supposed to know why, me knowing is against the ToS.
>me knowing is against the ToS.
Haven't there been lawsuits aimed at Google? There's no way...
In the US, trusts are generally seen as a good thing, and judges are trained to understand that a monopoly, including one as cracked out as Google, can offer lower prices due to economies of scale.
Yes, really, that's been the prevailing assumption of us trust law since the 70's and it's part of the reason the country is having so many problems with people getting "left behind" by the economy and new market developments. It's hard to be an entrepreneur in a " go frick yourself" economic system like this.
I remember being taught about 1800s monopolies in school, and it's hard to believe that history is repeating itself.
The companies learned from that history. Journalism and activism helped break the gilded age.
Look who owns information now, however. This stuff has been killing us for decades, but when all the information networks are monopolies, they purposefully avoid raising issues about what a problem they've become.
Adam Conover once talked about how the only topic his company killed for "Adam Ruins Everything" was his corporate monopoly episode. Just fricking canned it, because his company was at the time receiving scrutiny for an anti-competitive merger they were perfoming.
>anti-competitive merger
Of course there's a catch, frick my life...
It'll still break into lon run. It's just going to be a lot more brutal and involve morehardship, because that's what always happens when powerful people decide to close the fist. The delicate egg that is society breaks, and then their dumb asses aren't holding an egg, but rather the messy yolk slipping between their fingers.
Today, nobody seems to really trust the press and everyone assumes the tech companies are lying to them, which is creating avenues for cults and demagogues to grab the reins and create their own information spheres. If you can't trust the news and media companies, who's going to persuade you not to believe in categorically false ideals? These system will weaken as they destroy themselves and eventually we will get through.
Albeit as a runny yolk, and it's not going to be a fun time in history.
>Albeit as a runny yolk, and it's not going to be a fun time in history.
Luckily I've retained my critical thinking skills, which is more than what I can say for most people around me.
Everybody is telling themselves that.
Shit, then I can at least... rely on diversifying who I hang out with?
I just mean humility is good. I think there's a saying that people who think of themselves as too smart to con are the easiest people to con.
More to the point. Predicting that things are going to get messy is also just a cynical take, and it might happen in ten years, or twenty, or maybe the neoliberals will finally kick the bucket and anti-trust law will come back after all. I don't actually know.
What I DO know is that Google 100% controls this market and everything in it, and while I agree that Monkey Wrench's writing is kind of a wet fart, as a fellow artist I get why Zureul is having a hard time reading the signs. It's because shit sometimes succeeds, and sometimes it fails, and the info networks are too controlled, too opaque, too useless. He's really close to his own work and thinks the writing is good, and everyone can probably think of something with shittier writing than Monkey Wrench that did huge numbers and enjoyed tons of undeserved fame.
Then the writing on the wall is clear: he's gotta start bringing out newer, smaller ideas.
A man who could kill his own darlings like that wouldn't be spending thousands on characters like Beebs and Shrike.
Not really, it'll go through a "gigapause", much like IDFB. (Assuming Zeurel wants to work on a "filler" project.)
I saying Beebs and Shrike might be the peak of Zureal's creative muscle. Sometimes you have an idea and it doesn't land, so even if YOU love the idea and it's your darling, you have to out it to bed and come up with new ideas.
But if you're looking at a character as underdeveloped as Beebs and saying, "Yeah, this is the idea I bet my mortgage on", you either have a fricking gambling problem or you are not full of great ideas.
Zureul is betting everything on Shrike and Beebs because this is what he's got - and even those frickers are just blatantly ripped off from Toonami. There are no other ideas.
So he's got the opposite problem to Carrozza's problem?
Isn't Carozza going all in on his gay theater kid Detective Cat show
Never heard of it
That's actually Charles Moss/Mossanimation who is making Detective Cat but now that you mention Carozza they do seem a bit similar...
glassy eyed automatons, never stopping to look around and THINK
It's better to do our own thinking, rather than letting search engines do all the thinking for us. (Unless it's searx.be, then it's alright.)
>Bad works often do well, good works seem to fail. I don't know why.
From what I've personally seen, it's because the bad artists know they can't compete so they compensate the skill issue by just making a bunch of "appeals to the algorithm" pieces, whether it's FOTM bullshit or it's a shitpost concerning [hot topic on internet currently] and they just rake in the lowest common denominator audience therefore more exposure and clout that they hope to translate into something monetary
However this approach is a double-edged sword. It may be something that benefits a shitty artist in the short term, but it's a terrible longterm plan. You end up not developing any real skill or work ethic from it because your audience sucks your dick on every thing you do so when the system changes again they're gonna be left in the dust except they don't have the skills to survive it and just fade away after a bit. They're just another speck in the internet wind. What they do is only ever looked back on as a "Oh yeah that happened" moment
Actually good artists that develop their skills, while being less relevant, have the element of perseverance. They may already be used to not always being in the spotlight/benefitting from algorithm shitposting so they spend more time just gitting gud. Even if they still don't reach some "peak" of success with their work they at least have the skill and work ethic to keep going regardless of what happens. Best case scenario, they get a cult following and are at least remembered fondly despite the setbacks. At least it's better than being remembered for being shit.
tl;dr bad works do well but only for so long, actually good works stand the test of time
Sounds like something Antonucci would say, and I think that's admirable.
I want you to know I'm not one of the dipshit who throws around catchphrases like "cope", but I honestly think this is just a coping sentiment.
Like yeah, maybe one day the kid from Ryan's Toy Review will overdose on fentanyl, but for years that kid's parents have been singing their way to the bank. They're doing shitty toys, shitty video games, whatever. All just from being what Youtube wanted, since YouTube is the only carrier now.
Sure, you can say, "Oh, this guy was only famous and made a bunch of money for one year", but it's common for careers to last only that long in the entertainment biz.
I'm not saying low quality artists are "better". Just that the moral high ground is a damn consolation prize when what you really wanted was to have your works seen by people.
I would not even bother with a moral high ground when it's entertainment in the first place. Everyone in the business is a Dog and Pony Show begging for attention. Most of it is shameless, lewd, or literally any other thing that can grab eyes from someone else for five minutes. At the most base level it is soulless and cruel. Some people only ever have a professional career for a single season and then never again, they fold right back into the normal working field since their five minutes of fame is up.
There is no point in ever trying to invent some moral high ground mindset to explain why someone else's show is succeeding and one's own is not.
I'm not going to completely disagree with you because in essence you are right, google owns the pipeline, and they do obviously control things to work in their favor. But I also think you give them more credit then they're due, and the black box is less of sinister shadow council that's puppet stringing every little move and more that they control a beast bigger then any group can reasonably manage and pushing trends to maximize views is priority, especially if its just a neutral entertainment viewing ground. I remember watching a matpat theory video where he actually WENT to google to talk to the guys their and no one new what the frick Skibidi Toilet was. Skibidi toiler has billions of views and hundreds of millions of people watching, and is constantly on top trending, yet they had no idea what the frick it was. If they really where keeping a tight finger on the pulse to drive people in a certain way, you'd thing they know what was getting views.
For neutral entertainment (Stuff people watch to pass time that isn't inflammatory, overtly political, or a very specific) I think its much more of catching the algorithm recommendations versus google preventing things from happening and pushing other things. Just ask anyone who watches YouTube, you catch one video of a certain theme or genre, you watch all of it, and suddenly you inundated with similar videos. So saying good things don't get popular and bad things do is reductive. Content farms wouldn't exist if their wasn't some genuine interest in the subject in question. Its that google doesn't really care, pushes shit people tend to watch, and only really step in when they get in trouble or get threatened by another corporation (see Alsagate or copyright bullshit).
Counter-point, why was YouTube such a shithole during 2015/2016? IIRC, 90% of the site was political.
Because politics got views and watch time?
I'm going to rephrase this because I think people are coming off like Im simping for google. Yes google owns the video platform, the do most everything to make sure their on top. They will sabotage things they don't like and promote things they do. But in terms of getting people to actually view shit or know what's actually going to be big naturally (I.E NOT PUSHING SHIT) they really don't know. They'd be fricking JAZZED if Monkey Wrench popped 10 million an episode. They'd be happy as a clam if every animation series upstart did banger numbers.
>So when you make stuff and have to work in that ecosystem, you have a hard time knowing if you're an unfunny butthole nobody likes, if you're a creative genius who didn't do the right algorithm things, or if you're at some point in between. Your viewership numbers mean nothing. The system is there for your benefit. It's very hard to learn anything from what you can see these days.
At some point you you just hit a junction where you have to say to yourself "Hey, Im getting views some fricking how so something I'm doing MUST be working." or "You know I'm just not getting views I guess I just need to work on something else". You have the imposter effect when your shit gets big, or you can have any amount of copeium when it doesn't take off. Eventually you have to commit to something and stop acting unsure at both points. And while the current YouTube ecosystem isn't great, theirs not a single era in animation where you didn't have to work in a bullshit ecosystem.
The difference between then and now, however, is that in the past you made Yogi Bear and Wacky Racers for PEOPLE. Now, you make who the frick knows what for a machine that measures how long it took the audience to click away, and that machine doesn't go, "Hey, this has potential, let's see where it goes". It just says, "based on my model of furries I say you're going to flop, as that's where I'm projecting your audience to be. Anyway here's thousands of recommendations for Minecraft conspiracy theories since your friend got you to watch that one."
It doesn't feel connected to anything anyone can 3xplain to you. There's a profit maximizing system, nobody knows 100% how it works, but there's only one company so it doesn't have to produce happy viewers anyway, and there you go.
Like if we were trying to figure out how much net happiness Monkey Wrench brought into the world compared to a Minecraft "50 things you didn't know" series, Monkey Wrench probably produces greater satisfaction even though it's boring, but Minecraft is safe and familiar, and you expect nothing from those videos, so you're more likely to zombie out on it. To Youtube any ad dollar is the same dollar, but to the creators and 3ven the viewers it's not optimal and you have a harder time understanding why you aren't being viewed.
They tune that algorithm in a variety of ways and have a lot of excuses about how they don't really control it. They DO occasionally go in and select content to succeed or fail if it catches staff notice for some reason. Pewdie as a case where they clearly promoted him intentionally, and LeafyIsHere as an example they intentionally destroyed.
But the fact is, whatever cold, calculating bullshit they use to promote content is, as far as market share is concerned, the ONLY way to be noticed. Their advertising is the same way, and I hate it. You give them money, tell them demographics you think might watch your stuff, and they they tell you nothing - you just get some metrics and are told thousands of people saw your content, but it doesn't really inform you of anything. Again, it's the only way. It USED to be you'd advertise on someone else's web page and knew exactly where your ads were, but those companies were eliminated, so now the Google way is pretty much the only one.
The Google way doesn't maximize viewer satisfaction, nor viewer happiness. It just maximizes certain quantifiable metrics they can harvest, sans deeper context. So when you make stuff and have to work in that ecosystem, you havea hard time knowing if you're an unfunny butthole nobody likes, if you're a creative genius who didn't do the right algorithm things, or if you're at some point in between. Your viewership numbers mean nothing. The system is there for your benefit. It's very hard to learn anything from what you can see these days.
>But I also think you give them more credit then they're due, and the black box is less of sinister shadow council
Google is a company redirecting a river away from farmers, leaving everything else to wither while it gains.
It doesn't need to be evil, it doesn't need to be a council of israelites all rubbing their hands while planning to destroy civilization: all it needs to be to do harm is to have a monopoly and only care about its own interest.
> you catch one video of a certain theme or genre, you watch all of it, and suddenly you inundated with similar videos.
Tell me about it. I have a friend who self-diagnosed herself with autism because she related to Instagram autism memes (seriously), so I watched one video on YouTube about autism diagnosis to dunk on her, but now my feed is absolutely bombed with autistic YouTuber e-celeb bullshit (which apparently exists. Imagine making your whole identity revolve around talking about being a moron).
Not everything has an audience. And most definitely not everything has a paying audience. Sometimes the work is just not great and no one is going to pay for it. It's not google's fault. It's not the audience's fault.
Thing is, entertainment doesn't work like standard oil or really any other type of industry. Entertainment is still completely subjective. People like it and it succeeds, or they do not like it and it fails. There is a pretty high failure rate that not many people know about. A great many big budget shows just never could attract an audience and failed. It's not the advertisers fault, they just did not make something people liked.
>but I don't know where they're coming from or even what they like about it exactly.
Studios have huge dedicated teams to study this exact thing. Figuring out trends and following what others have done is pretty much mandatory if you ever want to make money from entertainment.
Another main issue here is that Hanna Barbera and UPA discovered that audiences will accept limited or outright bad animation with poorly drawn characters and shitty backgrounds, if the story is still good and the characters entertaining. But the opposite does not work. No one will stick with a bad plot, boring characters that look immaculate. (People fricking loved South Park, Flintstones stayed on tv for 35 years) It's a visual medium but it is still a story being told here. People want the story most of all. Zeural is making another Thief and the Cobbler, wasting too much effort making a very bland and boring work, that looks really good. But it cannot keep anyone interested. They want an engaging story and funny characters at the end of the day and will accept shit visuals even if they complain about it.
>They want an engaging story and funny characters at the end of the day and will accept shit visuals even if they complain about it.
as shrimple as that. so many older youtube videos are essentially still image slideshows but are still hilarious because of the writing and voice acting, rough artwork/animation can also be charming if it has a lot of personality. monkey wrench has bad/boring writing and mediocre to outright annoying voice acting.
It's amazing how nothing you said is correct. Almost like you came in here to be a disingenuous butthole simply because you like to talk shit about someone's work.
t. Zeruel
This was pretty stupid, but it’s also from what I remember the last time he did that. And people who follow him called him out on it for not mentioning it in the first tweet. I think a good callout set him straight.
At least on social media he’s calmed down a bit, especially since he sold his plushies and got money on patreon. On his twitch streams he moans, but mostly just about other internet people and tv/movies. Which isn’t any different than your average Cinemaphile poster
Any stream highlights you'd like to share?
I see so many people in the indie community act like this. They feel entitled to views/followers/money because they put in lots of effort, time and money. It makes me feel insane because there are so many creators who wish for just a crumb of the attention the big guys get.
I don't know how he doesn't feel embarrassed acting like this. The fact he blames his audience when they try their best is what drove me away from monkey wrench/zeurel.
Yeah
I'd kill to get even half of the viewership zeurel is currently getting but overall I'm still happy with my current numbers (a little over 1k views)
I'll just have to keep at it
Everyone has their "one-hit wonder", you'll have yours eventually 😉
I just don't understand why he won't try to compromise better. As anons have already stated, he needs to cut the runtime in half at the very least. There are also story and character issues that need to be addressed.
Well what did he expect? Monkey Wrench stars boring protagonists with no unique gimmicks to grow attached to, it follows a lame forgettable story, and its pacing makes me fall asleep. The animation quality is literally ALL it has going for it, and as it turns out that's the main thing sinking Zeurel deeper and deeper into bankruptcy. Maybe the guy should prioritize other aspects of his web cartoon instead of putting so many hours into making it pretty.
>why won't people with three-second attention spans watch my Cowboy Bebop copy that lacks substance
on that note, this show is severely lacking a hot chick. that's just marketing 101
Alright to be fair to Zeurel the guys been around for over a decade and I'm certain people still look back fondly over his DeviantArt tournament days.
I can understand his frustration that even now he's having a hard time convincing people to support and watch his cartoon after the Ren & Stimpy but with babies idea fell through and that one webseries about cartoon characters playing Teamfortress 2 went nowhere
It definitely sucks seeing and being told that Indie is the future and the future is now old man and then getting left in the dust despite your tenure on the internet as an Animator. It's an Old Head believing the time is now from the very apparent evidence and then not being denied a seat at the Round Table
I kind of agree, but the painful lack of self-awareness is kinda souring the deal for me. Like your post mentioned, Zeurel was the bomb during the dA OC tourney days.
But that was a long-ass time ago, man. He's still lugging around those characters and plotlines. Still hoping THIS YEAR FOR SURE people will appreciate him and stop making bebop/earthworm jim comparisons.
Dude needs to let go if he wants this to work. Maybe not get a new creative identity, but at least do some experiments. See what sticks. Stop treating his highschool OCs like they're his magnum opus.
People told VivziePop to give up on her deviantART stylings too and made "better versions" en masse.
People jump to that decision for two main reasons. 1. They find it easy to chase trends, but trend chasing is rarely substantial 2. They want to directly control what an accomplished artist makes through constant online feedback, rather than the artist building from their lifelong passion
>Zeurel was the bomb during the dA OC tourney days.
All I remember is him throwing a hissy fit for losing to "an inferior artist".
What exactly makes one an inferior artist from him anyway?
At the end of the day he mostly makes wacky goofy toons with big eyes and giant smiles. Not exactly the highest of art that is impossible to recreate.
I feel like he never dropped this elitist attitude either. And possibly the main reason he refuses to follow any suggestion or make any changes of any type to this series which is clearly not working out well right now. He will not accept lessers trying to inform him of a damn thing.
>I feel like he never dropped this elitist attitude either. And possibly the main reason he refuses to follow any suggestion or make any changes of any type to this series which is clearly not working out well right now. He will not accept lessers trying to inform him of a damn thing.
Yeah, he has no one to blame but himself yet all he does is blame others.
QRD?
>Zeurel takes part in a Tournament on DeviatArt using his OC Spoiler
>Spoiler was edgy as hell
>His opponent is some guy who's existence has nearly been erased from the Internet
>Zeurel makes his animation and the other guy does his thing but the other guy wins
>Zeurel genuinely SEETHES over this and "quits" the Internet until he comes back
Now there's an argument to be made on Zeurels side. The other guy had originally been part of a previous Tournament and his opponent was at the time Popular artist Unknowns OC Karl, a statue pirate.
Karl was big, popular and there was an argument to made that because the other guy had previously fought Karl he had some clout and therefore won his fight with Zeurels Spoiler. I think even the other guy thought Zeurel should have won
Wow
Even considering the circumstances, Zeurel was still being petty
That's such a deviantart situation. Everyone there (including me) stupid and petty enough to care about that due to being mostly kids and highschoolers.
While people tend to call shitty artists entitled, which they can be, I've noticed the really good ones also act like children when they don't get what they want.
> also act like children when they don't get what they want.
Same could be said for anons, tbh
He insists you like his dream idea that every cartoon creator has yet only a handful actually work out.
He refuses to accept that people aren't interested in his dream cartoon idea he's probably thought about for years before even starting the production of it and refuses to accept it and adapt.
Just look at Hannah and Barbera and the sheer amount of hit and misses they had. These indie uptight asswipes like Zeurel need to humble themselves.
To be fair, HB had the money to pump out endless loads of shit in between hits.
i showed stuff like hazbin and digital circus to friends because i knew they would like it
didnt want to do the same with MW since it simply didnt click with me and its also super long
just thinking about the ghost egg joke makes me cringe
its like something from 2007
I'm gonna put my 2 cents into this
I'm not super articulated but still think its' important to discuss the issues.
This guy is a amazing animator, but he is terrible writer. He thinks that shoving colourful crayons into your eyes will ignore your ears listening to absolute snooze fest and make you ignore the odd pacing
And thing is he CAN do better but he doesn't want to listen. Almost EVERY take i heard was that he was just making boring stories and that he needs to write better or be better writer, that's it yet he keeps insisting that he is not wrong but that it's the public that doesn't understand
He doesn't want to change it to be appealing. He ironically tried so hard to make it look pretty by animation and technical skills that it became boring. Not soulless but more so soul is there but really dry. He is scared of changing his childhood ocs and making them fit better. Hell the fricking title Monkey wrench has no monkeys. Like what the frick are these two even supposed to be?
He wants everyone to see and get marketed to but in the end no one really cares other than his animator circlejerk.
Take the example Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss and Space King. All of them are flawed and not great but they have audience and humor that attracts x amount of people. I could show space king to most of my friends especially my best friend warhammer nerd and toy collector and we would all find it to some extend appealing. Even hazbin attracts specific tumblr girls and deviant art gays
Literally MM is so boring that you could put it as some small cartoon on nicktoons that would get canceled after two seasons and everyone would forget
Would you say that also describes the flaws of Romeo & Julliet: Sealed with a Kiss? Both MW and Sealed seem to be driven by pretty animation, but have flawed writing.
The entire show is just the big guy saying they're gonna do the job and they end up doing it. The writing needs rapport maybe the other characters can interject then they do the job
Sincerely, go frick yourself for bringing that innocent movie up literally out of nowhere just because you watched Schaff's review. I hate it when e-celebs slather their greasy hands over obscure stuff and attract autists to it. Did you think it made you look more intelligent or something?
These guys have a point
This guy figured it out. Watching a series is fully being drawn into the story, not the art. To the point where the art can be genuinely bad but as long as the story is interesting or funny, people will still love it and pay for it. No one sticks with a show because it looks pretty, they will stick with something because there is a mystery box they have to know the truth of, or there is a character that is just hilarious every time they are on screen.
Game of Thrones was an amazing huge budget, fricking beautiful to watch show with amazing visuals, but ten seconds after the story went south, the world abandoned that ship and the fandom evaporated.
i don't think a WHITE man should be voicing a latinx coded character whose main trait is to speak and cuss in spanish
I hate the irony poisoned era of the internet
Worse part is that some anons will fall for your baiting
>irony
I'm from Gen Z, so it's something we've grown accustomed to.
Naw, it’s just that the VA is an insufferable homosexual who deserves to be mocked for any reason whatsoever.
I'm watching Lackadaisy
He's kind of an angry sperg that rages on twitter way too often. And for stupid reasons.
>twitter
The worst kind of artist
Autism
Zeurel deez nuts.
I really like zeurel's animations. Shit even his still art looks like it could start moving at any moment. He's clearly very talented-
But the man can't write for shit. God damn hire a fricking writer or something because Monkey Wrench is awful and it didn't have to be
Nothing about it is any worse than your usual indie show
It's got a more appealing style, at the very least. (Which is less than what I can say for Circusslop.)
Yeah, you can tell when he animates other people's skits like Lythero's his style fits like a glove
I feel this. I love his art, and really love his passion and commitment. But Monkey Wrench is so uninteresting. It's not even bad, it's just boring.
Is he born rich? He seems like the type of guy whose education was paid for.
Most LAgays are.
>make own thing
>can do anything
>make the most boring, safe, sanitized thing imaginable with the most unlikable MC with a horrible voice (that he made up 15 years ago and cant let go) and side characters possible.
It's a hard question.
>have a perfectly good youtube animation channel with a sizable sub count
>promptly make a NEW channel for monkey wrench, with barely a fifth of the originals sub count
Why?
Why cut off 80% of your viewer base like that?
He made a lot of strange decisions but this one is probably the biggest and most foolish of them all.
He probably got talked into it by some morons from the indie sphere whose opinions he valued.
There's a bunch of shit about how Youtube learns which of your subs aren't watching every video you release, and it gradually stops notifying them of everything you release because it really doesn't give a frick WHAT people are watching so long as they watch something.
A good way to reduce your viewership is to experiment and create variety. Youtube sees some people don't like every video, so they take those viewers away and focus them on something more consistently to their tastes.
Making the new channel was the wrong move, but using his old channel was also wrong. That's just how that site is.
Frick, no wonder you can't pull off meiaids-esque trolling anymore...
Seriously I genuinely think that's the main thing that fricked it the most. A lot of people knew that upload and with it gone he got rid of a lot of potential fans. It's like if they deleted the Digital Circus video with millions of views and just made a seperate channel out of nowhere before the fanbase grew.
I hate drama gays constantly trying to stir up shit when the guy is as normie and even-keeled as they come
Yeah he's completely tame. The only thing anons even have to say about him is when he's upset his cartoon isn't as successful as he wants.
I love Monkey Wrench and Shrike is adorable but the creator acts like such a mopey b***h
his stuff's better than hazbin hotel and helluva boss but it has no hook. we need animations for mentally ill little boys with mommy issue now. daddy issues have become too mainstream and it's fricking gross.
>daddy issues have become too mainstream and it's fricking gross.
yeah, just look at what it did to poor industrycuck
Qrd?
His indie cartoon is mediocre, boring, unfunny and gets little views and the creator (Zeurel) refuses to accept any constructive criticism or try a complete different approach or a brand new cartoon all together.
I pity him
He had the one in a lifetime opportunity to make his dream cartoon as he wanted it and no one is really into in it
It doesn't help that he killed it's traction by changing channels
As an artist this is some sort of personal hell, you can't even blame anyone else for how bad it's being received, it's his vision through and through and it failed badly
No wonder old farts in animation tell you to not get attached to your first idea
My opinion: he needs to stop making the show like it's tv-y7 and make it tv-14-tv-ma. It's already patreon funded so why not make it an adult cartoon. By adult I don't mean viziepop-tier adult or make it a swearfest by the way. I would also suggest he permanently retire annoying or cutesy characters like that annoying bird or those rock creatures.
He really needs to 180 the show or accept the obvious and try something different.
My criticism is to make it shorter, a lot of it just fall flat or would be better digested if about 5 minutes of dead air or stuff that doesn't work were cut
He really needs to prioritise what gets on the storyboard and know good cutout points to make it 10-15 minutes long, that alone would improve the experience without compromising his vision
I think the hope is still subconsciously that it gets picked up. Crowdfunding animation sucks tbh. It’s barely possible now, but you’re always barely scraping by, everyone works for far less than they would on a mainstream production, and tons of time needs to be dedicated to shilling and begging. When shit is funded by a network you can just do the work and get paid.
>mw needs to 180
This, the show feels like a chore to watch not a lot a lot of subtle nuances on what he's trying to go for not a bad watch after all it needs to be better script wise
gay
>design a lanky ugly alien that looks like sonic the hedgehog and earthworm jim had a baby
>give him a high pitch, nasally, fake hispanic accent
>make him the star of your show
>”why wont people watch my show? :(“
>He looks like two really popular characters
Oh wait Earthworm Jim is by a conservative
Earthworm Jim hasn't been really popular in literal decades.
what about doofenshmirtz or the monarch though? I don’t hear many complaints about their voices
They have TONS of personality. I don't get the sense that Shrike has a firm personality. He's a nasaly comic relief guy, and if I had to choose one word to describe I guess it'd be "stupid", since that's kind of his core trait.
They’re incompetent villains. Their voices fit that role.
Shrike just feels inconsistent. One scene he’s an incompetent comic relief. The next he’s a cool competent hero.
pretty much this
>what about (well written and actually funny characters)?
The lanky funny voice villain is a classic.
why does shrike have a seam line down his face like a ballsack
>DUDE i love PIZZA!!!
why is "le pizza le nachos" synonymous with terribly written goofy dumb guys at this point?
I think its appearant that zeurels cartoon is just him showing off his animation skills and not focusing on making a good show which sucks cause that means animation is boring
I never liked space adventures, they always seem too random
He ordered spooky spaghetti
Like come to think on it, let's not compare Elsagate to Monkeywrench. It's apples and oranges.
Let's compare Digital Circus to Monkey Wrench. Digital Circus is tighter and better written, but is it genuinely MILLIONS OF VIEWS better than Monkey Wrench? Is Digital Circus millions of views better than Felix Colgrave or Worthikids? I wish I could compare it to more animators but I struggle to think of anything else well known besides Hazbin, which is its own unrepeatable phenomenon.
Figuring out why stuff is popular has always been hard, but now we have only one system that decides this, using completely inhuman logic. I watched Digital Circus. It was okay. I will watch the next one, but I can see cracks in the script where maybe the series falls apart in episode 2 - or, maybe they tighten some stuff up and it gets better. It's not what I would call a shining example of what all animation should strive to be, but its viewership numbers seem to imply it is.
You can't learn from works that do succeed, is the other crazy thing. Talent and quality goes into stuff like Digital Circus and its staff are experienced, but if you gave that same staff a fresh channel and hid their identities, could they be successful a second time? I'm not sure any of them could tell you WHY they're doing well.
I mean there's this series called Bridge Kids that was languishing jn obscurity for years, and then all of the sudden now they're getting hundreds of thousands of views. It's a funny, dry sort of writing with minimalist animation, and it feels like it deserves to succeed. By why now and now last year? No fricking clue.
And again, I really do think Monkey Wrench is boring. I watched the first three episodes and I think I'm done, but if this were MY project and I loved it, I'd have no way of knowing if the problem is me, or if the problem is that my solitary source of promotion was designed by complete motherfrickers.
>I'm not sure any of them could tell you WHY they're doing well.
I know why, and it's because I'm subbed to Kevin Temmer. (Who worked at Blue Sky beforehand.)
Dude is that fricking blackface?
See smiling friends has a better script structure therefore bolstering its quality monkey wrench is a bit childish
>the winners of good cartoon making are the writers writing genius humor like season 2 spongebob
That sucks animation should be better
Am I missing something? Monkey Wrench isn’t peak fiction, but I’d hesitate to call it boring. The character designs and interactions are fun and it’s got great action sequences. I personally enjoy the show.
The character interactions are my least favorite part of Monkey Wrench. None of them really strike any chords. A lot of characters are doing things just to advance the script, or for a gag, with no thought about what that says about them.
Like the dragon lady letting her payday go in the first episode because her rival, a nondescript ninja, showed up? Just establishes the dragon is not a serious bounty hunter, and she's not good at what she does. They killed that character in episode one for a one-off gag with no long term importance and I'll bet Zeurel didn't see anything wrong with doing that.
Cinemaphile being overly harsh because this place is full of jealous neverdraws
>this cartoon is kinda boring and the characters are grating and lame
>OMG STOP BEING SO OVERLY HARSH YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS
if you do not want people to judge your work then just never release it.
I thought it was fine, personally, but I can't blame people for being uninterested based off the first two episodes. I do think the third was a decent improvement, but it goes to show the main duo really can't carry the show themselves. Could really use changes to their writing, and/or having other main cast characters they can interact with.
Well fwiw there's a bunch of years old concept art that heavily implies their team will have a new human character named Lariat.
Oh it seems they've been redesigned in this post by Zeurel from September. https://twitter.com/Zeurel/status/1707033903096279522
Thats just Leela from futurama.
She's so cute
>tail
Oh, so *she's* the monkey from the title. Kinda cute. Why wait to introduce her, though?
Yeah I have no clue man. I feel like they should of at least hinted at her existence by now or show her in some kind of subplot that will connect to Shrike and Beebs.
bnuuy
Imagine how much better this show would be doing if Zeurel swallowed his pride and just coombaited already.
Or just listened to literally anyone telling him the exact same thing for the last two years.
alright, I just watched the first episode and it felt like a whole lot of 'tell, don't show'. Feels like everything is described and nothing goes without some amount of dialogue to accompany it, even the jokes. With how well Zeurel animates surely there could've been more room for purely visual storytelling. Also I just didn't feel very compelled to care about any of the characters because most of them were just.. annoying. Except for kara, because she didn't say anything at all
"Show don't tell" is a vague soundbyte that gets thrown around way too much by people who can't properly articulate their criticisms.
Monkey Wrench's problem isn't that it's telling when it should be showing; the problem is that the script is bloated. The excess information contained in the dialogue doesn't need to be conveyed visually; it needs to be either trimmed down or else cut out entirely.
Whether you're telling stories verbally or visually, you have to understand what's worth saying and what's empty fluff that drags everything down.
yeah that describes my complaints with the show a lot better, there's just so much small talk over things that don't need to be said, or have already been said
>the problem is that the script is bloated. The excess information contained in the dialogue doesn't need to be conveyed visually; it needs to be either trimmed down or else cut out entirely.
Thank god other people noticed this. I'm actually working on rewriting a script for episode one cause the script has so much shit to cut/replace. I cut out 5 minutes already and hope to whittle it down to around 4 - 7 minutes long.
The Cowboy Bebop/Earthworm Jim idea really seems like something a high schooler in 2002 would have invented. But also moved on from by 05 at the very least.
No The Locals episode 7