Smashbits #6: Minecraft Ep 1 (Mature Warning) Released Animation

Ho ho ho, MERRY CHRISTMAS!  Here's a yuletide letter about what I've been up to, leading up to this video:

This is the released animation for a freelance cartoon I was hesitant about sharing, due to its crudeness.  But considering I worked on it from August through November, and that it's the first 10 minute cartoon I've made in a few years, and that it's pretty popular now, maybe you guys would be interested!

This was technically the cheapest I've ever been asked to animate, but due to the length of the video, it was my highest profit so far.  I was given the audio and a script including most of the gags. In my first draft of the storyboards, I tried to crop out the pig's pooping so it could be more of a sound effect gag but they insisted it be visible.  I also pointed out that the narrator should just rerecord the dialogue since he guessed a character's gender wrong and stumbled over a few words, but they actually enjoyed my animatic's gag at the narrator's expense.  I did the animatic in a very limited by-the-books manner (the characters were already designed so i was just plotting expressions) but knew I'd have to add a lot when doing the final animation to make it entertaining.  

In the end, I tried to give it more of an "ugly but self-aware and full of adrenaline" type of style, something akin to South Park.  In addition to beginning the animation and designing the characters and backgrounds, I started training to animate sprites for a German game developer.  Then on top of that, the last week of September, Smashbits needed me to stop and animate something else in only SEVEN DAYS.  So the production timeline on this Minecraft thing kinda went crazy off track and I had to compromise my lip sync standards a little to get it in on time-- they were very kind and extended the deadline each time, but, by the end, my drawing hand was cramped to hell and I needed to get ready for my honeymoon in the last week of November.

So the style and humor in this video isn't completely to my taste, but I hope somebody likes it!  I was quite surprised to find out that the video had actually exploded past 2 million hits in under two weeks.  The reaction videos pouring in from all over the world actually made me like this animation more, haha!  I'm told to expect an Episode 2, and I'm kinda excited to experiment further with this cheap style. But don't worry, I've got a few other things to show you over the next few weeks...