#support youtube creators

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube channel to check out:

[monkey-wrench-zeurel]

One month on; The future of Monkey wrench as a fully animated indie series.

It’s been exactly one month since Ep 3 of Monkey was released to the public, and as the ever want to be as transparent as possible with indie production it’s time we sat down and had a very important discussion on the future of the series…

So, as we said above, one month has passed from the public release of episode 3, and everything hinges on how well it does.

Below are the metrics for it on Youtube;

Our hope was to have ep 3 hit 500k in two weeks. After 31 days we’re still under 470k views, ad rev as you can see is pitiful and engagement has evaporated. Maybe we set our hopes a little too high?

It’s not all doom and gloom though, this is the first ep to get this many views in this amount of time. Our patreon support has grown by 1/3 after the ep came out and our Scratch & Scritch plushies did ok, see images below;

So as of now, we have enough money for voices, sound and music for episode 4. Voice recording begins next week and I hope to start the animatic for the ep sometime after.

As for the animation portion of production… things are looking a little tricky.

As you should know, animation, especially frame by frame stuff like we do, it’s obscenely time intensive and expensive. For ep 3 we had a rough animation rate of $20.83 per 1 second of animation and the same for clean up with very minimal edits and redos.

Seeing the recent animation pay discourse has honestly shaken us up pretty bad, we had no idea how pitiful our pay had been compared to other indies and we in no way want to exploit anyone for their work on the series.

With both Ash and I putting everything we had saved in Eps 1, 2 and 3 and seeing how below average they’ve all performed and with how little we can afford to pay our animators, on top of burning myself out horrifically doing 3 eps in a row, we’ve sadly had to come to the conclusion that full animation for this series is no longer financially possible at our current support level.

That does not mean we’re stopping production, however.

There are two possible routes we can take;

Route 1; Animatic hybrid.

Over the past week and a half I managed to solo out 5 minutes and 15 seconds of animatic keyframe animation for our recently released outtakes video.

At our current support level I can do the animatic keyframe route for most of the mundane stuff in an ep, and then go into full animation for the ‘good bits’, that way we can pay our animators an actual decent wage. Over time if our support grows we can return to full animation.

Route 2: Kickstart ep 4 for $100k

We have thought about doing a kickstarter type thing to get the $100,000 we’d need for the animation portion of the ep. We want to pay our animators properly for their time and skill and this would be the best route to go if we want to have ep 4 fully animated.

However with our current viewership and engagement with eps 1, 2 and 3 I’m not sure we could hit a goal of $100,000 in the 30 days we need.

Is it a risk worth taking?

What would we do for rewards?

Physical rewards would take money away from animation production and things like animated rewards would take time away from myself working on the ep.

That’s pretty much where my mind has been at the past few days. I’d love to hear your input and thoughts on how you would like us to proceed.

[chellychuu]

To all my creatives out there; you’re not a flop because your artwork didn’t get 100 likes, or because your video didn’t hit the 1k view mark, or you lost a few followers. You didn’t get ‘worse’ and people don’t suddenly hate what you’re putting out there. Sometimes you just get less engagement, but it’s not because you’re making ‘bad’ art!

Keep creating and making things YOU enjoy! You have to be your own biggest fan!

[theladyvalkyrieskyeart]

Mignon is a lovely and independently made queer Korean anime that can be found in the link below. First three episodes are free, but the rest is $1 USD each and all together will take an hour of your time to watch, but maaaaaan is it worth it.

The premise is a young man who's a boxer in an underground fight ring who falls for the rings doctor but discovers the doctor is a vampire.

The animation is great, the soundtrack is very heavy 80's synth vibes which I love (and you can find on spotify)

TW: abuse, blood, violence, and one graphic sex scene.

Link to watch here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mignon

Here's the trailer. Again, its worth your time

UPDATE 8/29/23: I'm seeing the original post gain traction so I'm gonna make an edited update to the original post

due to some issues with the creator's former production company, ABJ had to take Mignon down from Vimeo on Demand so sadly unless you know someone who has purchased the episodes and can give you their Vimeo login info or you just happen to stumble on a pirated version you cannot watch this anymore until the legal shit gets sorted out 😔

I posted about it here

[twilight-deviant]

Watcher fans sure are entitled and a little insane, ngl. "No one is going to sign up for your service! We're all poor! You've made the worst decision, and you'll be back in no time!" Saying this directly to the creators really reminds you of how low the respect for people you don't personally know has gone. I miss the forth wall between creator and audience.

I get and fully understand not having the money to support them, but... Watcher does have fans with money. A lot of them actually. They have merch sales. Their live tour sells out most venues. They have thousands of supporters on Patreon, where the cheapest tier is $5. They're able to gauge the rough finances of their staunchest supporters; that's how they landed on the subscription price. Yes, this move will reduce their viewership in sheer numbers, but to say all of their fans are broke and none will follow/support is factually incorrect.

It may not be a decision everyone agrees with, but severing the limitations of advertisers and youtube in favor of artistic freedom is a good thing. Yes, even if it comes with a loss of revenue. They understand that risk.

Also, I'm begging people to stop treating this like "another Netflix" or something and instead look at it as, "I am supporting a creator I like, similar to Patreon." They literally said in the video that they don't care if you share accounts. Get five friends, and you'll pay $1/mo.

I hate feeling compelled to rant in favor of their decision because I have my own reservations about whether it's the best move. However, I know it's not a choice they made lightly, and I like to think they understand that they'll need to branch out like crazy to entice subscribers.

[jesus-said-chill]

People will shit on watcher just trying to make their company grow but turn around and support big corporations. 😭

[hjansetv]

Whereever you are or whatever you’re doing

LISTEN TO THIS MURDER DRONE FANSONG BANGER! (Not mine)

[saydesole]

Start creating content 📷📱

[apollo-justice-irl]

not a fhjy post but I found the most wonderful yt video today. A really cool music therapist on youtube posted a video recently where she turned Brennan's "I CANNOT WIN" monologue into a musical theater song and it's AMAZING. her name is Trina Chakrabarti and all of her original music is fantastic PLEASE show her some love. I don't have any platforms where I can share this with Brennan directly but I do think he and all the other amazing folks at dropout should see it. Trina if you see this somehow please make a tumblr you're so amazing! also here's her channel link and the song:

[alexisyoko]

Analysis, theories, thoughts :

(I'll add more)

Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) :

Black Butler Facts People Rarely Talk About

Who is Undertaker?

What happened to the shinigamis?

Grell as trans representation (a trans guy's opinion)

Something concerning about Grell and my theory about Charles Grey

William and what his pigeons may symbolize

Does Lizzy know Sebastian is a demon? (and other Black Butler theories)

Seeing the humanity in Sebastian Michaelis

Ludger is amazing and underrated

This made me love William even more!

No, Grell is NOT a predator! (defending Grell)

Analyzing Grell's sexual and romantic behavior

William is one of the first people to respect Grell's identity (my headcanon)

Is Undertaker good or evil?

Outlast 2 :

Analyzing the character of Val

Fear and Huger :

Defending Enki the misanthrope

[destinygoldenstar]

Not counting Dragons Rising, there is a legit RGB Sibling complication and it makes me happy. Yes to sibling relationships. (now we just need a dragons rising one because that has them at their peak)

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube video to check out:

[monkey-wrench-zeurel]

Tomorrow...

Fund raising for ep 4 begins...

[chellychuu]

Daily reminder to all my creatives; it’s okay not to post every single day! Take breaks, make things that’ll never be posted online, work on projects that are just for you, do things completely unrelated to your online presence! Don’t burn out trying to appease the algorithm ♡

[blackcat419]

So with James Somerton turning out to plagiarize the queer community, let’s signal boost queer creators!!!

Mia Mulder - Historian and trans woman.

I recommend her video on a specifically Russian conspiracy theory on parts of history being made up. Super interesting and very enjoyable!

[twilight-deviant]

Telling content creators it's wrong to explore artistic freedom and be independently funded by fans, and they should instead continue taking advertisement revenue from google* is

NOT

the anti-capitalism stance actually.

*(Yes, google owns youtube.)