squigglydigglydoo:

gotabonetapick:

awkwardtimezone:

gaius-d:

It still surprises me at how few people have seen Freak of the Week, and I love sharing it with friends because of the inevitable, “How the hell have I never seen this?” look of awe drawn out on their face.

And man, it really is gorgeous.

Directed by Juanjo Guarnido, it took the team about a year of hard work to hammer out this bloody masterpiece (which you can learn about in his video here) using a combination of 3D animation with the power of college interns  skill of a team of artists to painstakingly re-draw the 3D elements they wanted in 2D frame-by-frame, not to mention the post processing and… everything else.

 Even though it came out in 2014, it doesn’t seem to have ever garnered the attention it truly deserves.

I really wanna drive this point home, so to give you an idea, Ghost by Mystery Skulls, animated by MysteryBen27 has 18,147,263 views.  
Freak of the Week has only 2,271,121 views at the time I’m writing this.  That’s fucking depressing for something so … phenomenal.  I want more of this, and hell, maybe you do too.  But we’re not going to see anymore simply because the right people haven’t seen it.  In fact, it failed to reach a respectable level of Internet Popularity®, Juanjo himself even described it in the comments section as having ruined him because of how little attention it got.  

So if you’re reading this and you’ve got some connections with a TV network or something, consider pulling some strings to get this video spoon-fed to the masses, because people ought to see this.  I’m sure Juanjo would be all too happy to oblige.  And hell, if you wanna buy the art book, you can get the link here for about $50.

Now, maybe you recognize the former Disney animator Juanjo Guarnido for his other work: Blacksad.

Which is a comic set in the late 1950′s about a hardboiled private investigator published originally by Dark Horse Comics that does… y’know, the …

… noir investigator …

… aloof ladies man…

… badass …

… detective story thing.

That I haven’t yet read but I TOTALLY NEED TO.  

Look,

I guess I’m bringing up Freak of the Week because I was reading the comment section and, man, it kinda got me down.  

Some of the best things things out there just haven’t been seen by the right people, I guess.  But I suppose it’s also a depressing statement on the culture of the internet that the video makes.

This is depressing. If you haven’t watched this video yet PLEASE do, I was in awe and fell instantly in love with it when I first saw it and just assumed something is fantastic and detailed would become an Internet hit …

Apparently not.

Well it should be, I hope this gets to the right people and the video gets the attention it rightfully deserves.

That is not how popularity works. The reason why Mystery Skulls Ghost had the massive positive reception was not because it was fantastically animated, though it WAS very good considering it was made by people who were significantly more on the green side.

It was popular because it told a story that people happened to like. Freak of the Week is not even comparable. And the pitting of these two videos together is apples to oranges. Freak of the Week is a music video that is beautifully animated, but in the end, it looks like a music video. You get what you get, and since the band itself isn’t that mainstream, there isn’t much of a hook to it. And this is coming from a person who loves the video.

Mystery Skulls Ghost told a story which people liked, so it got popular, Freak of the Week didn’t. It’s the same reason Lone Digger got a lot of views as well.

^^^ this exactly. I ADORE the Freak of the Week music video, but as phenomenally made as it is, it fell into a pitfall that ails a LOT of art – it forgot its audience.

Freak of the Week is,unapologetically, exactly what it is.  It’s a hardcore animated music video using aesthetics of heavy metal and, arguably, WWE-style imagery.  That’s excellent!  But it’s not very popular.  There is certainly a niche audience for that kind of thing, but that’s just it – it’s a niche.  The visuals are beautifully done… but not attractive.  It’s beautifully animated but it’s not pretty.  As shallow as that may sound, you have to remember that the general audience of this kind of thing isn’t going to be your super-high-level animation connosieur crowd.  It’s gonna be your average Joe, who honestly doesn’t have much of an appreciation for the art of animation because he doesn’t understand how much goes into it.  Your average Joe doesn’t even bat an eye at Roger Rabbit – he takes it for granted.

You can pooh-pooh that all you want, but that’s the REALITY of it.  Mix unattractive, kinda-deliberately-ugly visuals with an aggressive heavy metal aesthetic that otherwise looks like your average hardcore music video and tells no story… and you have something that gets swept under the rug with everything else that falls into the “generic music video category.”

Again, allow me to reiterate – there’s nothing truly “generic” about Freak of the Week.  It’s BREATHTAKING… if you know what you’re looking at.

If you don’t?  It’s a bunch of metalheads rocking out with the exact kind of aesthetics you expect from metalheads.

For contrast, Mystery Skulls Animated: Ghost is a music video that prioritizes storytelling.  Again – beautiful animation.  Not nearly as detailed, but it doesn’t need to be in order to be effective.  It uses a bright, appealing color palette, simple and easy-to-remember designs, a charmingly-spooky aesthetic reminiscent of Scooby Doo, and a bold visual style that overall calls to mind the likes of Sanrio properties.  To put it bluntly, it looks really cute.  More importantly, it looks really cute to your average Joe.

Not to mention, the story – people love a good story.  People love a good heartbreaking story.  People love a good heartbreaking story with a bittersweet ending, dashes of comedy throughout, and a dark underlying secret to the story  that encourages them to dig deeper.  Freak of the Week may be beautiful, but it’s not deep.  Ghost is deep, and encourages a rewatch or several so that the viewer can get the most out of it that they can.

Freak of the Week focuses on amplifying the effect of the music.  Ghost takes the music as a springboard and builds an entire world off of it – prompting the building of a fanbase of people eager to see where the story goes next.  In other words: Freak of the Week forgot that longevity requires encouraging people to come back to it.  Freak of the Week forgot its audience.  Ghost did not.

There is a massive difference.  Just like Eli said above me – it’s comparing apples to oranges.  It’s a HUGE shame that Freak of the Week doesn’t get the attention you’d HOPE it would get, based on how much work was put into it.  But putting work into something doesn’t automatically make it valuable – what makes something valuable is how much the audience wants it.  

(via max-out-of-ten)

endangeredcds:

This joke was also already done, but it didn’t stop me from giving it my best effort.

(via the-snatcher)