Then I got anesthetized and my dentist friend is fine

Today's post.

Oh boy oh boy.

Christ do I have alot of shit to talk about. And its not even interesting shit (he said as if the other posts on this blog implied otherwise) it's shit that is so technical and verbose and just

ugh

but I need to type it out.

Because for regular readers (heh) this actually has to do with something I've been trying to do YET SIMULTANEOUSLY has to do with something I did years ago which probably noone reading this blog remembers or ever learned because most of the people who knew about it then have left the internet.

So.

I need a good jumping off point for this short essay of crap.

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Quite a few months ago I applied to be a Youtube partner. What this meant is that Youtube would pay me money to upload films AND I would make money from the hits I get on my stuff thats on Youtube.

Now then, despite what my very small handful of fans and friends may think, I'm not in any way popular. Not even in internet-cartoon-circles. Normally, I enjoy the obscurity however when it comes to getting youtube's attention, this worked against me.

MOST of my youtube videos have very few views. Like....200-500 views. Even ones that have been online for years. Now obviously there are alot of factors that influence this:
A.) people still associate me with newgrounds which is a stigma i'll never shake off

B.) im not jailbait with a large busom and a webcam who gabs about my life and puts it online every day

C.) im not funny

So my videos don't get alot of views. Youtube WANTS partners who get lots of views.
So they have been ignoring me. Well, ever since I complained to youtube about those "Media" bastards (whom i talked about a post or so ago), they suddenly paid attention to me and what I do on their site.

AND I got an email from them.
Saying they wanted to make me a partner.

However, this came with a catch:

Dear zekeyspaceylizard,

Your video has become popular on YouTube, and you're eligible to apply for the YouTube Partnership Program, which allows you to make money from playbacks of your video.

Once you're approved, making money from your video is easy. Here's how it works: First sign into your YouTube account. Then, complete the steps outlined here: (magical link removed). Once you're finished, we'll start placing ads next to your video and pay you a share of the revenue as long as you meet the program requirements.

We look forward to adding your video to the YouTube Partnership Program. Thanks and good luck!

The YouTube Team

What's the catch?
They already picked the two videos they want me to be eligible to make money off of.

And the videos they picked? Haha, well.

First was my fake trailer for the Dark Crystal 2. I uploaded this fake video to troll people, and it has worked very well. But, I really dont have the legal right to make money off it. Why? Well for one, much as I'd love to, I dont work for Jim Henson studios. Nor do I own the images in the trailer (except the fake logo at the end). I dont own the Dark Crystal orchestral theme either. Nor do I own the StarCraft II voiceclip that I used at the end.

The other video that they picked was my cartoon the Birds and the Bees. A cartoon I also have up on albinoblacksheep. Now why is this bad? Because not only do I not own the right to broadcast that film due to the soundtrack (even though I bought the album it was on) BUT BUT BUT BUT the lovely producer of the record company was so angry he tried to sue me. That's right folks. A record company tried to sue me for making a cartoon on the internet. A cartoon, I might add, that I never intended to make a cent off of. Nor have made a cent off of.

The epilogue of that is that the producer has a myspace. He looked like your typical early 90's yuppie. Sitting in his jacuzzi. Surrounded by hot women. Drinking a martini. Thats the guy who wanted my money for making a fan video to his song.

Let that sink in.

Anyway.

Now normally I like to break rules (not because i'm a rebel but because i am lazy) and in most cases I'd totally say to youtube "OH YAIS MASSAH PLEES GIVE MEH SOME O DAT MONIES"
But I can't! Becaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuseeeee if they REJECT the videos FROM their revenue application form, they will DELETE MY VIDEOS OFF YOUTUBE.

Yes.
Bad times.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this decision Youtube has made.
Either this is all a setup to get my videos with copyright info removed from the site as part of a revenge ploy they have to get back at me for complaining so much recently about rich bastards trying to stake claims on my snake videos....

OR

The reason they chose these two is because of how many hits they have gotten.

The Birds and the Bees has gotten 38,524 hits
The Dark Crystal 2 Trailer has gotten 29,881

Thats ALOT, for my videos.
With the third highest being Spooky Scary Skeletons which has 20,883 hits and my fake "Life Found on Mars" troll video which has 23,544 hits.

Not a huge difference. I assume Youtube's threshold of "its time to give a shit about this user" is somewhere above 25,000.

Now you might think thats alot of views. (its not).
For example this cartoon I made:

Weebl uploaded this. He is my boss. And very popular.
It has 192,752 views.

But pretty much everything he puts online gets around that many. Must be nice!
But he is already a Youtube Partner. Has been for a while.

For comparison, this cartoon I made for valentines day which AlbinoBlackSheep uploaded only has 10,908 views which is still alot more than it would if I'd put it on my personal account.



HOWEVER, the first thing I ever put online that made anyone give a shit about my cartoons was Your Horoscope for Today. Which got very popular, won me 200 bucks, and Weird Al Yankovic himself even put it on his website because he liked it! (as opposed to trying to sue me).

How many hits does it have? 119,570 views

Witch Doctor: 156,641 views in ONE YEAR.
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So where am I going with this? Well, for starters I'm a bit between a rock and a hard place. While I'd rather make money off youtube, it feels wrong to let the site sacrifice a couple of my videos in order to MAYBE do so.

Do I really want to sacrifice my precious fake movie trailer?
Do I really want to sacrifice one of the few cartoons I made in the past that has actually aged well?

Especially since, if they are removed, youtube won't WANT to fund anything else I have on the site because everything else I have up for the most part has no audience.

Of course, they could just rescind their offer and take the two videos down anyway and even probably ban me if they wanted to.

So I'm in a bit of a sticky wicket. I'm going to say "YES" just see what happens. If they kill off my account, I'll just use my other one.

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It's a bit ironic that this happened just now as well.
I had just been talking to my good friend Man With 10 Toes, who makes lots of video skits with his buddies, about how I was still trying to find the best way to distribute Polypeptide, my hopefully-soon-finished 10 minute long animated film.
AlbinoBlackSheep wants to sponsor it, but he hasn't given me a number. On top of that he wants to show it with a bunch of other new cartoons by me because he's afraid it might not make enough hits for him to make back whatever amount he gives me for it to be exclusive to his site.
Which is probably a bad sign if he thinks it's not worth anything. For all I know, it might be a worthless film.
I mean, I'm proud of it. My good friends like it. I've even put a short clip of it online recently.

But it could still be worthless.

And if I'm going to release a worthless film I'd like to get SOMETHING off it.
Albinoblacksheep is still a bit up in the air. I sure as fucking hell am not giving it to that cesspool, Newgrounds.

Releasing it for free online is always an option. But what do I get out of that? A few extra comments on my blog maybe. And perhaps a few new angry emails from people who hate me and want me to die. BOY I SURE LOVE THOSE.

Some people have had great success in releasing things for free online. Nina Paley for example, who went through ALOT OF TROUBLE to even get the legal rights to release the film she slaved over (which is a great film that uses alot of multimedia designs and art). And then made 55,000 dollars off of putting it online for free. Most of that came from donations. I could ask for donations, sure. But her film is actually cultural, pretty, and somewhat educational. Mine is just a silly thing I've been toying with. Who's going to donate to that? Especially since I'm pretty sure my core audience are all too young to have paypal accounts anyway.

The rest came from merchandise (selling DVD'S). I cant do that here.
I'm on a pc from 1995 with 80mb of ram and a ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics card. I couldn't make a dvd if I wanted to. And who would want a DVD of friggin Polypeptide? Some of it came from television and movie broadcasts. Those are two things I'll never be able to achieve. I've been on tv in Australia, sure, but that was for a music video by a very popular band. And no theatre around here in friggin Tampa is going to want to show a 10 minute cartoon when all the indy theaters can be showing documentaries and old movies and stuff the people in this town actually want to SEE. The only way they'd show it is if I paid THEM. NO THANKS. I did that once with film festivals already. No more.

Anyway, yeah.

So, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm planning to do with this film.
Part of me wants to email some of the famous animators who are online and ask for advice, but then I'll end up looking like a complete retard to my idols. Or looking like a bum who wants a handout.

I dont NEED a handout. I dont NEED to make money off this film. Especially since almost noone in this country respects animation as a serious art form anyway.

Despite my massive debts to my useless college, I'm pretty financially secure right now.

But I'd LIKE to get some sort of financial gain from this project. I mean I've been working on it for 3 years. It's lived through quitting a job, getting a new job, getting a tablet pc, getting hired by weebl one of my favorite animators, getting kicked out of my house, moving in with my dad and brother, and a whole bunch of crap inbetween.

Slamming it up on youtube or vimeo or goatse or whatever for free where it'll be forgotten in a week like everything else I've made almost seems disrespectful to this film, whether anyone likes it or not, or whether its even deserving of respect.


Either way, if someone has an idea for what I should do, I'm all ears.
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jesus fucking christ I wrote alot. I'm so sorry you had to read through all that crap of me trying to sound philosophical to explain my apparent greed.

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Hey lets talk about fun stuff now.

First things first, I got made into a member of Artsprojekt. which means now I get to sell my designs alongside other designers and artists who are way better than I am like Jeremyville, Chris Parks, Jeremy Forson and other people who do all sorts of cool art and gallery stuff. That's pretty awesome that they let me in. I mean...I had to apply and everything. But still. Badass. I'm part of a "cool club"
I even made this to celebrate.

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A day or so ago it was my friend Mr.Scriblam's birthday.

I posted some of his cartoons about two posts ago. He is a good friend of mine. So of course, with it being his birthday, everyone was pestering him about what he wanted.

He asked pretty much everyone to draw him Captain Underpants. If you are not aware of what Captain Underpants is, I'd suggest educating yourself at the local book store!
Anyway, I drew him this:



I'm really enjoying inking things in flash these days.

Happy Birthday, Scriblam. Wherever you may be.

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I joined wooshii recently. I still haven't the foggiest idea what the site is about or its purpose or how stuff even gets made there. The "ABOUT" section is very vague and just screams "THIS WILL LOOK GOOD IN YOUR PORTFOLIO ONE DAY MAYBE"

It also has a really broken system where if you link to someone else's youtube video there, the amount of views the video had on youtube is transferred to your account. So, by linking to a bunch of videos I now have, in one day, one of the highest-viewed accounts on the site.

Dumb.

That doesn't seem fair or make any sense. And the site itself doesn't make sense. But people were inviting me so I made an account. An account I most likely will never use! Either I've missed something or this site is paying alot of cartoon websites to suck it's e-penis.
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The other night me and my friend Bug (who has changed his Steam name to Ludicolo) were playing in tf2. I was an engineer and he was a heavy. We kicked ALOT of ass that night, the two of us. I found some lovely sneaky places to put sentries in Badwater Basin, while he patrolled around mowing people down.

We also went to a weird achievement server where something went wrong with the graphics and Bug became a soldier wearing the boxing gloves that normally belong on the heavy weapons guy character.

Very bizarre. He looks like a big lobster:


Anyway, I'm going to bed.

Its raining.



IL PLUT.