Intro
In our English class we were assigned a Humor project in which we would have to analyze various comedic works and inspire from some of our personal favorite comedians. With my friends Maya and Alec, we scripted out a draft of a possible animatic in which we reflected some of our struggles as animation students in a slightly exaggerated short.
Inspiration
For our humor project, we were inspired by the YouTubers JelloApocalypse and ColeyDoesThings. More specifically, we focused on JelloApocalypse’s So This Is Basically series, in which he does an overview of what happens in a show/game in an animatic-style video. His humor utilizes parody and caricature of what the show/game is about, often exaggerating the mannerisms and actions of the characters in the series. He also uses verbal irony to highlight certain parts of the characters’ actions. ColeyDoesThings also uses parody and exaggeration in her videos, but she records herself instead of doing animatics. Her content is also satire about the tendencies of fandoms and groups of people within them, rather than the series itself. While a large part of the appeal in both creator’s humor is that their audience usually has some context from the actual series they’re parodying to go off of and can view the videos as kind of like an inside joke, you don’t need to know what they’re talking about to enjoy their content. In fact, sometimes it’s more fun to get out-of-context jokes, and it makes you wonder about what the actual series/fandom is like.
In our humor project, you can see the inspiration from both JelloApocalypse and ColeyDoesThings’s style. We made our video animatic-style like JelloApocalypse, but went more with Coley’s style of exaggerating a concept, rather than a series. Our project focused a lot on caricature through Timmy, and exaggerating aspects like the computer acting up and the wrist stretching. We also used a bit of irony throughout the animatic as well, with the contrast between what is being shown and what the narration/music is like. Similar to both of our inspirations, our project has a little more appeal to the animation kids, but ultimately it’s for everyone to enjoy and hopefully get people a little interested in what it’s like to actually be an animator, (assuming watching Timmy’s struggling didn’t terrify you all a little). Lastly, thanks for watching, and we hope you all have a nice day!