Where upon I share my thoughts on things after a week of Ghost’s release.
Welp, it’s now a week since the Animated video for Ghost has been out in the wild. And boy, its been quite the week.
At the time I’m writing this post, the video is at 865,000 views and rapidly approaching the million mark. This will definitely go down as my most successful video project at this rate. To be honest, I was fully expecting the video to be noticed for maybe a week or two, a month at most, and then just mostly die down. I figured the fact that this wasn’t a specific reference to a game or show would ultimately put this video under the radar.
I was wrong. I was very, very wrong.
In less than 24 hours, I was already starting to see the trickles of what would eventually be the FLOOD of fan art, speculation, fan blogs, cosplay, plushys, and all manner of fan content that is still going strong a week after the fact. There is so much at this point that its actually PHYSICALLY NOT POSSIBLE for me to look at it all now.
It took all of 2 days before people were saying a fandom had formed. Needless to say, I was not expecting to be the center of a whole brand-spanking new fandom (though I don’t think that’s something ANYONE is really “prepared” for.)
How do I feel about all this? It’s definitely been one of the most fascinating things to happen in my life. Since Monday, I’ve been getting tons of comments congratulating me and thanking me for doing the video. 99% of the comments I’ve had so far have been overwhelmingly positive and eager to learn about more about the characters and plot, and even that 1% of not-positive comments has mostly just been confused about all this more than anything mean spirited. From “Start a Kickstarter so I can give you money!” to “..Can I just GIVE you money..?”, the amount of you guys that just want to support me is humbling, to say the least.
This all comes at a point where I had started to believe the internet simply wasn’t capable of being positive about something anymore. This year has been.. rough on me. I feel like I have had more stress these past two years than I’ve ever had in my whole life. With Ghost finally out, after Luis (Mystery Skulls) and everyone else has told me how much love there is for it, I feel like a lot of that weight has been lifted.
I was hoping to be take a bit of a rest after Ghost had released, though I’ve hardly had time for that in order to answer everyone’s questions and look over fan stuff and all that. It is a pressure all to its own, but it is a pleasant kind of pressure. So while I know everyone is eager to see what happens next with Ghost, I apologize in advance if things are a bit slow on my end for the remainder of this year.
Just going through the fan art, I’ve been so blown away by everyone’s work. There’s cute art, scary art, realistic art, serious art, funny art… pencil, pen, 3D, pixel, paper, cloth, pumpkin, WAX. Just, for any conceivable style or medium, every character has been beautifully crafted in it.
I know a fair amount of people think the fandom formed only around the desire to “Bink-Boink the Bara Bone Boy” (Don’t think me and the rest of the crew didn’t see that whole Confessions Tumblr :V), but honestly there’s much more to it than that (…granted a lot of you guys really, REALLY like that purple skeleton man, like, A LOT, I ain’t gunna deny that part ‘3’).
There’s so many of you that have come to me saying how much inspiration the video has given you. How those of you with artistic blocks have been once again encouraged to just do what you love. Or how many of you want to START animating and drawing just through this video alone. I have even had a handful of you come to thank me for giving you comfort as you go through troubled times in your life, saying that the video was able to take your mind off things and just let you forget your worries, if even just for those 4 minutes the video lasts. I don’t think there exists a greater honor any one artist can be granted than that.
As for what happens next? This next week or so, I will be looking into my options in what I can do with the characters and plot Ghost. Stuff like official merchandise has been suggested to me and while I am treading lightly in this department, there is a strong chance that may be happening in the near future. I don’t want to rush things and am making sure I’m being careful about this kind of stuff.
It’s going to be quite the feat for me to follow up from what I’ve done with Ghost, especially with so many talented people now keeping an eye out on me. Regardless, I will do what I can to foster the creative environment that has sprung up around it as best I can. I will also be trying to set up an FAQ and perhaps some character profiles for people to reference, if just so I can cut down on the number of messages I get in a given day ‘3’;;;.
I guess I’ve rambled on enough about all this at this point. Apologies for all the clutter, I’m not usually that much of a talker, heh.
But yes.
Thank you to my fellow crew mates who helped me make Ghost what it is and thank you to every one of you fans who has come to show your love and support for this video (and the Mystery Skulls!).
I truly appreciate all of you~
<3 <3 <3