 where my mind went to is kind of that I think that this medium of YouTube storytelling for animation is still kind of butting so I think a lot of what bloggers can enjoy that we can't is that there's kind of like an established language and I think YouTube animation kind of is an infancy and I know we were talking about like oh people are like copying each other I think that happens because we're still trying to like figure out what works with audiences on YouTube and yeah there's no like old grandmaster that we can look to like oh I guess I think well I guess I'm just like envious of how other content creators can just make like when they make videos they can record things in bulk or even like when they're making one specific video they can they can omit or edit we don't edit we just make things from scratch so we can't we don't have the luxury of having like deleted scenes or whatever it's we have to animate the deleted scene you know so I like having to edit things down but we're just building from the ground up is when YouTubers like they take breaks or like oh I'm gonna be gone for like a week so I have to like both record videos like we can't do that because it's already taken like a long enough to like make our own videos like just the normal ones so when like when we were here James and I we had to like we're gonna be gone for like three weeks not making a video and then our channels gonna like crash and die and we're gonna suffer I think we're gonna be crappy and then so we had to like plan so much in advance where there's gonna be like we filmed a filler kind of drawing video yeah we're drawing iconic yeah my videos drawing iconic characters for memory one more thing to add about the difference between us and other youtubers that don't do animation is that I've heard some like the gamers that say that there's like hundreds of their videos that they're just not proud of they just make it they upload it but like we are proud of every single thing because we put our heart and soul and you know you're not you're not one of your videos I think that's a whole other can of words I think my second video I didn't even know how to export it the right way yeah yeah either way you put your heart and soul into every video no well I had the trick is make like the most garbage so you can do it and upload it and then you can only go up from there low expectation if you make the best thing what are you gonna do next all right let's go to the next one so what's your opinion on the new animation community community that has been growing like since animation has been dead on YouTube for so long and then here we are the budding flowers of animation bring it back what's your opinion on that are you gonna steal our well I like it because like you said it seemed like a dying thing YouTube isn't really notes for us to you know like make stuff but we try to survive I guess we were like the survivors and then people kind of just believe you know that someone like oh they can do it we can do it too much like how we thought we watched other animated like oh we can do it too so they kind of just came out of surprise right now what I didn't even honestly just blow up like the last couple years and I'm just discovering new animators like every day like I met a bunch just here at VidCon yeah like I think it's since it's the animation kind of stuff is so against the YouTube algorithm which is daily videos like 10 minute long videos all this stuff the fact that we're somehow making it work is just like makes people happy what happened that I guess I'm gonna say like we're doing like against all odds making it work people just appreciate that we're not like grinding like can we get like five million likes or whatever like we're just like we're just having fun doing our thing so who cares animates for YouTube or just animates an error I'm like one of my favorite things is like there's like a huge enthusiasm for like making stuff that like wasn't here last year and seeing that's like inspiring I kind of joke too with Alex that like oh god like my replacements are coming but there's a lot of talented people like cropping up and like starting their own like groups of animators and encouraging each other and that makes me super inspired a little bit jealous talented kid but I'm not really happy about this new crop animators yeah I'm insanely happy that that animation is is growing on YouTube again because I remember watching like like all the old people on YouTube like you were after Tony and G and all those guys I wanted to be just like them and I was making videos kind of like them you know they were making short like little skit animations and I guess after the years when YouTube started changing it wasn't favoring their their formula of animation it started moving on to things like watch time and you know engagement stuff like that so you know after a while animation had to evolve and some people didn't come with it and some people did and you can see that it's changing to something more like this where you know there's longer videos more videos and you know videos more personal I like that that they're more personal and we're telling stories and stuff it's all about it's all about us and it's great so I love the community something that I really like about this new way of animation community is that people are starting to put effort into their videos because I don't know like a lot of other YouTubers not calling anyone he just like makes videos he makes videos just to make them then you have to make a video every day so if you have no idea what to make just do one out and so what I really appreciate is that people are now starting to like actually write scripts and edit and put effort into their videos which is something a good fresh change on YouTube and I really appreciate people who do do that so I collaborate with a lot of people who are starting to know animation tips you're like an animation sensei yes senpai let's do the last question if you could go back to when you were just starting YouTube animation what do you wish you knew back then that you know now it's a thicker I wish I knew how to text for videos the right way I didn't even know like you should draw pictures at 1920 by 10 and you should draw pictures by 1920 by 1080 by the way I wish I also like knew kind of some like other tips and tricks because I picked up small things along the way and like I would have been able to go faster I wish I told myself like yeah don't worry about it just have fun which I was so I don't know why you did everything perfect I didn't I don't I mean I wouldn't say anything I'd be like you're good dude yeah I would really say much I wish I just probably learned more about the programs that I was using when I was first starting out because I was kind of just going for it I'm still learning stuff to this day so I'll probably just get more knowledge for me I I and I guess I'm still going through this process but like I'm trying to remind myself or past self that it's okay to be kind of like a little bit bad at first I think a lot of especially when you're in animation and you see like beautiful works from like Disney or like stuff on tv like everything's really polished and I think when you're looking at your screen on your computer and you see like oh this is a stick figure okay it's really easy to kind of like be paralyzed to not keep working but that's kind of like a process so just like get that done and it's gonna be positively mediocre but then you just move on to the next one yeah that's what I thought yeah I pretty much just agree with what everyone said I mean I guess it's yeah like technology I wish I knew some things from shortcuts but I eventually didn't learn on the way so like it's like an experience to just learn something new for the next project because like we don't really get to practice what I'm like I don't really practice animation like each project and it is a practice so if I like messed up something on it then I know what to do for the next one very true I just say like just chill out like when you first start you like you're in the mindset of oh it has to be perfect people are gonna watch this they're gonna judge you on it and like it has to be like the best you can do and I mean you always want to be working like hard and improving but don't like stress because if you're always like you're always going to keep doing it and you're always improved like improvement is going to happen just whether you just like it's just going to happen you don't have really control over it you can like practice more and then just basically just don't worry about it kind of thing like you want us you want to you think that you need to have perfect things like right out of the game but you're gonna learn as you go and just yeah pretty much don't prepare yourself to people around the back all right so that's all my questions so uh the the rest of the time we can just like take questions from you guys and stuff so yeah about 30 or something yeah so like it's really cool meeting you guys here my question is doing line art it just drives me nuts on the computer on traditionally it's fine but doing on the computer with tablet it drives me nuts what strategy do you have to make smooth line art because all of your line art is like nice mine is not no i use tbk well let me wake you up uh so flash has this option to auto smooth lines so you just like select the line it's moving it's moving well hello for someone who doesn't use flash i think from paper to tablet is like really hard especially when you're first starting out what i did was i drew what i wanted on paper i scanned it in and then i was able to just trace over what i wanted to get so i think and also paint tool sign has a pretty cool stabilizer function and i don't know what tablet you're using get a tablet if you get that tablet you're using a mouse and it's like that i'm really curious is this a problem that happens when you're switching or is it just in general with your drawings um with traditional i'm good at learning just i don't know i think i'm good at it i would say practice a lot i think like every time you make a line yeah you're learning like shape language every time you're moving your arm and as soon as you get used to that perfect line it's gonna like click with your brain yeah thank you into like animation and i'm really good at drawing people but um i know you like recommended some tablets and stuff but is it like really hard to animate and also i was wondering if you could take a little bit of comic i drew a big time you mean afterwards but um i i would say i think this was jaden's answer for one of the things is if you were going to get a tablet your very first tablet should be a cheap tablet and you can create professional art with a cheap tablet with the expensive ones just make it easier and faster to work but if you get a cheap tablet then you'll be like practicing you'll see if it's right for you so it's a good idea to start off cheap and then if you like it then maybe upgrade to a better one and yeah i'd love to see your comic thank you um right right now but later i'm answering all the questions look down on your paper right now besides soupway what did you do before you huh besides soupway what i did comics that's one thing besides the dark shadow which will be scared to the most as a kid uh you're saying jumanji that won't happen just hoping to see jumanji besides drawing what's your favorite thing to do what was that favorite thing besides drawing that big game at home i used to play video games on the computer like not even like real video games just like neopads that was being tested are you stuck in the 2000s that's like hi guys so you were talking about like how hard it can be to animate stuff and make videos and stuff like make a script draw an anime and as you're growing as your channel is growing and as you'll need eventually to make more videos do you think having a team like someone who'd draw for you or someone who will edit and animate is it something possible for you because you know they are points out as a real um a really defined style drawing that um some people can't do and so how would you do to explain and teach people how to do it and uh i okay yeah um that's a good question um i i think that having an assistant or animators or editors or people helping you out uh it's a huge help but it's also like a different kind of work you're kind of replacing your um your own like work with like working delegating things to people so it's kind of its own skill set but if you get really good at it um you can get like a really good pipeline going um Alex and I we split the work pretty evenly and you start to learn each other's strengths and weaknesses and slowly like your style starts to look like each other's a little bit um and then yeah hopefully it's all goes well it it helps a lot in getting the content out quicker hi oh okay i just want to make sure that it was good volume okay as a fellow animator i'm just curious this might be your more towards uh jaded doll and chris sorry tony but assistant character drawings mouth drawings in every video like do you have just separate pictures that you import into the software or do you redraw everything for every new video uh in the beginning i used to redraw like every time but over time yeah i was like this is ridiculous i i'm drawing the same guy i might as well just have a symbol to repeat each time so uh for me personally the only thing i recycle is the head and then the body i redraw every single time i'm a little bit different i well i started the same like you draw everything at first and then you're like wow this is i'm drawing the same exact thing every time it's taking a lot of time but i don't have so i have like 12 body positions like pretty normal body positions that i have and i recycle them like when i need a position position and we also for lips sake um we have we draw the like ah e kind of thing uh we there's a plugin for flash called keyframe tagging that gets you yeah it's a life saver all right and you just like shout out to keyframe you have your mouth and then you like as the idea goes you press the button to bring it which like mouth who's drawn like the ah e kind of thing so like instead of drawing it you just like bring it back so it stays consistent am i the only um to move guy yeah you know in your video in the nanocons now for alice and i we work uh a lot with rig characters which helps a lot for like uh like getting in our best case but also like consistency with the characters um if you make a rig character make sure it looks good because you're going to be using it like for nothing and it's not going to change much enough um and then uh we want to make we do a lot of cutaway gags for our videos and that's where we kind of get to flex our like animation like actually drawing for anybody putting muscles um and that's kind of like the only way to make everything look consistent during those like cutaway gags like you really just have to practice your shape so i have a question and i have a question like um so as a high school student like i don't have a lot of time i like to do stuff other than a work on work so how do i like delegate my time kind of help video games and sleep let me add and sleep with us a lot of times just that's cool but like as you know just in high school you can do it as a hobby you know you're not paying the bills or you do like just doing it for fun you know just every day just spend an hour it's fun you know you don't have to be like getting it at international like every week so if you're gonna just as a hobby and just post a video and also that's my kind of happy question yes uh should i create like a character regularly or something yeah the program lets you i mean that'll be time saving yeah and it'll also look more professional um i'm just curious to doubt weren't you making videos on top of your college work during a lot of that when i was still in college i was only doing the the comments so that was the only thing i was balancing but once i graduated that's when i did the animations hi i mean you guys talk a lot about flash and i was wondering if you don't necessarily have the program or the money really um how can what other programs would you recommend to someone who's trying to start out paper uh also open to you guys have an answer um well i remember like this isn't like professional but it was like fun kind of she if you take if you take a like a thing and sticky close up notes okay that's right i like what you can do but some i use is uh i draw really uh program called paint tool side you can pay $40 for it and use paper at once and even like just having windows movie maker you just slide show the drawings i use Adobe Premiere which is something you have to pay for but if you're trying to go for like bare minimum sheet and like windows movie maker we're gonna say also by the way if anyone's looking for a free drawing program fire alfaca is really good for it's like a good paint tool side replacement you can't pay anything wow so yeah fire alfaca i don't we don't at least i don't know any good free animation programs because animation programs are really bulky and stuff i've i heard legend that flash this too might be free but i don't know all right uh so uh i have a question that's uh technically not mine uh alex asked if chris would answer the rest of the questions only speaking japanese hi i'm sure i'm sorry i'll say hi alex to my boss please walk on i guess let's give us a title you guys made that you think made like the biggest impact online your audience and stuff or just like i don't know what was that question like uh video like like that you made that you thought made like a really big impact like did it feel like making a positive impact on other people i've never made any like serious videos all my videos are almost done one story so i haven't really done like serious videos i knew my i've never talked about someone in a video and you know like their channel james gave subway a lot of customers i'm sure i think he gave part-time workers a lot of hope for me more important kind of video talking about like self-confidence and like how you do yourself and i thought it was like more serious serious it's more serious it was more serious than i normally do and i just thought it was an important video to me for people who like me were like chatting like self-confidence and i've gotten a lot of emails saying that it helped them and that was it's just good to do so um yeah one of my questions my question is uh if you ever feel that you need to change your style a lot or you know change the way you draw things what would you what would you recommend doing if you have a real point where you feel that's case you're not happy with your art style right now then just change it i remember even though like when i first started to comment i had characters with skin and clothes and i didn't like it so i just like you know the very nice comment i did the bubble because i wasn't happy with the other thing so if you're not happy with your art i don't know if that i'm understanding the question right but if you're not happy with your style or art then just change it you're not like tying it up and stuff right good draw good draw that's like the animation version of get good yeah sometimes i think my fans like know what i i like i feel deep inside because uh i first i i didn't do like coloring in any of my videos and then one time i tried it and then people were like it's better without coloring them like you're right yeah and that's the way that's for it too so yeah right my my character has been through several different art styles especially if you go back to my old new grounds that's some bad stuff but eventually you'll kind of just find a style where you can't change it anymore it's like that's you now and it's just going to be the one that's easiest for you to draw the one that you're happy with so what i would say like when i first started in youtube if you go back to my very first video so like don't first comment different looking than when i'm from now and i didn't have like any intention on changing it that's just how i drew myself and just over the years it's evolved and gotten better it's like oh i like drawing myself like this so even if you think that it's at the best it can be just more practice and like experimenting and just finding what you like it's gonna eventually like improve over time and then sure yeah they're gonna fight backstage oh they have the bell sticks ready nice now i just wanted to i was kind of curious what is the hardest thing to guys like what's the hardest thing to animate yeah um i'm gonna take tom and he like oh no i can't do a thing in a train station i can't draw a train station i'm just looking to get a reference tomato tomorrow um i don't understand okay get a reference tim like jeez and so i think draw because we're all cartoonists right so i mean maybe if we like tried some frame by frame stuff i think one time i wanted to do like a fire animation frame by frame and they had to look so easy but i had time to actually make it look good so i did yeah usually the hardest thing to make are things we haven't done before so it'll look bad with what you know is practice i would say also real quick um there's nothing that's hard to animate it's just more time consuming because the thing is like you might spend like two hours on like walking or like i remember one time when we spent like 45 like 40 hours no like maybe an hour you're like animating this guy riding a bike and you only see it for like two seconds in the video it's like why do you even bother but the hardest thing for me is making characters blink because it's so unnecessary no one cares about it but i make it and it's like no one cares about one day of war it's just like little stuff like this that takes a lot of time and like only a slight few people who like appreciate animation will notice but i mean it looks good when you put our heart into it so it makes it work good little detail is that you like doing it because if you don't mind doing it it'll show in your work and people will notice and so if you're putting your your passion about it then it'll show in your work so the most important thing is that you like doing it i'd say endurance like you gotta really be in front of the screen for a while it's a pleasure like doing it yeah because you like doing it i think it's important to take breaks if you're working on long projects because sometimes i'll draw a line and i'll just stop in the middle of it and be like hey play some video games for a week first of all uh jane i want to say that i really like the recent video you did about the random thoughts i thought that was hilarious very well done um and my question because you're animators uh if you ever meet voice actors uh how do you find them and uh where do you go for them i mean we have several voice actors who that are interested in animators well i didn't hear the last part of the question um i just said clearly there's several voice actors who that are interested in animators i was gonna say like they come to me so i mean we don't have to look everyone's just like they want to be in our videos and you know we're all looking for new talent and it's great that you know they're coming to us well so you get talented parts so my my kind of practice is because i'm like if you want to collab with someone you'll probably have a good chance of collaborating with me um and what i i kind of like look at your channel and see if you like actually have put in the effort and work into your channel and it's like yeah we can collab and so if you like just send me an email and also like keep this up to dl if if you send me an email and you don't put a link to your channel it's like an automatic no i'm just like you know i'm too busy i say i'm too busy but it's i didn't even look because so i'll like put a link to your channel to want to collab with me and also like make and put in an effort for your videos one of the advantages of having these like story time videos is that you get to put your own voice into it saves a lot of time not having like schedule things so if you're confident with your voice i mean like throw it in there a lot you'll save a lot of time i'm playing i'm playing a lot of uh payday too right now but uh my favorite game is probably uh super smash bros i'm in the hotel we'll play okay i tried downloading it on my uh mac computer once but then they wouldn't like let me download i know this will be good i just kind of like too much stuff on it or again it's just like because sometimes um mac can't just like if you try to download something with the internet sometimes mac can't says that you can't find the actual like person who made them who made the item so i'm uh how do you download fire app i might be the only mac user unfortunately hey i like support as much programs out there with that like pc does like paint till size and on mac i'm like oh so um i think in your settings uh you'll have to google it or something but i guess just find other programs that work like it kind of thing i use clip studio paint if anyone yeah it's okay paint till size better um just like find other alternative programs that work the same way that mac can support kind of thing yeah a lot of the adobe stuff it's like yeah adobe is good it's like supported by everything from last good con when now that you guys are more famous youtubers and you can be inspiring to other youtubers but you see people like you see my go see that's part somebody lost in the water like but you treat them as celebrities you know the best thing that you get how do you guys deal with knowing that people like super inspired you even though that you are you know you're just a person and you do great things but how do you you what is your reaction to it i don't know how i got here like honestly we really don't well i i can't speak for everyone but i don't think i don't see myself as a celebrity just because like i'm just like you're you grow up it's like it's like if you were to imagine like in the year being where we are you're like oh but i'm just me it's like that's me right like james and i have attempted walking to the expo hall because we underestimate how many people enjoy our stuff and we like we got like a little bit farther the first time and then we got swarmed and kicked out and then we like we went backstage and then we tried again and got like maybe 10 yards and get swarmed again and we really appreciate like meeting you guys but we keep underestimate like i also think you guys probably don't realize what goes on behind the scenes like when i say i work in my pajamas like i literally like to stay in my pajamas all day and like go out inside my room so that doesn't really feel like a celebrity to be honest just you know i haven't shaved in a long time you know post the video on my underwear like yeah good yeah people like it so and also like we i guess this could be for all of us for the youtubers like we can go out in the public we can go to grocery stores not grab an ice doll just really here at conventions where we can't go to the expo hall so i forgot the question but we were i really like it i'm not it's really how about me you guys to cut through the noise of a lot of social stuff do you guys are you guys local no we're i'm from erosu so what was the question you cut through the noise basically well i'm sorry it's uh basically if you guys are in town soon great if you want to do the future great do you guys want to come to dreamworks cool but just email me i'll bring alex then you guys at home yeah okay so i'm gonna set the card up and then not be for everybody here just does everyone else invite it too we'll get that one in one second to bring bite everyone in the room so i'm not like okay great like what are we getting out of it if uh for the three people in the room because there were a couple in here do you guys have any thoughts on like you know youtube for 3d since you guys are like super successful going into 2d for all the people doing 3d here like how can they do stuff i think there's like a language that still needs to be developed for it um do you guys know like mommy oh yeah she's like she's like an animated 3d animated vlog channel where she it looks like a normal like youtube vlog but it's what it is and uh you'll have to check out her channel amy yamato but she's a sweetheart so i think it's just like there's no rules to youtube i think it's just that no one's really done it yet it's like a untapped like oil kind of thing so yeah it is interesting i've seen a few here and there and i feel like um it's we've we're it's it's got potential this is four of five actually i have two questions i've been working like speedy fast um so this one's for cheating equations um so since you started out and like i had some difficulty in making stuff for her how did you transition to making your own for her and that was like i uh thank them because without them i don't think i would have made a channel like i don't i didn't like think anyone anything would come with it and that initial like working with them it was an initial like 2000 boost to start off with which is really hard when you're just starting out with scratch and stuff so it was good publicity um we worked together for like eight videos and then i my channel like just got bigger and bigger and i was like having less time to devote to setting my channel aside for them so we kind of just like fell um out of touch not out of touch but i just couldn't set a time aside time to keep working with them so it was just like in gradual i became my independent candidate well we're still friends like i had lunch with them the other day but yeah okay second question this one's more stupid um so james i don't know i should call you that so uh how do you feel about the Jenner marbles and Jackson's drama hashtag corn diamonds some day are keeping the brush for food i i didn't know there was drama going on i mean every dog's a good dog a good dog snack what's up james hi true so um i love you guys by the way when i found out you were subscribed to me james i threw myself out of a window but my question is because um as you guys mentioned before earlier um during the panel is that there are a lot of animators like it's a it's turning into like a really big community and i spend um three-fourths of my life animating and even with that i spend 82% of the time trying to figure out what i can do that hasn't been done yet like original content like just like a video had that like no one's done that's really like video the art what are you guys doing for that i was going to say there's nothing new anymore yeah there's nothing that's original anymore just there's only doing things your way but it's fine to do a video that someone else has done before but in your you know your style and your flavor it's yeah i think it's good to take inspiration from something not completely copied but you know add your own twist to it add your own style to something and it'll be comfortable well and also uh if you the important thing is that you make content that you're proud of and if you're proud that it shouldn't matter if it gets one or a million views and the important things that you like making it and that you have a good time and you're proud of it so