So the day before yesterday, two animated music videos popped up on Twitter at about the same time for me.

“Freak of the Week” by Freak Kitchen, animated after a $140k Kickstarter campaign by the dude who draws ‘Blacksad’ and a few other Disney feature veterans…

…and “Ghost” by the Mystery Skulls, animated for an unknown budget by “Mysteryben27” and a few other folks.

A hell of a lot more people were retweeting the Mystery Skulls video than the Freak Kitchen video, myself included.

I find myself thinking about why this is. Because clearly the Freak Kitchen video is “better” animation, right? There’s a lot more attention paid to any individual frame, the motion is beautiful and fluid. The Mystery Skulls video’s animation is often crude even by the standards of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons it borrows from. (The individual drawings are pretty good – but there are so few of them!)

And yet. The Freak Kitchen video is just “hey here are some caricatures of the band rocking out”. It switches back and forth between animation and stock footage; in terms of narrative, it’s little more than a standard video made with lots of shots of the band playing. Nothing really happens – there’s no tension built up about whether or not these leering musicians will be destroyed by the molten metal involved in their cartoon stage presentation. The Mystery Skulls video, on the other hand, is presented in a consistent style from start to finish, and has a narrative. It’s very much intertwined with the music – everything bounces to the beat, its action riffs off the lyrics – but it adds a whole new layer of story to the song. Halfway through when it hops into a flashback and gives you a reason this skeleton dude is pursuing these Scooby-Doo parodies, it may even become somewhat emotionally affecting. The Freak Kitchen video never reaches for that; at the end, all it has to sum itself up with is ‘the band leader was imagining a really cool stage show and now they go play for real’.

On the micro level of frame-by-frame animation, the Freak Kitchen video is far superior. Juanjo and his crew are into drawing these dudes rocking out, this animation has really been loved on. But on a macro level, the Mystery Skulls video is the one that wins, with its attention paid to story, character, and the occasional gag.

As always: pour all the care and craft you like into a drawing, but ultimately, when dealing with any form of art in sequence, it’s story that carries the day.

Today Nick came over in the morning. We went to the farmer's market, then rented a car for a few hours to haul the last wave of Kickstarter packages to the post office. The post office was supposed to come pick them up yesterday, but never showed. Even though I paid 'em $20 to supposedly come at a particular time.

We also ran up to Northgate for some sewing supplies for my coat upgrade. And because he'd left something there that he was bringing to my place, and was afraid he might have left at the bus stop.

After lunch, we went back to my place and lounged in the living room for a while. He puttered on the net, I played some more Amalur for a while. At one point “famous people who share your birthday” came up, and he found out that in addition to sharing P. T. Barnum's birthday, I also share Bill Watterson's. Which was cool. I'd known about Barnum since I was a kid but that was new.

We also played the latest version of Ascencion, which was pretty fun. I ended up winning 107-70something, not bad for a few mistakes in the beginning and not playing any version in a good while.

And now I am lying alone in my bed listening to a neighbor practice their bongos. They have been joined tonight by a flute. It is simultaneously charming and annoying, and is kind of the price of living in the university district, really. (Also the drummer's playing is significantly more complex than when I first started hearing their evening sessions – hooray for the power of practice!)

Tomorrow I will probably do some combination of working on the coat, dealing with non-Kickstarter packages that have backed up while I dealt with the KS, and writing Rita.

Today Nick came over in the morning. We went to the farmer's market, then rented a car for a few hours to haul the last wave of Kickstarter packages to the post office. The post office was supposed to come pick them up yesterday, but never showed. Even though I paid 'em $20 to supposedly come at a particular time.

We also ran up to Northgate for some sewing supplies for my coat upgrade. And because he'd left something there that he was bringing to my place, and was afraid he might have left at the bus stop.

After lunch, we went back to my place and lounged in the living room for a while. He puttered on the net, I played some more Amalur for a while. At one point “famous people who share your birthday” came up, and he found out that in addition to sharing P. T. Barnum's birthday, I also share Bill Watterson's. Which was cool. I'd known about Barnum since I was a kid but that was new.

We also played the latest version of Ascencion, which was pretty fun. I ended up winning 107-70something, not bad for a few mistakes in the beginning and not playing any version in a good while.

And now I am lying alone in my bed listening to a neighbor practice their bongos. They have been joined tonight by a flute. It is simultaneously charming and annoying, and is kind of the price of living in the university district, really. (Also the drummer's playing is significantly more complex than when I first started hearing their evening sessions – hooray for the power of practice!)

Tomorrow I will probably do some combination of working on the coat, dealing with non-Kickstarter packages that have backed up while I dealt with the KS, and writing Rita.