ARTIST EXPLORATION: TERMINALMONTAGE

TerminalMontage is a YouTuber who creates animated content centered around mostly Nintendo video-game parodies. His distinct style of animation and comedy makes for a great source of entertainment. On the platform for more than 9 years now, he has developed into one of the major animation YouTubers, accumulating almost 2 million subscribers and millions of views per upload; his most popular videos reaching 25 million views.

Style

TerminalMontage has a particular style blending rather harmless character designs with crazy personalities and actions. His videos are very fast-paced and details in the background are hard to catch on your first watch. He includes some animated gifs for dramatic effect as well. His use of certain SFX also complements his bizarre style. 

Progression

Starting out making second-long animated memes on YouTube, TerminalMontage has progressed into making animated shorts; some reaching the 8 minute mark. In his early years, your able to view some of the animatics  he uploaded, giving you a look at his creative process.

Overall

Overall, I believe TerminalMontage to be the most entertaining animator on the YouTube platform. His animations always always make me laugh. Although the comedic style leans towards the those familiar with games, the style and effort behind each video makes it worth a watch and enjoyable for anyone.

My Favorite of His:

Exploring Free Animation/Graphics Resources

Adobe products are great for art and animation, but they can also be pretty hard on our wallets sometimes. I want fellow animators and artists should know that there are great alternatives to these programs - and you don’t have to pay a dime to use any of them!

Krita

Krita is a program I use all the time. It’s an open source graphics editor, which in my experience can do pretty much anything Photoshop can (you can also make pretty good animations with it!) Luckily there’s plenty of official manuals and instruction videos to learn from on the official website and youtube.

Website: https://krita.org/en/

Example of animation done in Krita:

I use this program frequently, and definitely recommend at least trying it out if you're an artist/animator.

FireAlpaca

FireAlpaca is another program I’ve personally used in the past. It’s simple, but you can make nice art and animations with it.

Website: https://firealpaca.com/

Example of animation done in FireAlpaca:

I prefer Krita now, but this program was great for learning how to make simple animations.

Wick

Wick is another open source animation program. Unlike the others, this one is online (you can download your work for later though). Despite this, Wick is a decent alternative to Animate.

Website: https://www.wickeditor.com/#/

A nice video overview of Wick:

I've been playing around with this one, and it looks promising!

OpenToonz

OpenToonz is another interesting free and open source animation program. This one is well-known for being use by famous animation studios like Ghibli.

Website: https://opentoonz.github.io/e/index.html

Animation made with OpenToonz:

This is just a small sample of all the free programs out there. You can find all sorts of alternative software and other resources on the crowdsource website AlternativeTo:

https://alternativeto.net/

The Midnight Gospel

.. this is stunning.
I'm at a loss for words.

This is a collaboration between Pendleton Ward (Creator of Adventure Time) and Duncan Trussell (Comedian/Podcast Host : The Duncan Trussell Family Hour.)
The impact crater this has left on my senses/being is unimaginable. Is without boundaries.

I am forever grateful art has the power or confluence or however it is best and most properly described to alter how you see the world with such overwhelmingly saturated experience and soaked to the core with the dopamine equivalent of indescribably mind blowing, ego shattering, pan-sensory driven revelations.
Art so good it simultaneously both puts you into and and blinds you to the fact that you are now cycling through the five stages of grief.
Within moments of watching this show I knew it had imprinted on me.
And I honestly got really excited to get to share it with you guys.

The amount of change art can enact is soo amazing.
And these guys knocked it out of the park. :D

Animators have made Propaganda films since the animation industry grew in the second world war. It's what saved Walt Disney's company during the time of financial hardship. Times have changed and propaganda has become a staple of our society. It has indoctrinated us in a specific system. Individuals are using many different platforms to express themselves and creating important thought-provoking art that goes against an agenda.  

David James Armsby is an aspiring film-director and makes animation short films on youtube to showcase his work. I found one of his animations on youtube that had a distinct style and name that made me want to see what it was all about. The title of the animation is called "Model Citizen" | Dystopian Animated Short Film (2020). What caught my attention by the name "Dystopian" is that it will have an anti-propaganda message. The style of the 50s era mixed with future controlled by robots gives this animation an eerily nostalgic feeling. The storyline is very strong and meaningful that it amplified the overall animation.