It turns out one way to get views really quickly on GoAnimate is to create an animation called How to Get Views, The Evil Genius Way! The first episode received more than 240 views, 37 comments and 19 favorites and was a staff pick in the first four days of release. It's one of my fastest moving animations, in terms of popularity, since the first episode of my infamous The Bikini Proposal.
This new series currently features two diabolical schemes to artificially crank up the views on their creators newly completed animations. Unfortunately, as with all evil schemes, they just don't pan out the way they're supposed to.
This series of mine was inspired by a random forum post I wrote on GoAnimate's message boards as a response to Uchiha7 who asked the question How do you guys like Ludvig II, showtime, RG, Coady and others get so many views???
My response went like this:
I shouldn't tell you this but... Ludvig II has a mountain top castle that is home to 1000 peasants who farm the land in exchange for a free computer on which they must view every animation Ludvig puts out at least once.
Showtime has theater in which he has installed 2000 computers that show his animations to patrons 24/7. For every view patrons get an entry into his 'Most popular viewer' competition, which will be awarded to the viewer who has viewed the most showtime animations.
Random Girl has an underground lair where she has networked 3000 computers and 3000 robotic rabbits who watch her animations continuously. In their spare time the rabbits plan world domination and hope Random Girl will lead them to salvation and electric carrots.
Coady, has taught all the pensioners within a 50 mile radius of his home how to use a computer. 1. Click on Coady's GoAnimate Profile. 2. Click on any of the animations on the profile page. 3. Repeat step 1.
Of course I could be wrong... Maybe they just share their animations around a lot (on external sites, this forum and more) and work really hard to improve their animations so those people who do watch get to know that they are people who make great animations so they keep coming back for more.
Note: Apologies to Ludvig II, Showtime, Random Girl and Coady for revealing your secrets (it's all in fun) but honestly, it's just easier to pay Nicolas to artificially crank up the views on every animation - that's all I do (that's how GA makes its money!) ;-) LOLGoAnimate's CEO and co-founder, Alvin, found the post so funny that he suggested I should turn it into an animation. Which started the ball (or at least my ideas) rolling. Rather than just reproduce the jokes that I'd already made public I decided to come up with some new schemes.
The first was inspired by the infinite monkey theorem that suggests if you give a monkey a typewriter and allow it to hit keys at random for an infinite amount of time it's almost certain it will, at some point, reproduce a given text such as Shakespeare's plays. That's really all you need to know...
The second scheme is a follow on from the first but is also inspired by that classic scene from the 1939 Movie, The Wizard of Oz, where the wicked witch is urging her flying monkey army forward to foil Dorothy's efforts to reach the Emerald City (see image right). There's not much more you need to know other than, if you're an Evil Genius looking to buy a monkey army, don't buy ones that can recite Shakespeare. Those monkeys are rubbish!!
As a final word on these two episodes I wanted to mention that both contain quite a few custom props and backgrounds (see if you can spot them). People rarely comment on my customizations because they tend to blend in rather than stand out. It's a little like a Hollywood movie in that regard. If you don't notice the effect and instead focus on the story then the effects have done their job really well.