Tactical thinking! Mainstream? (Patreon)

Chase made this comment in the Ad rev kerfuffle  post and I'd like to make a new post about it and my response to it because it got me thinking (sorry Chase, hope you don't mind).

Chase: "YouTube's business model itself is a problem. In 2014 it had $4 billion in revenue yet made zero profit. The longer YouTube is in a profit vise, the more it will feel a need to squeeze its content makers to part with less profit, too.

Content is seriously hard to monetize. The major movie studios treat films the way venture capitalists treat startups, for instance; they expect to break even on some, lose on others, and have one or two blockbusters that account for 99% of their profit. Of course, if you're a content guy and you're not on one of the blockbuster teams, you won't be sharing in much of the profit the studios or blockbuster teams enjoy, though. Ends up being feast or famine.

Have you ever considered coming up with a character/series/angle that would appeal to a mainstream audience and serve as a breakout character/series... A chance to have a blockbuster of your own? Lots and lots of artists hone their craft in lesser known areas and make little money, until they craft that breakout act that suddenly gets huge and lines their pockets.

I guess there's the risk it ruins it for you, too. Some artists love their breakout characters, but some of them come to hate them and resent them, especially if they watered things down too much to go mainstream. They end up being known solely for this one huge breakout act, and everything else they do before and after gets treated as irrelevant by most of the public.

I see you going for the low intensity, longer content dialogue-based setups with only a few background changes, and I keep thinking "Seinfeld." The characters are basically always in Jerry's apartment, the diner, or one or two other settings, and it's all dialogue (I guess that's most sitcoms, come to think of it. The characters are usually all at the couch or the table at home, talking. Maybe one scene in the yard or at work or upstairs). The reason Seinfeld blew up so huge was because it was satire of everyday situations that regular people could relate to.

Or if you look at successful cartoon sitcoms (Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park), they're all similar things: making fun of everyday situations or current events. This is where most of the money is in show/series-style entertainment.

You have all the tools to make a cartoon sitcom work (recurring characters dealing with exaggerated versions of problems regular people deal with)... if you wanted to do it. Maybe a mainstream-friendly blockbuster series is something to mull over?"

Thanks Chase, these are good comments.  I think about this often.  

I started writing a fantasy series that would have mainstream appeal, in the way that the second half of Harry Potter, or The Hunger Games does.  It was good practice to write it but I don't think it was "the one".  It wasn't terrible either but to bring it to life I'd need years of commitment and I decided I didn't have it in me.

I think my own sensibilities reside in the mainstream when it comes to action adventure, magic, fantasy, hero's journey that sort of thing, not so much sitcoms.  In other words I wonder if I have the ability to write comedy that is funny to a mainstream audience.  I think I could write something that was more of an action/drama story (not a humorless one of course) that would have some popular appeal.  Actually bringing something like that to life as a single animator is challenging to say the least, whereas situational conversation pieces with some reuseable assets is possible, so I think your suggestions are solid.

I sometimes wonder if Fernando, Gooseman and their world could be successful if I could write them the right way, or if they could never be greater than niche.  I still think the best thing I have written is this massive half hour story with them in it, but again its in the action fantasy realm and would probably take me 18 months minimum to make.  I tried to write it so it's accessible to a viewer who knows nothing about them.  I'll make it some day!

I started to write a conversational thing featuring them only last month.  It starts at a costume party in the Manwhore Industries  building where Gooseman is trying to pressure music journalists to write about Fernando but predictably I ended up with a 2000 word sprawl featuring sedatives, blood letting and lizard summoning.  

So yeh, I vacillate on these questions.   I do try to strike a balance between keeping characters going that I think are worth continuing and trying new things.  I think your comment implicitly suggests I should think more tactically, and agree that I should too, and I have been in my own way, but perhaps I have arrived at the wrong conclusions.  I think sometimes I delude myself in thinking things like Bruce Wizard and Sweet Boy Beach will be compelling to more than a small percentage of people.  Certainly the Fernando story I'm animating now does not have a lot of mainstream appeal.

Thanks again for your comments.  If anyone else would like to share their opinion on this topic I'd like to read it.