The Death of Puff/Snaboo (Coup De Grace)

You ever just spend about half a year of your life making something and constantly running into narrative headaches, trying to learn a completely new skill set as well as working on a decently sized game for your skill level only to decide that the thing you've spent half a year making isn't really a good idea. No?

Heh, yeah imagine doing that-

Ok so saying that I wasted six months of my life on something like that is a bit of an exaggeration, the skills I learned are useful for Project Cash and for basically most things I want to make. But the point still stands that I worked on something for six months only to decide that it sucked for a variety of reasons and I threw it out. Why? Well, sit down and listen up (or read up I guess) as I tell you a story, one of poor foresight and enough first world problems to make your eyes roll into the back of your skull.

(Also for those wondering yes I was working on Project Cash as well during that time, don't worry that's still coming along nicely :) )

The production of this animated short began around the time the Flumpty video was released. I knew then that the Devlog series would evolve into being an animated series about consumerism and how art is dead and capitalism killed it or something ( I knew basically nothing about these topics at the time, I just really hated Letterboxd). This video was meant to be the first step in that direction. It was basically going to be a bunch of segments which has Puff (the purple guy in the icon of this post, also the main character of the devlogs) tries to decide on what the April fools video should be while also trying to cope with accidentally killing himself and basically respawning like nothing ever happened. For those who don't know the lore of Puff's blog (Not to be confused with this blog, Puff’s blog is a separate blog written from the perspective of Puff, archived here.) Puff is basically stuck inside of this floating thing in space that he can't leave without suffocating to death, he has an indestructible laptop and he sees drones watching him. Adding two and two together Puff realises that his entire purpose in life is to make content until he dies (which is also fuled by the fact he finds out infamous YouTuber Ronald Rizz isn't real, the idea being Puff can't seperate fiction from reality. Which now that I write it like that sounds like the funniest shit ever.) The video ends with him deciding to make the video that he dies in the April fools video. While at the end of that video Puff stares horrified at the video in pitch black darkness horrified rewatching his death, realising that the person he is is based on fiction and not reality.

Now, I know what you're thinking:

...and, well, yeah you're right. I don't think that writing about something like this is bad, I just think the approach I took is bad.

The main flaw in this plan is what I like to call "The Puff Problem". Puff was meant to be the main character of this series and was meant to have a personality and a worldview that is completely different to mine, but he was also meant to be kind of like an outlet for my opinions on media and updates for Project Cash. You see the problem here? If I were to go in this direction then there would always be a section of people who think that Puff is me and that his core personality and flawed worldview is me, which he isn't.

I've never seen this core concept of a normal YouTube show go off the rails with a serious tone done right. Every time it just comes off as either tone deaf or unintentionally goofy. I feel if I went on with this concept it would be the former, and honestly I'd rather do the general concept of consumerism vs art in a different concept (possibly as a theme for a game post Project Cash).

(Also animation is so hard, oh my god. It takes so long to make something that looks nice, made me respect animators on an entirely new level after that.)

I had the idea for this project dating back to 2020, the incarnation I was gonna make that this episode became dating back to early 2023, I regret not making it sooner. I have no regrets with spending six months making this though, or cancelling it. I think the best thing you can do if you're making stuff is failing. There's an Extra Credits video (back when they were good) called Failing Faster, the entire concept behind it being that testing out ideas and failing quickly is good as you can see what works and what doesn't. While six months isn't exactly quick, deciding "nah, I don't wanna make this" is something that I think is ok. There's been this webcomic I've had an idea for a while and I think that now that I've learned that you should start on your ideas as quickly as possible I'm gonna start writing it.

As for YouTube, I wanna start making videos again. I'm gonna move Puff away from being a character and rather just use him to represent me because I still like the design. I don't know what they'd be about (more devlogs probably) but I'll think of something. Expect more soon :).