No Mouths?!/Transcript


 * Rebecca Parham: Hello my geeks and peeps, my explainers and entertainers, my little oodle lollies. Rebecca Parham here. Wow. There's a lot of you now. I mean, before I posted my last video, How to Creep Out Your Favorite YouTubers at Conventions, I had what I thought was an unrealistic goal of hitting 30k before Vidcon, and now... Well! You guys shot that all the pieces! Now, we're closer to hitting 100,000 subscribers before Vidcon, and I am BEYOND ecstatic. You guys really are the best. Thank you so much for making these last few weeks so exciting and just game-changing for me. But with this influx of fresh faces and new eyes on my content, naturally you guys are asking a lot of questions And I'm here to address them. So let's jump on in and answer some of the most common questions and comments I get.


 * Fan #1: Why don't any of your animated characters have mouths?!
 * Rebecca Parham: I've seen people get angry about this one. "BECCA! Why don't you just draw a mouth? Takes like two seconds!" WHAT? you're going to put Gromit down because he doesn't have a mouth?! What about Marvin the Martian? Is he less cool because he doesn't have a mouth? Are you gonna undermine the awesome power of Bill Cipher because he is mouthless?! Nah, I'm just joshing you guys. I had a theatre teacher that once said he loved Gromit from Aardman Studios' Wallace and Gromit because you could understand everything he is thinking and feeling just from that magnificent brow. Something about that observation just stuck with me, and I carried it into my work. There are many different ways you can convey a character's thoughts and emotions: through the eyes, through body language, and strong storytelling poses, and depending on the stylization of your animation, you can really push the boundaries of your characters emoting. I've always liked animating eyes, and not having to animate lipsync gives me more time to come up with livelier poses for my animation. Just boil it down to style choices, personal preference, and cutting corners where I can to please the YouTube algorithm.
 * Fan #2: What's the answer to the riddle from this video?
 * Rebecca Parham: I probably should have made a video addressing this because nearly every new comment on this video is people trying to answer the riddle. and the most common answer is "Mabel." Guys, I said in the poem that Mabel is not the answer.
 * Fan #3: Yeah, you were probably just messing with us or trying to psyche us out or something. Of course you'd leave the answer in plain sight! I still say it's Mabel.
 * Rebecca Parham: The answer is "dolls."
 * Fan #3: What?
 * Rebecca Parham: Dolls. The answer of "dolls." In the poem, I said Mabel's name was a key and that you need to remember this phrase. Those are the two most important aspects of solving this riddle. Well, the alphabetic numbers of the letters in Mabel are 13, 1, 2, 5 and 12. And if you go to the 13th, 1st, 2nd, 5th and 12th letters in this special phrase, they spell out the word "dolls."
 * Fan #3: Oh... Well, why dolls?
 * Rebecca Parham: Because this puzzle was a gift for my sister and she's terrified of dolls.
 * Fan #3: *laughs*
 * Rebecca Parham: Originally someone got the answer within about an hour of me posting the video, and true to my word I pinned it to the top of the comment section. But I think everyone commenting on her comment afterwards got a little overwhelming and I think she deleted it. Which I guess is understandable.
 * Fan #4: What software do you use?
 * Rebecca Parham: For animation I use Flash, which is now called Animate these days. But that style of animation is still referred to as Flash Animation, so really, Adobe, what was the point? But there is other software that I use to make my animated videos as well. I draw all my keyframes in Photoshop because I draw better in Photoshop than in Flash, I've been recording all of my audio on Audacity lately, and I edit everything together in Premiere Pro. Also, I can press all those giant video files in Adobe Media Encoder and Handbrake.
 * Fan #5: Why don't you have more subscribers?
 * Rebecca Parham: Yaaww, you. :3 Golly gee willikers! I ask myself that question every day.
 * Fan #6: You pronounced flan wrong in this video!
 * Rebecca Parham: Yeah, that was part of the joke. I actually went to several dictionary websites, and when I press that little sound button, you know, the "say it out loud" button, they all pronounced it /flan/. Which confused the heck out of me because, like a lot of you guys, I've heard it said flAHn many times before. But I went with flan because comedic mispronunciation is funny to me.
 * Fan #7: Why am I only now just finding you?
 * Rebecca Parham: That's a good question and I think the answer is with Jaiden's collaboration on that last video, the YouTube algorithm is finally starting to associate my videos with creators who produce similar content. People like Jaiden or TheOdd1sOut or TimTom. I've been creating content for years with a very slow climb in subscribers. But thanks to bigger YouTubers who believe in me, more of you are able to see my stuff, and that's pretty awesome!
 * Fan #8: Was Kid President really that awful?
 * Rebecca Parham: Bleh, okay umm.. Heh... Yeah, that one's on me. For those who don't know, in my 2015 Vidcon recap I recreated a moment that happened at the exhibitor party when I was playing video games with a friend of mine. Kid President came up behind me and started smack talking my bad gaming skills. Now one of the principles of animation is exaggeration, and that means pushing poses and facial expressions and emotions past realism to create more entertainment value, visual appeal, and contrast. Trying to escape that dreaded Uncanny Valley. But in my attempts to be an effective animator and exaggerate the emotions for entertainment sake, I think I portrayed Kid President in an unfavorable light. Truthfully in that situation him smack-talking me and joshing me for my bad gaming skills was really more lighthearted. All in good fun, you know? He's still a good kid so don't let my bad storytelling ruin your opinion of him. If I could go back and animate that scene again, I would change his expression from this... ... to this. See the difference?
 * Fan #9: What's up with your friend Ami from the 2016 VidCon Recap?
 * Rebecca Parham: I've been asking that question too, and I think it's just really good moisturizer. TomSka agrees.
 * Fan #10: Jaiden only said, "Ah!" in your How to Creep Out Your Favorite YouTubers video!
 * Rebecca Parham: I know! And she sent me like 20 seconds of her just going "Ah!" over and over again.
 * Jaiden Animations: Ah! Ah! Aah!
 * Rebecca Parham: I tell you what, it was hard to choose which was the best take, because that girl knows how to be startled. She also did this!
 * Jaiden Animations: Hey. Hey, Rebecca. Love you. Bye! Can't wait to see you at VidCon!
 * Rebecca Parham: Aww, Jaiden, you squishy little butter biscuit! I squeeze you! :3 TomSka sent over some pretty interesting audio too.
 * TomSka: Hey Rebecca! I hope these lines are okay! I've got a cold. I hope that doesn't come out of the recording! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Why am I on the bottom? *chuckles* ...bottom.
 * Rebecca Parham: Alright Explainers and Entertainers, I think that's all I can answer for right now. But if you guys want to see me answer more of your questions, then let me know in the comment section below. Maybe we can make this an ongoing series for a little bit. Thank you so much for tuning in but now I got a tune out. Bye!