If you don’t know Jason Windsor’s name, you really should. He is the creator of the viral “End of Ze World” video that you undoubtedly saw if you were a sentient internet user in 2003. Often cited as one of the first viral videos, that 94-second, Flash-animated masterpiece explored how the world might end via nuclear apocalypse. With the aid of hilarious accents and lighthearted portrayals of how key international players might react to all out war, it quickly gained a cult following, and was endlessly quoted throughout the web.
How interesting, then, that in 2018, the actual end of the world seems closer than ever, and our foreign relations are more fraught than ever, thanks to the well-covered actions and rhetoric of a certain US President and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. Luckily, the possibility of the end times comes with an animated sequel, entitled “End of Ze World: Probably for Real This Time!” It sounds about right, and the new short is around 4 minutes long and pieces apart some of the very same issues that freak out much of America today, like climate change, domestic terrorism, the opioid crisis, and a lot more. In order to make sense of it all, The Dot and Line caught up with Windsor ahead of a live Q&A he’s hosting February 24 on YouTube to discuss his approach to animation, voice acting, doomsday prepping, and whether or not he thinks we’re definitely going to blow ourselves up.
The Dot and Line: So it’s 15 years after the original, what made you decide now was the right time to make a sequel?
Jason Windsor: I’d kind of been watching 2017 progress in dismay, along with half the country I feel like (the other half, of course, is celebrating), and I’d had a couple people reach out and ask about my thoughts on it all.
I don’t know exactly what it was that made me decide “OK, I’m gonna do this,” but it’s definitely a response to current events.
How has your approach to animation changed since the 2003?
It’s changed a little bit, I like to think my animation chops have improved! [Laughs.] My day job is making animated explainer videos, so I work in AfterEffects pretty much every day.
Not so much Flash anymore, it’s kind of a dying program, unfortunately. I still used Flash (or, Animate as it’s now called) to do all of my animation, but it’s a little bit buggy. Actually, about midway through production on this video, I had a crash and lost just about everything.
Since then I backed up multiple times, and I found out what I needed to do was make individual scenes, and export those to AfterEffects. That’s where I added the voiceover and still images as well.
So it’s still a one-man show! What was your storyboarding and script situation like?
I tried to emulate the original process, which was like, record the video all in one go. No storyboards, but I did write a script. I tried not to spend much time on the artwork, just kinda moved through pretty quick. I spent a lot more time on the script, probably went through about 6 or 7 versions before I landed on what’s there.
For the animation there’s definitely some parts where I spent a little more time and had little more fun because I like animation, but I also tried to keep the simplicity and even rudimentary style.
How about your voice acting? Any influences or notable experience you pulled from?
I didn’t have any formal training. I’ve done a little acting, but it mostly comes from my dad always doing goofy voices when we were kids. I just grew up doing voices and accents.
The accent for “The End of the World”—I’ve been asked about that a lot actually! One of me and my friend’s favorite movies at the time was Rounders, and John Malkovich has this character with a vague, crazy accent. I kind of attribute it to that, but there’s no real rules.
What are your goals for this video?
It’s a side project. What I’d love to do is to produce short content, in the same style would be cool. Like, deep dives into relevant topics, especially if there’s disagreement or confusion. There are some potential topics that I’d like to unpack, like climate change would be really cool. But it’s really hard to wade into, for a lot of reasons.
In this country right now, the biggest thing holding us back right now is the polarization. We’re really divided, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and I’m critical of this administration because they’re feeding into it.
I just think it’s a squandered opportunity, and I think we can accomplish what we need to. I think there’s a way to come together, and it doesn’t require turning everyone into a liberal, or convincing one side that the other is always right. I think there’s a middle way.
Are we going to see an “End of Ze World” series?
Nothing’s in the works at the moment. I hope to retain some viewership or at least monetize a little bit.
Because I didn’t do any of that with the first one, it was just something I created that was passed around between my group of friends, and someone posted it somewhere that eventually got picked up by one of the flash-video curation sites.
Youtube’s changed so much, there’s entire livelihoods based around channels now. There’s so many analytics to be considered now, that weren’t even really conceived of in 2003. So I tried to be sensitive, or, y’know, there were some considerations I did make for this one. I didn’t want to alienate anyone.
But moving forward, I am thinking of doing a live Q&A on Youtube, so I’ll keep you updated on that! Mostly answering questions about this video and the old video, but there will probably be a little political commentary as well.
Aside from that no, no deals with Amazon or anything like that. But an “End of Ze World” feature or Netflix series or something would be really cool!
How did you get into animation?
I was always kind of dabbling in animation, and live action. We’d always make movies as kids, we’d take my mom’s big VHS camcorder from work and just go for it. I got into really rudimentary stop motion early on, I was making stop motion movies with Legos and things like that. I can’t remember what year it was…2000 or 2001, but Lego came out with this Steven Spielberg kit that came with a little webcam and this really simple stop-motion software, and I got deep into that. I sort of got into Flash afterwards, I was learning it when I made the original, for web design actually.
Even before that though, I would take drawings off my computer, I think I made them in Paint? I’d put them in a really early version of Powerpoint and just hold down the play button so it would move really quickly through the slides. I know there were better ways to do that, even then. But was a great way to learn about framerate, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
What’s your setup look like?
With the original, everything was drawn with a traditional mouse. Just a regular, right-click/left-click computer mouse. But now I have a Wacom tablet that I use. Not like their Cintiq or anything, just the medium-sized one. Right now I work from home, and we have two kids so we’re all kind of crammed in here. But, tablet, standing desk, Macbook Pro is pretty much my home office at the moment.
How do you decide whether or not a scene or joke “works”?
There were a few gags that didn’t make it into this video. I screened it with just a few folks, fellow “brainwashed liberals,” so there wasn’t a ton of revision on it. But I did pull a few things out, I can’t remember exactly what they were, stuff that seemed too “on the nose” or too one sided. I tried to avoid pot shots, but the president can kind of bring that out in us. If he just didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t even be a thing!
But I try to watch through a lot of times, and go with my initial reactions. I’m the type of person who can go back and kind of continually revise unnecessarily, but I think there’s a lot to be said for the first reaction. If it feels good, it’s probably right.
I think they were just thinking “If we use the same dude, and do the same thing, and put Nike stuff on it, it’ll go viral!” And of course it didn’t.
What are some of your favorite cartoons? Or other shows that have inspired you?
There are a few influences or references I could talk about. It hurts my productivity if I watch stuff when I work, but I’ll put on Adventure Time while I’m working, just to have in the background. I think during production on this one, I went through most of Adventure Time, I went through all of Samurai Jack, including the new one.
Actually, the very beginning of this video where I say “crazy fires” there’s kind of a vague reference to the intro of Season 5 where everything’s burning…because oh my gosh, what a gorgeous series. Genndy Tartakovsky [its creator] is a huge influence of mine. I’ve watched almost all his stuff. When I was young, Dexter, Powerpuff Girls, of course Samurai Jack were all favorites.
These days, one of the shows my daughter watches is Sarah & Duck, I think it’s produced by BBC. Lots of stuff talks in the show, like umbrellas and shallots, and one of the things that talks is the Moon and other planets. They have, like, really deep voices, and I kind of tried to emulate the Sarah & Duck Moon for the Earth in this video. It’s a really cute show.
I’m trying to think of the other things I watch, I guess Rick and Morty and…I’m trying to remember others, I went through quite a bit! I guess influences when I was a kid…I watched all the cartoons. A lot of NickToons: Doug, Rocko’s Modern Life, Hey Arnold, Rugrats, all of those. A lot of the Cartoon Network stuff too, a little later on.
One of the earliest cartoons I remember watching was Thundercats, I was super into Thundercats. I want to say it was one of the first shows to use depth of field? Maybe don’t quote me on that though. [Laughs.]
Any advice on how to create a viral video?
That’s like the ultimate question, isn’t it? Right up there with “what is the meaning of life?” [Laughs.] There was definitely a period of time after the original video of like “how do we do this?” And especially when I got out of school and more into the marketing side, everyone was like “what’s the equation to make a viral video?”
One of the first gigs that I got was with Wieden+Kennedy, they’re the ad agency for like Nike, Old Spice. They’re out of Portland. They’re a pretty big one. They hired me to do a few spots for this Nike clothing line. They wanted me to do the same thing. The animation was kind of similar, I did a voice that was kind of similar. They were OK…I don’t know. They weren’t that funny, and they definitely didn’t have that viral response. I think they were just thinking “If we use the same dude, and do the same thing, and put Nike stuff on it, it’ll go viral!” And of course it didn’t.
As far as advice, I don’t know. For the original video, there was no intent behind it, other than to make something funny for me and my friends to laugh at. So I was just really making something like, “Oh, this is funny to me, this is funny to me, and this is funny to me.”
I think you just have to disconnect from any sort of expectation, and just make stuff that you like. Make stuff from your childhood. Make stuff that is important to you, and not everyone will agree with it. But it’s a lot of the stuff that’s really true, really organic, really innate that we connect to and find funny and shareable. You just gotta make stuff.
Your ending is fairly optimistic, but do you think we’re headed towards the end of the world?
I’m definitely nervous, the stuff going on with North Korea is certainly scary. Comparatively, it does feel a little bit scarier now, at least for people in our generation. I’ve heard my dad talk about “duck and cover” drills, and I don’t think we’ve gotten to that point. But, then again Hawaii just had a false missile alarm, and…can you imagine going through that? I am still optimistic, but yeah, it’s still a little scary.
So no doomsday prepping at the moment?
Yeah, well I’ve got my bunker going in the back…
Really!?
No. [Laughs.] No, I’m not really doing anything like that. Sometimes I do think, “Oh, I should just take my kids and my family and move to the woods somewhere where nothing bad can happen to us because the world is going crazy!” But you can’t really think about all that stuff because it’s not useful. You can’t fix it all. It’s a weird thing to there to be this kind of threat to our existence, but you still have to go to work and go to this meeting. But I’m kind of trying to just ignore it. And joke about it, of course.
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