What A Cartoon! - Homestar Runner "Strong Bad Email: Army / The Jail Cartoon"

I'm in my upper mid 20s now, and I remember when I was in elementary school my mom told me that she was talking to a teacher and they recommended I check out a website called www.homestarrunner.com . I immediately was like, oh I guess this is an educational thing, spent maybe a minute on the site and closed it because I didn't want to bother finding out what made it educational. Oops. but when the telltale games came out I did play them because I'd been playing all their stuff since the Sam & Max ones they released, and honestly I think the homestar runner episodes were maybe my favourite, even if I wasn't in on the universe. They were pretty fun!

I feel like the Chapman brothers also didn't have lots of the baggage that persist in lots of the 2000s era flash animators from that day since they were willing to work for larger studios even in smaller roles. Many of those animators from these days have seemed to abandoned animating since it isn't profitable on social media by becoming media personalities or just work as hardcore freelancers.

SilkiePJ

Flash IS still used in television animation at studios such as Titmouse. Its prevalence really fell off a cliff over the last several years but it's becoming competitive with ToonBoom now that Adobe has actually tried to remedy (some of) the problems with the program and add more features particularly to aid with television production. Somehow I've managed to exclusively be a Flash animator my whole career without having to learn a different program (yet). You're right about Newgrounds animators now working in television. Also, my wife has always been obsessed with Homestar! I was late to it as well, not watching any until 2010 or so in college. Me being a big fan of TMBG by then helped a lot. I was first introduced to it in 6th grade by an art teacher, but thought at the time she was condescending to me haha Regarding Adult Swim, they did approach the Chapman brothers to develop a Homestar Runner series in the late 2000's and apparently they couldn't come to a consensus with Adult Swim on the format of the show. Btw, I was in the 2015 Halloween fan costume video dressed as Strong Bad.

Daran

It's awesome you guys made an episode about Homestar Runner. It was the first web series I was ever a fan of and I was super into it throughout middle school. During my freshmen year of high school I was super jealous to find out one of my classmates had their email read by Strong Bad, which convinced me to write one as well. I asked why he always wore a mask, and of course it was never read. Still, I'm glad I gave it a shot when it was still a frequent thing.

Luke Baty

Thank you guys for this episode. Homestar Runner was a huge part of my late college and early work career days. Watching the weekly cartoon was a routine that always brightened my day, even though I stopped watching around 2009 or so. Honestly, while I appreciate the Brothers Chapman’s strive to not sell out, HSR could have been ridiculously huge. Like Minecraft huge. The funding for the Trogdor game shows that. Some fun facts about Flash since I’m a graphic program geek aka graphic designer. It was originally developed by Macromedia as an offshoot of their software Shockwave. That’s why in the early days we’d call it “Shockwave Flash”. Macromedia was Adobe’s biggest rival, and when Adobe bought them out quite a few people were annoyed that Adobe now had a monopoly in graphic design software. I loved Flash because I always wanted to make cartoons as a kid, but like anything you had to really put the time in to make anything good. Flash made animation super easy though, and it has to be responsible for a lot of talented creators today due to its accessible toolset.

Christopher McDougall

Boy did this stir up my nostalgia for the Web 1.0 era. Low bit-rate audio and all. When you guys we're talking about the "chan culture" that pervaded that era, it reminded me of an observation I heard someone once tell me. People who grew up in that culture in the late-2000s to early 10s either became 1.) Nazis, 2.) "centrists" who sympathize with said Nazis or 3.) big time lefties. As a recovering Chan-ite who thankfully became a part of the third group, I think that observation is quite apt considering the online people I follow or used to follow but don't anymore for obvious reasons.

KaiserBeamz

Thank you guys for doing this episode! I always loved how the webpage itself had elements of a text adventure game. As you clicked on random things you could the explore the world of HSR more and more.

docbrownn

I played the Telltale Batman game and my favourite thing to do was select "(say nothing)" every time it was Batman/Bruce's turn to speak, because the other character would just keep talking and talking in response to him saying nothing at all

nina matsumoto

I got hooked on Homstar Runner via my best friend when we were in college in 2002. I thought Strong Bad in particular was pretty damn funny but my friend would be in tears laughing because Strong Bad sounded almost exactly like his dad, right down to those little grumbles. We got a lot of mileage out of that website, but it's a littler bittersweet now. Less than 4 years ago my friend's dad was stricken with ALS and passed away about two years later, so I always think of him now when I encounter Strong Bad. It's not all sad though, as he was able to set aside some money that went to my best friend that he and his wife used for IVF, after years of struggling with miscarriages, and have recently welcomed twin girls into their life as a result. And yes, I totally backed that Trogdor board game out of pure nostalgia. It should come out this summer.

Joe Hodgson

Cute story time: In the days when HSR was ramping up in popularity, I ordered a Strongbad shirt from their website for a friend's birthday; a fellow Strongbad Email fan. Some time had passed between the order and the shirt shipping, and I thought to follow up just to make sure an error had not occurred. Somehow (maybe in the order email?) I had a phone number I could call . . . so I did. I ended up speaking with a VERY nice man about how popular the show had gotten, and how his TWO SONS were the creators. Yes, the person fulfilling the t-shirt orders was the creators dad. He and his wife were prepping orders out of the basement of their house, and were trying very hard to keep up. It was very sweet, he was wonderfully talkative, and very proud of his boys. Too adorable.

RyoGeo

So glad you made a show on Homestar Runner. I erroneously thought this show would have never made the cut. I distinctly remember these days of flash animation, and would ANTICIPATE new HSR episodes, especially Strongbad Emails.

RyoGeo

Your*

Kris

What's you're opinion on the Teen Girl Squad?

Kris