Interview: Mike Booth of somegreybloke

On YouTube somegreybloke is creating quite a following. His animated Vlogs are currently subscribed to by over 7,400 people and his channel on YouTube has been viewed over 63,000 times. We had a chance to ask the UK animator Mike Booth a few questions about his videos, and his thoughts on online video. Here's what he had to say:

CamcorderInfo: What type of videos do you create?

Mike Booth: I do animated character comedy. The character is a guy whose only social interaction is via internet, mainly through the vlogs he makes.

CCI: What made you originally start doing online video?

MB: I thought it would be fun to create an animated character who responds to videos put on the internet by flesh-and-blood people. Also, after years of designing and writing stupidly ambitious animated projects that never got produced, I wanted to do something that was very cheap and quick and that wouldn't need anyone else's involvement.

CCI: What sites do you currently upload video to?

MB: YouTube.

CCI: What made you choose that/those sites?

MB: Honestly? At the time I started I wasn't aware of any other video-sharing sites, and I didn't do any research. But YouTube has been good to me - I get a lot of feedback, and surprisingly little of it is the usual "You suck!".

CCI: What is your process for creating videos?

MB: Write a script, record my voice, draw some pictures, match the cartoon mouth shapes to the sound, animate a few blinks and eye movements, faff about with export and compression settings. The last bit is my least favourite part.

CCI: What type of equipment do you use to create your videos?

MB: A PC with Adobe After Effects and Flash and a great lip-sync program called Magpie Pro, by Third Wish Software.

CCI: What do you think it takes to make a popular online video?

MB: I think you need three things:
1) Some skimpy underwear.
2) The ability to dance in a sexually provocative manner.
3) To be a good-looking girl.
If you've got those three things, your video will get hundreds of thousands of hits within days of being uploaded.
If you're not a good-looking girl you have to work a lot harder.

CCI: Are you making enough money to live off your videos or do you still have a "day job."?

MB: You can make money doing this?