7 Youtubers I recommend

I spend a lot of time on the internet nowadays, since 2008 the laziness virus slowly spread across my body and resigned me to not bothering to go to the TV for entertainment for much longer, due in no small part to the fact that in recent years I'd discovered people just making videos and things for the internet without necessarily having been hired to do so. It's what sparked my desire to become an animator easily as early as when I was 12 years old and discovered people making unofficial Mario Cartoons using games sprites that they had no legal right to back on Newgrounds.

Since then, independent content makers on the internet have always been important to me, as they symbolised the layman making their way in the world without reliance on the cold, unfeeling finger of industry pointing at them and saying "Sod it, he'll do.". Also some of them are just plain funnier, more talented and more creative than alleged professionals I've seen on the TV.

So I thought I'd compile a short list of 7 artists I've discovered in recent years for you to enjoy, I'll also link you to what I think is the best example of each of their works, as well as places they can be found, in hope that they get the views they deserve, because afterall, none of these people have actual advertising, and it's only through methods like this that they ever get seen.

7. Khyan Mansley

Besides being the name of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, Khyan is a vlogger/Filmmaker type person who resides on Youtube. I like him because most of his videos have a kind of melancholic, self deprecating feel to it but are still funny. At a mere 76,000 subscribers on Youtube, I consider it to literally be a criminal offence that Khyan doesn't get more recognition. My favorite two videos of his have to be 'It's hard to make friends' and 'Violence Baguettes Violence', the former for its honesty and familiaity of the subject, and the latter for its sheer ingenuity.

Also has a sister who makes amusing stop motion videos who gets even less recognition. Watch hers too.

6. Jack Howard + Dean Dobbs

This one's probably cheating a bit, but I've lumped Jack and Dean together mostly because their best content is when they're together. Together, they form a hilarious double act in their various comedy sketches that they write and act out together that have made me laugh more times than I can care to count. In addition, they each have their own projects going on on their personal channels, Jack does a vlog every couple of weeks, though they have more in common with stand up shows than vlogs, as well as his various short films for University. Dean has his own small vlog series entitled 'Harmless Things' as well as other projects. 

I've mentioned this before but I'm a massive fanboy of Jack Howard specifically, it started when I merely liked his videos but escalated when he responded to a Tumblr post I'd made toward him, which made me giggle like a schoolgirl.

My favorite videos of theirs have to be 'Superglued' and 'Silent Disco'. Please watch.

5. Tom Ridgewell (TomSka)

TomSka is yet another Youtuber from the same tiny circle of friends that the previous people mentioned have been, they're seriously good. Anyway, Tom has created a little series you might have heard of called the asdfmovie series which has most likely eclipsed 60,000,000 views in total, as well as creating his own hilarious sketches as well as incredibly well choreographed fight scenes along with some of the best special effects to ever be seen in a Youtube short. 

Recently however, Tom took a turn for the worse when his friend Edd Gould lost a battle with cancer and he was tasked with continuing Edd's animated webseries Eddsworld, Tom pulled through though, and has produced a better than ever couple of episodes that you should really check out.

Also he signed my Eddsworld poster. That's nice.

4. Arin Hanson (Egoraptor)

One of the great internet animators in my opinion, I first discovered Egoraptor years ago at the start of his popularity when he made a little cartoon called 'Metal Gear Awesome', and I was just hooked from then on. Besides straight up animation, his other endevours include the 'Sequelitis' series where he discusses game design theory in an intelligent and articulate manner when he's not randomly yelling suddenly. Also funny is his Let's Play channel 'Game Grumps', I'm usually indifferent to LP's but this one in particular is excellent to behold, as Arin and his friend Jon are really good at improvising amusing dialogue and have good chemistry.

3. Harry Partridge

Forget 'one of the greats', Harry, I think, is THE greatest animator to ever be showcased on the internet, even better than Adam Phillips, and he was a former Disney animator. Harry creates fully realised animated shorts with more detail and complexity than the average TV show, and he doesn't even have an entire company behind him. His main subjects are parodies of the old 80's Saturday Morning Cartoons with wildly imaginative twists with the blackest black comedy you've ever heard.

His current endeavor is a beautiful looking animated short series called 'Starbarians' which is probably his best looking set of works with incredibly high standards of design, animation, voice acting, the works.

2. Chris Bingham (Bing/Slomozovo)

I've linked two two different channels in this title, just so you know.

Chris 'Bing' Bingham is a 20-ish year old filmmaker on Youtube, he does short sketches, songs, vlogs, the works. I could talk about how his vlogs are all funny and imbued with obvious creativity and love for his craft and other things about his main work, but the main reason I think you should watch Bing is for his vlogs.

Bing created a series about a year back called 'Past Bing/Future Bing', it's basically a very ingenious vlog series documenting two years of Bing's life, namely his last year of University and his first year of industry work, but the twist is that when he started, he'd already filmed the previous year, so each day he uploaded vlogs alternating between the present day and the same day a year earlier, with Past Bing asking Future Bing to observe how an aspect of his life had changed in that year, which was always guarenteed to be in an interesting way. My favorite part though is that no two days of his life are the same, it seems as if each day he's working to make things for us, the audience, though what's better is that it documents his emotional change through the two years in a very subltle manner. It's basically like watching the story of the life of an interesting guy, in the sense that it sometimes feels like there's a plot, there are recurring themes and characters etc, except that's not true because it's all real.

He's currently working on a webseries called 'Hi, Imma Draw Ya' and another series in tandem with the Guinness World Records called 'Slo-Mo Test Lab', both are regularly entertaining and continue his tradition of conserving his uploads.

ALSO has a sister who makes sketches and vlogs.

1. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

Ok, this one's kind of cheating a bit. Whilst it's true that Yahtzee started out on Youtube and has the occasional Youtube upload such as 'A poem for FTL' or his various LP's, Yahtzee's main work is on a website called The Escapist, which hosts his excellent webseries Zero Punctuation, a short video in which he monologues about a recent video game release in sentences covered with wit and variety.

Yahtzee is at the top of this quite simply because he's the funniest person I've seen on the internet, it's not necessarily that he tells a joke every 5 seconds that always hit their mark consistently, or that his amusing analogies and weirdly phrased metaphors always make total sense, or that his labyrinthine knowledge of everything he speaks about is both factually accurate and also worded amusingly, or that his art style is unique and simple to look at..

Oh wait, maybe it is all those excellent reasons.

Watch Zero Punctuation.

Final Word

Obviously there are loads more Youtubers I watch who are equally fun, but if I posted all of them I would never be able to convince you to watch all of them.

That's all for now, one day I will some day write an editorial about 7 webcomics you should read and other internet/independent created content, because I really think there is some real gold hidden on the internet. Like I always say, 90% of everything may be crap, but the 10% is worth dying for, more so on the internet because the wider range of talents, which can range from literally talentless to surpassing professionals themselves.

Laters.