What are you working on? Whether it’s something concrete like an animated series (that’s us!) or whether it’s less concrete like building the life you want by attaining your goals, we’d love to hear about what you’re involved in!
Whatever it is you’re working toward, what have you created or built today that has gotten you closer to your end goal? What have you created this week? This month? Have you created something even within the past year that you can look at and be proud of?
Creativity is Essential
Your creation can be a work of art, a story, or music. It could even be a more toned physical form or a habit of eating something healthy every day. I include all these things in the category of creativity because by building something meaningful to us or by making ourselves or our lives better in any way, we’re being active agents in our own lives. We are creating our reality rather than letting outside influences create it for us. In this sense, creativity is absolutely essential for human beings to be truly happy and fulfilled. To consistently create everyday is the only true recipe for success, no matter what it is we’re trying to build or achieve in life.
What is Success?
Speaking of which, I often find myself thinking of success as something that happens in an instant. It’s easy to absorb a very romantic view of how success works. A struggling actor lands his or her big break and becomes famous. An author gets published and sells millions of books. A scientist has a major breakthrough out of nowhere that changes the course of history. It’s not super hard to see why we think of success in this way, as it’s how the story is often told. The “rags-to-riches” narrative is inspiring. The contrast between where someone was before and after some life-changing moment shows us that perhaps someday we might have an epiphany or breakthrough that impacts the lives of others or makes our own life more worthwhile. But in telling that type of story and in trying to convey the contrast of life before and after “making it big,” it is often the most important details that get overlooked or ignored. The “one huge event” narrative is at best usually only partly true, and at worst completely false. In reality, the most important parts of the story are really, really mundane. That’s why they don’t get covered.
In the real world, success is agonizingly slow at times. It happens as a result of what you might call the daily grind. The means to success is always consistent, sometimes lonely, and often thankless, work. That consistency and work can go on for years before it bears any tangible fruit. Success is really not so romantic once you look at what predictably summons it. We hear about the massive book deal but we don’t hear about the late nights spent writing, the countless drafts and edits, and the nagging insecurity that nobody might care in the end. We hear of the successful businessman making millions, but we don’t hear quite so much about the after-hours work, the worry of not making rent every month, the rejections from investors or the uncertainty of taking a risk that very well might not pan out. In reality, success is slow, steady, constant, and dedicated.
Lessons from Homestar
There’s a surprising example of this in a popular internet cartoon from the early 2000’s – Homestar Runner. Created by Matt and Mike Chapman, aka “TheBrothers Chaps,” it’s hard to find anyone who grew up or went through adolescence during that time that hasn’t heard of it. It was what my high school friends and I were watching in computer classes instead of doing class-related things.
One day Mike was hanging out in a bookstore with a friend (Craig Zobel) and they were flipping through terrible kids’ books. Having a good laugh at their expense, they decided to make their own terrible kids’ book just for the fun of it. That was the humble start of something that turned out to be much bigger than them. With no intention of publishing, making it big or getting rich, they drew up all the characters in one day. Eventually they finished the book, made a few copies for friends to have a laugh at, and
that was it, at least for the time being. (You can see the original book here. It’s terrible. Note that you’ll need flash to see it, so it won’t work if you’re on your phone. Bummer.)
A few years later, brothers Matt and Mike were wanting to learn web design and at the time, Macromedia Flash was a huge deal in the web scene. They picked up some tutorial books and started learning Flash, turning to the wacky characters they had made a few years prior as something to use to learn the program. Since they were creating content, they decided to upload it to a website they had set up. From there, they just kept creating and learning. As they created and uploaded, traffic naturally started to pick up strictly through word of mouth. They sold their first T-shirt in 2001, and they got their first 1,000-visitor-day sometime in 2001-2002. They worked on cartoons in their spare time. Matt recalls, “I’d come into work after having stayed up all night making Strong Bad Emails on a Sunday night. The fact that I was allowed to go into work at 11am instead of 9am definitely contributed to the rise of Homestar.”
Despite never originally intending to make it big with their idea, in 2003 they were making enough money just by selling merchandise that they were both able to quit their jobs to work on Homestar Runner full-time.
Throughout Homestar and Strong Bad’s heyday, the Brothers Chaps always knew that this full-time gig would be temporary. As they began to grow their families, they walked away from Homestar Runner as a full-time job, leaving it as a snapshot of what the web and internet culture were like in the early 2000s. On its own little corner of the internet it remains, still cherished by many fans.
“We are constantly amazed that we were able to wriggle our way into a tiny, poorly animated corner of popular culture. We recently did a couple Homestar 20th anniversary live shows here in Atlanta and the response was bigger and farther reaching than we could’ve imagined. A father and son came all the way from Anchorage just to see the show. That blew our minds and made us want to pay for their airfare.”
Their successful career launched by the rise of Homestar Runner is far from over though. They’ve gone on to write for a handful of TV shows, including The Aquabats Super Show, Yo Gabba Gabba, and the popular animated series Gravity Falls.
There are a few lessons I take from their story. First, the things we create do NOT have to be perfect to be worthwhile. Homestar Runner was far from brilliant visually or technically. The content is great and their signature sense of humor is really enjoyable, but visually it’s really simple and the animation itself is pretty bare-bones. People loved it anyway, myself included. They didn’t wait until they were perfect at what they were doing to start putting it out there, either. They were learning, making and uploading, and the audience ended up trickling in.
They didn’t need vast amounts of time to get started. Everything was done in their spare time and on weekends and it wasn’t until much later that they had oodles of time in which to work. You and I don’t need to have a ton of time right at the start either. We can carve out a little time each day and make progress on our creations slowly but surely.
Most importantly, we see the incredible value of consistently sitting down to create. The audience came, but that would not have happened had the Brothers Chaps stopped making content. It went slowly at first, and as things picked up their pace grew faster and faster until they could work full time on it. But even at a slower pace at first, they kept making content.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look back into the story of the Brothers Chaps and Homestar Runner and that you’ve gleaned something from it that can help you in the things you’re building. You can see the full interview with the Brothers Chaps that I’ve referenced here.
Until next time, take courage and keep working to create the reality you want to see, a little bit every day.
