People of Earth! For the many of you who visit my site regularly you mot likely know me as THE RECEPTIONIST. If you don’t…well….catch up!
This year I am trying to take my little web series to the next level. That level is winning an award for my hard work and humor. The Streamy’s is basically the Academy Awards for web shows. It would be just dandy if you take a very short breath from your life, click the link and nominate me! The cool thing is, if you’re really dedicated you can do this once a day…but I’ll be more than happy with just the one nom.
I couldn’t resist. I had to make one more Halloween themed Receptionist episode. This one explores the fictional origins of how the Jack-O-Lantern may have come to be. Enjoy, and happy Halloween to everyone!
I’m finally back with a new episode of The Receptionist! This week you are getting a gothically delicious Halloween treat! I got pretty involved with the sets and camera with this one, so it took me a little longer than usual. Hope you enjoy. Tis the season to be spooky!
While thinking up new ideas for Receptionist shorts I realized I’d never done a panel to panel comic strip style. This seemed odd as my use of paper seems perfectly geared for just that type of experimentation. Thus the hilariously inanimate object world of police justice was born. Originally I thought this was going ot be a quick and easy one to make…but damn I was wrong. I had to hang the characters from the ceiling along with their speech bubbles, all the while lining them up with me in the shot. No easy task. In the end I am happy with how it turned out visually. Sure I could just use photoshop and make my life easy…but that would defeat the entire world and tone of The Receptionist. I hope you will enjoy, and if you haven’t already, SUBSCRIBE to the series HERE!
I know it’s been awhile, but I finally got off my ass and made a new RECEPTIONIST episode. I tapped into my love of horror once again and made this one extra creepy with a side of giggle sauce. Enjoy!
My independent web series, The Receptionist, seems to be the only artistic thing I do which occasionally puts a little scratch in my wallet. Mostly, I believe, this is because I do it alone and my budgets never reach any higher than $0.00. With no one to pay back I am the sole beneficiary of all the George Washington’s that come my way due to my construction paper world. Oh, how lovely it is to pay my phone bill every so often!
My first paid gig as The Receptionist was nearly 3 years ago when I had just started my channel on YouTube. Back then there weren’t as many personalities and people clawing tooth and nail to be popular. It was much easier to build an audience and a small group of devoted people had found me. An advertising representative recognized my tiny audience and paper-laced madness and contacted me and a few others to create online promo’s for their new movie, Let’s Go to Prison. We were to basically do a video in our own style with the idea of presenting tips on surviving prison life. I was paid a small fee which gassed up my car and got me a few nights of Taco Bell. Here is that video:
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After that, my channel continued to grow. It was never a subscriber behemoth or anything, but people were discovering my shorts every day and I was developing a bigger audience. So I kept on making um! Suddenly, I am contacted by Comedy Central. They love The Receptionist and are looking to buy content for their web division (which later became atom.com). The CC bought 5 of my old episodes and commissioned me to create 5 new ones as well. This was a very exciting opportunity as I was making these shorts just like I was before, only now I was being paid. The money was nice and allowed me to pay some bills and move out of my 1 room apartment and into a place with dividing walls and rooms with names like, bedroom and kitchen. Here’s an episode I made specifically for Comedy Central:
When I finished the new 5 for CC, they did not hire me to make any more. They played on T.V. a few times but eventually (like most web content) they were forgotten. I went back to YouTube and brushed the cobwebs off the channel. I never started making these for money, and money wasn’t going to stop me from continuing to make them. Thus began, what I call, The Receptionist: Season 2. I was back in production and the episodes were larger in scope, using more of my world and sprinkling in more music than before. Sure I was now a YouTube partner, but anyone who is a partner can tell you (aside from a few choice and lucky individuals) that the money barely exists. If you’re a partner for the money then you are in big trouble. So, recently YouTube contacted me (and a few other’s) to create a promotional piece for HP. They were holding a contestand needed example videos. They would pay me to make a 1 minute video about anything I wanted. I just had to be creative and not show my face. I was going to be making a new video anyway, so why not get a little greenback for it? I created this video for YouTube and HP:
3 years running, and The Receptionist is still the champ for money brought in from artistic endeavour. Perhaps someday I will be paid to make feature films, but until that black magical day arrives, I will be enjoying the process of the construction paper short…and if it happens to pay a bill here and there….so be it.
I always enjoy doing musical Receptionist episodes. I’d probably do them more often if I had the time and the musical resources. This is one I have been meaning to make for a long time now, but always got lazy and made something else. Well, I finally got my shit together and here it is. Enjoy the hell out of it!
This episode was loosely inspired by the fact that I feel like I’ve been at my job for long enough that calling it “Hell” is more than appropriate. Each new day is like a knife twisting under my ribs. That being said, recently I have been able to look around at all the positive things in my world. There are others out there suffering far worse than this whining artist. Â I have a lot of great things going on at the moment and I want to stop taking them for granted. After all, my pen pal from Hell has it much much worse.
This year I am trying to take my little web series to the next level. That level is winning an award for my hard work and humor. The Streamy’s is basically the Academy Awards for web shows. It would be just dandy if you take a very short breath from your life, click the link and nominate me! The cool thing is, if you’re really dedicated you can do this once a day…but I’ll be more than happy with just the one nom.
. We were to basically do a video in our own style with the idea of presenting tips on surviving prison life. I was paid a small fee which gassed up my car and got me a few nights of Taco Bell. Here is that video:
