As the process of transforming Twin Images.com from a blog to a video website looms ever closer, we’re both making the necessary preparations.

If you read a post regarding the state of the blog from earlier this year, you may have noticed that when we listed the upcoming segments for the videos on our upcoming channel, that our 2 miniseries What the Funny and Pop Dream weren’t listed among them.

So what’s the deal?

This was intentional, as there have some recent developments regarding those 2 segments. I must now announce that Pop Dream and What the Funny are now officially on hiatus and they won’t be used for our video channel. Why? Allow me to explain:

Yes, the WTF post for the Regular Show episode “Free Cake” was the last WTF, or at least the last one that I do that way. In retrospect, when I first embarked on this special event segment, there are a couple of things that I should have done differently. 1) I said that since the WTF segment had passed the #10 point that I would keep them coming and would no longer be numbering them. In hindsight, that was a mistake. What the Funny was supposed to be a special event, like Taco Night.

One reason why people look forward to Taco Night is because they only have it once in a while. If Taco Tuesday becomes Taco Everyday, it’s no longer special. So I’m not going to do at that pace anymore. What The Funny was more enjoyable when there wasn’t the pressure to keep churning them out in an assembly line fashion. 2)The episode breakdowns have got to go. When I started WTF, it was supposed to be a highlight reel, but as things progressed, it became scene-by-scene episode breakdowns. That’s just a review show which you can see anywhere, and again, there’s nothing special about that. Plus, we’re already doing that in some of our other segments. This new segment will definitely not have the play-by-play setup where it’s scene, joke, scene, joke, scene, joke, conclusion. Not anymore. 3) What the Funny has a bit of an identity problem.

Consider one the original Care Bears, Friend Bear (I’m going somewhere with this. Trust me). Friend Bear was never a major character in any of franchise’s numerous incarnations, and it’s not hard to see why. Her chief shtick was being friendly, but all of the Care Bears are friendly, so Friend’s primary characteristic has no way of distinguishing itself from the personalities of the others. My point? How do you distinguish a segment focusing on animated comedy on a website/channel that’s all about cartoons and comedy? WTF needs to be focused on a more specific thing than just comedy in general because that’s too broad a subject (even though it will still most definitely be comedy focused). The good news these problems aren’t unfixable, but it does mean that I’ll be putting What The Funny on ice so these issues can be addressed.

-Hey, Damon (Silverstar) here. I was having issues with my “special, once-in-a-while” miniseries segment Pop Dream as well. For one, like said Jason said above, making them a semi-regular thing was a mistake; a Very Berry pie is a wonderful treat, but not so wonderful if you have it all the time. For another, the latest Pop Dream (of the Alpha Masters from Animal Jam) wasn’t very funny, which is why I noped out of it after the first installment. Don’t get me wrong, the jokes I came up for it were pretty good, but the subject itself wasn’t all that funny; more cute and charming than funny. (Plus, Animal Jam hasn’t had any major video adaptations, so I couldn’t do any Funnier Moments, and that was crippling, since that’s always been a favorite section of the Pop Dreams. Animal Jam in general isn’t that popular in the mainstream zeitgeist; Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse at least has that going for it.) Which brings me to my next issue with Pop Dream: while the concept of Pop Dream (deep dive profiles of favorite comedic or toyetic characters) and format thereof was and is pretty decent, the framing, style and presentation was starting to not gel with me. It was supposed to be kind of laid back, pleasant and breezy…

Jolly and candy-like…

But the style, not to mention the subjects of the first and third Pop Dreams to me were coming off as…I’m trying to choose my words very carefully here…

Too “girly”.

Adding further to my creative inner conflict was my discovering Doug Walker’s Untitled Review Show videos and re-discovering Chris Stuckmann’s Hilariocity videos; suddenly, I wanted to make a zany segment like those instead of what I was doing with the Pop Dreams. Finally, I began wondering if we needed two “special, once-in-a-while” miniseries segments; again, if we have more than one “special” segment, they’re not as special. So as of this writing, Pop Dream is hereby retired.

I now plan to work on a loose, quippy, wacky segment like the Untitled Review Show (though it won’t be a review show); bits of the concept and possibly some elements from Pop Dream (such as Funnier Moments) will live on, but from now on I’ll leave the sparkly stuff to the sparkly people.

“Sparkle-Sparkle!”

The good news is that none of these things are unfixable. The not-so-good news is that we’ll be putting both What The Funny and Pop Dream (the segment, the Pop Dream name and branding are already retired) on ice until we work out the kinks.

Our current plans are to replace both with a single, new special segment. There’s only going to be one this time. Not only will having only 1 occasional segment be more special, but with both of us working on it together, we should get it done in half the time, which will make for a lighter workload. I’ve since become aware of LS Mark’s second YouTube channel Splash Dash, which is all about the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and also a fan website made by fans of Jim Henson’s Muppets called Tough Pigs.com. I’d like for this new segment to be something along those lines, entertainment/informative, with plenty of jokes, wackiness and nonsense. Also, we’d like for this segment to be presented in a way that’s different from what we’ll be doing on The Razzle Dazzle Show and our other mini vids. Also, this won’t be a monthly or annual type of deal. We’re not going to commit to that kind of time frame. We’re just going to do an episode when a) we have a idea for an episode, and b) whenever we have the time and space to devote to making one.

We could end up calling this “new” miniseries segment What The Funny, unless we collectively come up with a new name that we like better, and this “new” segment could incorporate the Pop Dream character profile format (Overview, Appearance, Personality, Funnier Moments and Conclusion); this could be part of the format it takes, but not all of it (I don’t want this new miniseries segment to just be Pop Dream with a different name; if my only issue with Pop Dream was the name, I would’ve have just renamed it and kept going); call it a lofty goal, but I wouldn’t mind if this new miniseries encompassed a wide range of subject matter relating to a single subject, franchise, studio or company a la Splash Dash or Walter Banasiak’s Juniversal for Channel Awesome. We do want this segment to be different — and bigger — than what we usually do in the other segments. It is supposed to be special, after all.

So, while the Pop Dream branding and What The Funny (in it’s previous form) may be gone, but like the Phoenix, a new special event segment will rise from the ashes. Better, more beautiful and very wacky.