Wii – Hold on Tight 2 Animation

Some weeks ago we featured an animation called ‘Wii – Hold on Tight’ that caused quite a stir, not only on TFTS but across the net in general (if you missed this first installment, you can see it here).

Brent Young, one of the chaps behind the animation has been in touch with Thoughts from the Sidelines to tip us off concerning the next instalment, Hold on Tight 2 – Revenge of the Nunchuck, which we have great pleasure in offering here in case you have missed it.

Not only that, but Brent has been kind enough to offer a little background information concerning the Wii Hold on Tight animation series that may be of interest which is featured below, with the second instalment of the Nintendo Wii inspired animation shorts.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvZbxfwnLfA]

An Insight into the Hold on Tight Animation Shorts courtesy of Brent Young.

We did the first one as an experiment really. We had some downtime at the office, and I thought I would explore the viral video world of youtube. We are big fans of the Wii and at the time the Wiimote was doing some serious damage. So I quickly sketched out a concept that would highlight our passion for animation and passed that on to our top animator. The first one took us about 3 weeks, we wanted to make sure the animation was filled with character. So we uploaded the first one Superbowl weekend and Gizmodo thought is was cool enough to post on their front page and it rocketed to the top of the youtube charts.

The new one is a sequel to the first. We really wanted to see if what we did with was a fluke or if we had the chops to do it again. So this time because the setup work was done I cut the production time to 8 days. To tell you how fast the production was I did the storyboard concept on a whiteboard in about 10 minutes. We jumped into it knowing that we wanted to focus on character. We had duct tape and a band aid on the Wiimote because of the damage he had received in the first one, but we removed this because new viewers might not get it.

We posted it at the end of day Friday 6:30. (which is a mistake we should have waited until midnight because your Most Viewed of the Day Honor expires at the time you posted so when we were in the top ten most viewed 6:30 rolled around and we were kicked off). So we are on the forth day 120,000 views pretty good, I guess the experiment worked and it was repeatable.

We would like to thank Brent not only for tipping us off concerning the second animation in the Wii Hold on Tight series and for taking the time to offer some insight into the work that went behind it. Unfortunately this may well be the end of the Hold on Tight series unless, of course, Nintendo would like to offer a little backing. Or perhaps Sony might like to contact these chaps….