The question of what the internet is varies greatly depending on the person. However, one thing that is very easy to overlook about the internet is that it is a breeding ground for creativity. From art on Twitter and Instagram to entire shows being created online via Kickstarter campaigns, there is no denying that the internet has made it easier than ever for someone to express themselves.
Animators, artists, writers, and musicians have thrived on the internet. People who otherwise wouldn’t have a voice have made amazing works that sometimes rival mainstream media. Unfortunately, a large portion of people, particularly those in show business, don’t see internet creators in this way. There are many people who think an internet creator could never run a show, make a movie, or do anything significant.
Due to this, many internet creators aren’t given the respect they deserve. There are Newgrounds animations that are higher quality than some modern blockbusters, and yet very few people are willing to consider these people as artists.
However, this might be changing, and it’s partially due to a show that you may have heard of.
Smiling Friends is an adult comedy series created by Zack Hadel and Michael Cusack, both of whom are self-taught Adobe Flash animators who upload content to Newgrounds and YouTube. In fact, most of Smiling Friends was animated using Adobe Animate, the successor to Flash, with the backgrounds made in Photoshop.
Hadel, in particular, has been very involved in internet culture. Having grown up in Kansas, he originally went to college to study graphic design but dropped out. He uploaded animations mainly to Newgrounds before transitioning to YouTube. His video “arrow to the knee” went viral in 2011, and in 2014, he collaborated with his close friend Chris O’Neil to make a video parodying Kony 2012, which also went viral.
In addition, being friends with O’Neil, Hadel occasionally appeared on his channel OneyPlays when it was first starting out. When two members of the channel left, however, Hadel rejoined and became a permanent member of the channel.
Hadel and Cusack met online due to their similar interests. Mainly, making “silly little cartoons” as Cusack put it. They both liked the idea of making a show that was purely comedic together. And so, the process of making Smiling Friends began.
The show started as nothing more than sketches by both animators, with characters hand-drawn on whims while ideas for the show itself were tossed around. According to Hadel: “Our goal was to have a show featuring a group of loveable characters, with a simple kind of concept, which we could take anywhere we wanted to.”
The two would meet at diners and restaurants and go back and forth sketching versions of the same character until the final product was what Cusack described as a blend of their styles. Their official pitch was actually only finished during dinner at Gus’s Chicken, a fried chicken restaurant, when Cusack was visiting Hadel in Burbank, California.
The pair pitched the idea to Adult Swim in 2018, who greenlit a pilot episode. The pilot was eventually aired on April 1, 2020, and went on to become the most-viewed episode of any show on the Adult Swim website. That’s pretty damn impressive for two self-taught flash animators. By May 2021, Adult Swim had ordered seven more episodes to be completed.
It’s clear that Smiling Friends was very successful. Not only was it popular, but it was cheap to make. Hadel claims that the entire first season’s budget cost as much as a single episode of Family Guy cost to make, around $2,000,000.
This is a massive milestone in the recognition of internet creators as capable artists. For most of internet history, the relationship between internet creators and more mainstream media has been a rocky one. For years, the closest we’ve had to internet creators jumping over to more traditional forms of media has been things like the SMOSH movie, or the Fred movie.
The thing is, both of these examples involved internet personalities starring as themselves. Yes, there were times when these creators were involved in the writing or the producing, but ultimately, these movies were seen more as a way to plaster an internet celebrity’s face on a movie poster. They were seen as silly little e-celebrities, more so than creative people who can actively participate in the creation of movies.
With Smiling Friends, both Cusack and Hadel were deeply involved in every aspect of the show’s production, including voicing the main characters. However, the main characters of the show were not Zack Hadel and Michael Cusack. They were completely original characters, with different personalities and designs from the showrunner’s online personas. When they were commissioned to make the show, they weren’t just seen as a pair of faces or names. They were seen as capable showrunners rather than internet celebrities to have their faces slapped on a TV show.
Ultimately, Smiling Friends is a huge milestone for internet creators. Smiling Friends has not only proven that online writers, animators, and artists are fully capable of running a show, but that there is a demand for this kind of content, and there are people willing to watch shows like this.
If two self-taught flash animators can get their own popular show on a major streaming platform, then what’s stopping more internet creators from diving into mainstream media?
