23 Ways to Show Off Your Cartoon
You've spent hour upon hour perfecting your animation. Now what? It's time to release it to the masses. Let's talk about the best options for distributing your cartoon.
Your Own Site
It's imperative that you have a site of your own to call home where you can post your cartoons. It doesn't have to be a custom URL, even though that would be ideal. There are so many free websites available, there's no reason not to get started right away.
If you are considering establishing your own domain, I do recommend Yahoo as a hosting provider. Yahoo is affordable, fast and can upgrade quickly if you find yourself with a large amount of site traffic.
Making your own space on the internet is the first step towards establishing yourself as your own brand name. Don't fight the fact that your name is the biggest brand you will ever belong to. Embrace it and fight to establish your name as the powerhouse brand you know it to be.
Video Hosting Sites
There are a myriad of sites that will host your animation for free, in either Quicktime or Flash format.
Newgrounds has a young crowd, but they do know what they like and aren't afraid to sling their opinions. They only accept .swf files, and you'll need to make sure your animation has a preloader. If your cartoon is popular enough to make the front page of Newgrounds you should expect a good deal of attention. Make sure your .swf file includes a link to your site!
It's worth mentioning that Doogtoons was discovered by Weird Al for his "Drive Thru" music video because of Newgrounds. The animation for the video is great and it's extremely funny. Finish reading before you go watch it though.
MyToons is a recent newcomer to the video hosting service market, but they're doing a fine job by establishing their niche in animation. You can find old animation whose copyrights have expired, like really early everything-by-hand Superman cartoons.
YouTube is the preeminent short film hosting site in the world, and deservedly so. It's worth submitting your Quicktime-based animation to YouTube simply to access their millions of eyeballs and hopefully gain a few more fans. However, after experimenting with using their embedded Flash media I do recommend using your own .swf files on your site. The quality of their embedded media just isn't that good, as they've had to sacrifice quality for file size.
Youtube submitters need a way to upload Flash based media, and it offends me that you can't yet do this.
Google Video to me feels slightly redundant since they own YouTube, but their media center seems to attract a more cynical audience. Maybe that's just me though.
Yahoo Video is the only company out there that can give Google a run for its money (until Microsoft realizes they're losing and buys one of them) in the video hosting world. Most of Yahoo's trillions of users seem to be off doing other things though as the Yahoo Video homepage is really lacking in the pizazz department.
Myspace makes my toes curl up by just existing. Their sheer dominance of the social networking world basically means they can pick their next conquest and be guaranteed a top five finish. "How about videos next? Sure, why not?". Two weeks later and another craptacular feature is available from Myspace. I don't hate them because they're inexplicably popular, I hate them because their sense of design revolves around caustic advertisement bombardment.
I went off on a rant there, sorry about that. You can post your videos on your Myspace page and I'm sure you'll be a better person for having done it.
Vimeo is a newish video upload site that I really enjoy. They have weekly file upload limits of 250 megs (instead of 100 megs per file of YouTube or Yahoo Video), and their site design and Ajax implementation is sublime.
Revver is gaining in popularity, mostly because of their profit sharing philosophy. If a viewer clicks on an ad that's at the end of your video you will be given a percentage of that revenue. That money builds up over time, and when you do eventually cross their $20 threshold they will send it to you. I will cover making money with your cartoons in a future post.
Metacafe is just like Revver in that they do profit sharing, but it's not as well designed. Their audience seems to be more international, which is just fine for most cartoons.
Social Media
Sites that are all about telling the world about the new coolest thing you've just found are considered to be social media. A popular animation can quickly turn viral, leading to thousands of visitors to your site.
Digg is the current leader of social media, and their plus/minus system does a great job of making sure the top stories are always big news. The problem is that the animation category doesn't have the popularity of the other sites, and because of that it's very difficult to earn enough votes to be noticed by the other categories. The audience also trends towards technology topics, so if your cartoon has a geeky bent you're more likely to be noticed.
StumbleUpon is a bit of an odd bird. They are the most likely to send visitors to your site, but the least likely to send users that will do anything but watch your one animation and then leave. If you want to get your cartoons seen and you don't care if those visitors ever come back, StumbleUpon is the best and easiest option.
Setup your StumbleUpon account now and start finding friends that are interested in animation. Then when you've completed your masterpiece you can just click the thumbs up icon on your toolbar to seed the system and watch it go.
PixelGroovy is basically like Digg, but for designers and creative people. They have a Flash section as well, so online cartoons should fair pretty well there.
Fark pretends to be a naughty word but really isn't. They've been around a long time and are a trusted source for news, often beating CNN and similar news sources to stories. You'll need to make sure your headline submission is funny though, or it'll never make it past the stingy censors.
Alternative Media
iFilm is considered to be a primary backer in the independent film world, especially for online media. Submitting your animation to them does not guarantee acceptance, but if approved you should expect a good amount of attention.
Associated Content has come up with a way of paying their contributors based on how many people use that information. Fortunately this includes animation and cartoons, so it's worth applying for.
Atom Films is similar to iFilm, and that's a good thing. Most of their content is short live action films, but they do have some animated content as well.
Social Bookmarking
del.icio.us is a very popular form of social bookmarking. It's free to setup and attach a small toolbar to your browser. Whenever you bookmark something that bookmark becomes available across all browsers that you've installed the toolbar in. Quite useful.
Forums
There are many forums about animation out there, not all of them are well done or even appropriate for online cartoons. Here are a few I do recommend.
Toon Boom Forum is the one I frequent the most, mostly because there's no other place to get quality information on Toon Boom. The users are all friendly and professional, especially those that have been around for a while. Show them the animation you just completed.
AnimationForum.net is another well known forum that does a solid job of tackling several important animation concerns. They would love to see the cartoon you just finished.
Skwigly is similar to AnimationForum.net regarding the topics they discuss. You should feel free to post your new animation here.
Conclusion
There are many places on the internet that would love to see your new cartoon. It should keep you busy for several hours just applying to all of them. It would be an interesting experiment to apply to everything and see which sites give you the biggest boost in traffic. That's an article for another day.
Now, go watch the "Drive Thru" music video.
Update
Friday, September 7, 2007Perhaps you are aware that the internet is an ever-changing beast. As such new video hosting and animation forums are constantly being released. In a feeble effort to keep up with this changing landscape I will continue to list new sites as they are found. Feel free to include sites as well, and I will append them here.
JumpCut is a video hosting service, focusing on the sharing aspect such sites. It feels very similar to Vimeo, which is not a bad thing at all.
Channel Frederator has long been a supporter of internet cartoons. Channel Frederator has made great use of iTunes video podcasts, more so than any other media outlet on this list. Because of this they have a wide audience, even stretching into mainstream media outlets. They're also a good choice if you have a larger movie since they accept files up to 1 gig in size.
Nice guide there, I'm an avid user on newgrounds, thats where I put all my stuff and post. They're good because they're brutally honest, although its not good for beginners because they are also very mean. Another good free site to use is www.bravenet.com and then to change your url you can get short one like I did for one of my sites www.pixelz.co.nr you can get the co.nr at www.freedomain.co.nr . I don't have a paypal account and my mom won't use credit card so I use those because I can't pay for a site, they're very good to use. And another good site to post flash is www.ugoplayer.com . And also, I think the latest episode of Calico Monkey could totally be on newgrounds front page. And Tom (the owner) might give the series a collection page and some more recognition on newgrounds. They're good like that, you can get interviewed and get a page and get linked to on the forum. Lots of publicity on newgrounds!
Nice! Thanks for laying out all that info. I'd have to agree with you that MyToons is great for uploading animation - the player is very clear. And I've seen those old school cartoons you're talking about, love it. Also, I agree delicious is "quite useful." It'd really be a pain without a tag in my toolbar... And thanks for the heads up on PixelGroovy, I'll definitely check it out.
Great info, Will. Putfile.com is another great hosting site that allows pretty massive files. I actually thought I was out of options for my video tuts until I found them. I think they allow 400mb avi files & 25mb swf.
Hey there, Alex Black from Revver here. We're glad you've found us of interest, but just wanted to clear something up - we don't have a minimum view threshhold before users earn money. We currently operate on a cost-per-click system that sees advertisers paying out per ad-click, so you can upload to Revver and start earning the very same day. We do, however, require users to reach $20 before we make payment. It's actually pretty easy to hit, and earnings roll over of course, so regardless of whether it takes you a week, a month, or a year, once you've hit $20 you'll get paid.
Hey all, thank you for the comments and site suggestions. I'll take a look at ugoplayer.com. Thank you for the clarification on how Revver works, Alex, I clearly misunderstood. I will adjust the entry for it accordingly.
Great article, Will! Well researched and covered, lots of good links. Thanks for your hard work.
Oh yeah--I totally agree abou the MySpace thing. Yet I've taken the dark step of setting up a MySpace for my site there in hopes that I'll get more exposure. No idea how it works. I've actually had a few students volunteer to manage my Myspace for me, but something about that scares me even more...
Hey you forgot atomfilms.com I think they buy your toons though.
Good point Alex, I did forget it. I'll add it to the list of options.
Dear Sir, Im an architect and doing my Masters In IIT. But besides this im very intrested in cartoons and drawing. Also im exceptionally good at it. Please show me a way where i can upload my cartoons and earn a little that will help me survive during my masters tenure. Awaiting your favourable reply / guidance. Thanking you, Yohan. E
New cartoons come out every other Thursday. I occasionally discuss publishing cartoons online and ways to make money with your cartoons. If any of that floats your boat I recommend subscribing to the RSS feed or follow my Twitter updates. Rock on.
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