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Mysterious Youtube Stat Facts
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Mysterious Youtube Stat Facts

1/2/25

So I finally decided to go back through my Youtube stats. Something I haven't done, cause I figure it's depressing. But I'm past that now. Anyway, I discovered some interesting facts. I figured I’ll do a short blog post about them. Both because it’s good info for people out there and overall its really not terrible news for me. It’s also perplexing.

First up is the average percentage viewed of a video. Sonic 2 is at 24%. Rogue Legacy at 24.3% My #1 & #2 performing videos Sheep Raider & I,Robot is 25.9% and 25.5% respectively.

So is 25% a magic number to get promoted by Youtube? Apparently not, because, Rollerball is 27%, Final Days of the NES is at 31%, Sonic Eraser is 34.6% and Sonic Edusoft is 36.7%. You get the point and I’ll refrain from listing everything. It’s not the raw minutes watched because those are all over the place too. Because 24% of Sonic 2 watched is 23 minutes. Almost the entirety of Sheep Raider and I,Robot. I’ve read over and over again it’s the percentage watched that should push a video. Well I think this all disproves it.

My click through rate is also extremely close across almost all videos at about 3-4% which is about the average click through on youtube. Sheep Raider actually stands out as low at 2.5%. That might be just because it was pushed, thus more eyes means less overall clicking obviously. The algorithmic overlords sure are mysterious. 

 

Why did the algorithm like these so much?

What does cause Youtube to give impressions to a video (IE recommend it to people)? I have no clue. Maybe it shared around? I couldn’t find that I,Robot or Sheep Raider were and the stats don’t show outside viewers coming in. Honestly, it gives me peace of mind. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.

And there is proof I should. I was thinking more and more that the animation work wasn’t catching anyone’s eyes. Few comment on it and obviously views weren’t coming in. However, as it turns out while checking stats there is a particular one that tracks if people are still watching at the 30 second mark. Many are 40-50%. I,Robot is 60%. Sonic 1 8-Bit is 61%. Sonic Eraser is 68%. Sonic 2 is 81%! What do these have in common? They all open with a fully animated scene. Two of those are complete cold openings even.

The average cross all of Youtube is 40%. The animated openings grab people’s attention. Wonderful. Couldn’t be better news to me.

So I’ll be keeping at it. The animation works.

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What Makes Hanna-Barbera Backgrounds Special

What Makes Hanna-Barbera Backgrounds Special

 

The backgrounds of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons have long fascinated me. When I say the early cartoons, I'm referring to early TV series like Yogi Bear and the first seasons of the Flintstones. Most stuff till Scooby-Doo aired. The theater shorts before that like Tom & Jerry were serviceable and  certainly required skill to make. 

It’s extremely well done. Nice lighting and color. But its not exactly very graphic so to speak. Not super stylish. Just doesn’t catch my eye in the same way. Doesn’t make me stop to appreciate it all quite as much. 

This on the other hand most certainly does. It’s like that special bike that stuck out to you as a kid, the sakura tree down in the center of town, the buxom bosom crossing your way at the grocery store. It instantly catches your eye because of the striking contrasts. People usually think of this purely in color I find but theres much more to it. There is also so much varied texture. This is what the background from Tom & Jerry is missing in my opinion. The wood isn’t much different from the grass. You can mostly tell its wood cause of color. 
 
Lets compare it to the wide shot from from Yogi. There is a few techniques going on, the most obvious one being sponge, but there's also ink and pencil work to define the shape and texture of the front tree, the grey one is completely different with flat paint mostly, the bushes have clear leaves, the hills and mountains have only a hint of texture. I particularly love the clouds following the shape of the mountain. 

You can see the origins of this style in Ruff and Reddy but not in the same way. That show was a test bed for Hanna-Barbera in a lot of ways so it makes sense. The animation was more rough and even had a serial-like release format of 4 minutes per segment in-between other shows. They were just figuring stuff out as they went. TV animation was an entirely different beast. William Hanna commented on this fact himself.

 

“Back at MGM our budget was lavish enough to allow as many as sixty drawings per foot of fully animated film. It was a new ballgame for TV. In order to meet our budget for Ruff and Reddy, we had to pare the drawings down to no more than one or two per foot of film.”

- William Hanna

That makes this whole thing even more amazing in a way. Consider what it meant for the paint department. They certainly weren’t going to have time for lots of lavish details, that meant simplifying and making every bit of those details they did include count. Funny enough, what did expand in number was the types of media used. I touched on this a few paragraphs above, pencil, ink, paint. Limitations do seem to certainly bring creativity, that’s true, but to add on that thought, I’d say it also amplifies it in this case. 

The thick ink work on the backgrounds really made them stand out on small TVs back then, huh? Beautiful and functional.

All the techniques used are in normal paintings. Sponges, friskets, dry brush, etc. But here without all the blending and the details to get lost in every technique is really allowed to stand out and be a star. The smooth sky against the sponged rocks, the brushed lines on the cave walls, the zig-zag pencil on the palm tree tells you all you need for its texture and form. 

 
I suppose what I’m trying to get at is that these limitations made the backgrounds so much more exaggerated and thus more cartoony. A major reason why cartoons can be beautiful is they simplify and exaggerate real life. Focusing on the beautiful, the amusing, the contrasts of life and brings them to the front. That’s what happened at Hanna-Barbera when animation needed to be become even more simplified and move to TV. 
 
Maybe I'll write more on this. Think I'm on to something here. Maybe I could even make a video but, we know how copyright strike happy the world is now. If I do it, I'd have to just host it on here.

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