10 Years of Gus on CGMeetup!

10 years ago, CGMeetup contacted us about adding our first animated short film, Gus, to their YouTube Channel. We felt honoured, and agreed. We thought some extra exposure would be good, but we didn’t think it would amount to all that much. Well, were we wrong!

As the years went by, we checked in to see how it was doing. First, 1 million. Wow, that’s pretty good! Then, 2 million. Nice! 5 million. Woah! 10 million. Holy moly! 15 million. Seriously?! Now, over 18 MILLION!! That’s almost 5000 views a day! That’s pretty good for an animated short film. Before YouTube, 5000 views was about all you could expect for an animated short film over a 2-year festival run.

Now, the view count is one thing, but the comments are another. Normally, the comments section of YouTube is a vile sewer of unpleasantness, and it still is, but while there are some negative comments (that’s to be expected), there are a lot of positive comments that really moved us and made us feel like Gus did its job well. Here are some of them:

What is incredible about this is it doesn't descend to fart humor. It somehow stays endearing! Well done!

Always accept someone before giving them away because you never know what they can do that is really helpful.

Beautiful story, beautiful music, literally heart warming ;)

A fart that moved my heart.

I never would have thought that a movie whose main story part is farting would warm my heart...

As a father, I definitely loved the father & son relationship this CGI portrayed...

The two of them laughing near the end always makes me weepy, they sound like they haven't laughed in a long time and now they've finally found something that has filled them with so much joy they can't hold it in. All I can think of is how it must feel to live in such a harsh and bleak world and to suddenly find something that gives you hope and lets you know everything is going to be alright. I'm fighting back the tears and smiling ear to ear just typing this, very well done!

It warms our heart to know Gus is reaching so many people who appreciate it for what it is, and what we intended it to be. We can only hope our future projects have at least the same impact.