DeepBlueInk on the indie animation process behind Deep Space Discounts

DeepBlueInk is an independent British artist who publishes a channel of animated shorts on YouTube. The subject of Blue's work often includes creative interpretations of scenes from popular online series and podcasts, including Drawfee, Game Changer, and My Brother, My Brother and Me. 

Blue was invited onto the Toon Boom Animation livestream this past January to discuss his experience as an independent animation on YouTube, as well as his recent original series, Deep Space Discounts. Deep Space Discounts is a five-episode webseries which follows a big box store (and spacecraft) crewed by alien convicts on a gamified work release program. The series’ protagonist is Immy, the first human ever to serve time at the store. 

We asked Blue about the production process behind his ambitious series, the value that indie animators can bring to other mediums on the web, and how the business of animating on YouTube full-time looks from his point-of-view. This article is an excerpt from our full livestream interview.

So Blue, what is your origin story? How did you become an independent animator? 

DeepBlueInk: I've been animating on and off since my second year of university, which was eight years ago, starting off purely as a hobby. In my second year of uni, I had the world's worst landlords and I basically had no internet access. So I distinctly remember having the thought, “What is a hobby I could take up that uses as much time as possible when I have no internet?” 

It was a hobby until about 2020 when I was furloughed from my job during COVID. After spending about two weeks playing Animal Crossing, one of my friends reached out to me and said, “I bet you're really glad that you've got animation as a hobby, and something that you can do when all this is happening.” 

And I went, “Oh my God, I forgot I animate!” And I picked that back up again. 

I was listening to My Brother, My Brother and Me religiously at the time and thought to do a couple of clips of it for fun. And one of them took off and got a bit of attention. I got my first commission off the back of that from the Sorry for the Wait! podcast, and that was the moment I thought people will actually pay me to make these silly cartoons. 

I went back to work – I got unfurloughed – but kept animating after work and in all of my spare time essentially. And after doing that part-time as again as a “money hobby,” I was reached out to by Michael Schaubach who offered me a short contract. 

It was enough to pay a couple of months of rent, so I quit my job, made some animations for Dimension 20. Since then I've made a few music videos, I've been building a bit of a following on YouTube, and just finding work where I can, building a very kind audience on Patreon who are now I think over a thousand people strong. 

In terms of how I became an independent animator, I think it's just a slow burn of picking up the pennies where I can, and being lucky enough that the pennies are coming a bit easier now, so I can do things like make my own show. 

Podcasts are really perfect for that kind of exercise because you have this really expressive audio, especially with something like My Brother, My Brother and Me, but you don't have any visuals to bias what you are producing. 

DeepBlueInk: I think that disconnect of any visuals makes it difficult to share podcasts sometimes. The way I usually get into podcasts is either from things like animations or just people talking about them. 

I certainly try to introduce my own personality and find extra humour in the audio where I can. So worst case scenario you're making something audio more palatable, best case scenario you're building on and adding an extra layer of comedy. 

One of the challenges of producing independent animation is that independence also means that you don't have a studio supporting you with a production budget. So how do you sustain your projects, and is it something that you need to actively think about? 

DeepBlueInk: For me it's more a case of actively thinking about time as a budget. All of my animations apart from Deep Space Discounts have cost me whatever energy it costs to run my computer. But I have in my mind a set amount of time that I need for each one. 

I've created an unrealistic schedule for myself, which is animating and uploading a ninety-second to two-minute animation every week or every other week. And I think you just have to find the time to make all of that. 

Certainly the first few years that I was doing this full time, I had a lot of concentration on how to speed up the process. And sometimes that means discovering new tools like Toon Boom's Master Controller, which is a godsend and I will always be grateful for. 

One of the challenges with self-published independent animation on a platform like YouTube is keeping people engaged. What’s your process for building an audience and sustaining that audience? 

DeepBlueInk: It's something that I thought about a lot more at the start of this process. I was very keen, for about a year on, getting to a hundred thousand subscribers. For no real reason other than I wanted the little silver award button that they send you in the post. 

But when I had that in mind, I definitely had one ear to the ground of when are viewers subscribing, what videos are convincing people to click the button, and things like that. Luckily I don't have to do that as much now. It's just at a level that I'm quite comfortable with. 

I don't have to think about it too much anymore, which is nice. 

What does independence allow you to achieve as an artist that you wouldn't be able to explore in a studio environment? 

DeepBlueInk: Well, take everything I'm about to say with a pinch of salt, because I've never worked in a studio environment. I've never even visited. If anyone in the U.K. runs an animation studio and wants to put me up for a week, I'd love to see what the process is like and have a rough idea of what the pipeline is. 

But from what I can guess, I think independence, if nothing else, definitely means speed. It definitely helps me streamline the process as much as I want to and as much as I can. For the first four years of working full-time I didn't storyboard my animations. I just took the audio and animated scene by scene. I could roughly hear in my mind where the camera would cut or some goof would happen that I could animate in the background. 

Being able to cut down the pipeline, as much as suits me at the moment, is a big benefit to working completely independently. Certainly working on Deep Space Discounts, it has helped with a cohesiveness with the project. 

It's something that I don't have to worry about as much with my animations of other people's products. I'm guessing in a studio environment there's a lot of communication that needs to happen for it to come across in the way things were originally intended. 

How would you describe Deep Space Discounts? What is the show about?

DeepBlueInk: Deep Space Discounts is a mini animated series following the titular discount store: a space sailing superstore that is staffed by a group of ragtag alien misfits, and more importantly alien criminals. Immy is our leading character. She is the first human to ever be sent to Deep Space Discounts. And we spend these five episodes following her as she comes to terms with her new life and her new work family.

When did you first conceive of Deep Space Discounts and decide you wanted to create an original series? And how did that change from that first initial concept? 

DeepBlueInk: So like most people that work in creative jobs, I'll go on a walk and be like “Oh, I could definitely make a show,” and then after about an hour forget what the idea was and decide it was stupid. 

So I've been doing that on and off for years anyway. But the dream at one point was to work in a studio and work as an animator on a project like this. But I never really had the confidence to start. Because anytime I look at an animation of mine that's six months old it will be unrecognizable in my mind. So I'll always think “Well, unless I can make a show in six months, it's going to change quality from first episode to last episode anyway.” 

But then October 2023, I did a stream on a channel called Drawfee, and one of the guests on there with me at the same time was Barrett Leddy, who's a voice actor who's worked on things like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon and with Disney. I animated a clip of him from a previous episode and he just sent out a message saying, “If you ever wanted to work on anything, by the way, I love your animations and I'd love to work with you.” 

I think that was the spark. I went: “Oh, if I've got a really professional, good voice actor, that would be a great place to start.”

Then I came up with the concept of an intergalactic store, very much inspired by a retail job that I had in my early twenties, and thought, “What if it was run by criminals? What if our protagonist is a human?” I saw an interesting idea and I thought right I could probably build on this. 

I had two weeks off at Christmas and I just wrote as much as I could, and then picked out what I thought were five good episodes, and then from that developed a professional-looking script. I sent it to Barrett and he was interested. He then also very kindly, and I think this was another turning point in the process, said, “Would you like me to help you cast this?” 

He put together a description for the show, he sent out an audition request to a lot of people he worked with, and this project which I originally had planned to crack out in maybe three months suddenly became a thing. I had almost a hundred professional voice actors who I recognized applying to be on it. And I went, “Oh no, this is a real show now.” 

From that point on I thought, “I need to take this seriously.” And I did. 

You found professional voice actors and paid them for their work. I think there are a lot of cases where people starting out in indie animation think, “Well I'm a little guy and I don't need to pay people,” but it's important to be able to treat other artists well too. 

DeepBlueInk: Yeah, absolutely. And I say this with sensitivity. Certain projects like this don't have any budget. But I will say these amazing, celebrated voice actors did not cost a horrendous amount. 

I won't go on a soapbox because I don't understand it enough to do so, but the idea that A.I. voice acting is becoming a consideration for these companies that have millions and millions of dollars and pounds to put behind these projects is so infuriating. I don't know if I'm allowed to swear on the stream so I won't, but to Hell with A.I. voice acting. It's not good. Don't do it. 

I really enjoy your art style. What are some of the sources of inspiration that you draw from?

DeepBlueInk: I struggle trying to think of really specific art styles that look anything like this. The closest from a visual point of view I can think of is a YouTube animator called Brandon Turner. He did a lot of Game Grumps animations. 

And then from more of an animation point of view, I think a lot of the focus on facial expressions might have come from Steven Universe and Adventure Time. They're very good shows for expressing the raw emotion of moments. There might be some influence from Bob's Burgers in the subtlety of animation. 

Some of the funniest animation I can think of is from things like Bob's Burgers where there's basically no animation happening. This is probably too niche an example, but there's one scene of Bob playing pattycake with the handyman, Teddy. [Voice actor] H. John Benjamin is screaming into the microphone, but Bob's face just doesn't move at all, and it's the funniest thing.

I've talked about trying to animate as quickly as possible, and I try to avoid that equaling as lazily as possible. I read an article on Toon Boom's website about Carol & the End of the World, and about the subtlety of animation. You don't necessarily have to have huge movements, and you don't need to see the characters' hands every frame. 

Sometimes you do just need to see two characters talking to each other. Seeing what they're thinking through facial expressions is all you need sometimes.

I think having that lack of movement means that when something changes, no matter how small, you do usually notice it. It's something where it makes it easier to point the audience's attention where you want them to look, which is very useful, especially in comedy. 

On that note, what was the design process like on Deep Space Discounts?

DeepBlueInk: I don't know how common this is, but I drew characters before I came up with their personalities. 

It was very early on in the process. I had the concept for the show, but at this stage I didn't have any ideas for the characters. On my phone's notes app, I drew twenty circles, and I just spent an hour doodling on them and coming up with as many different alien designs as I could.

After about an hour, I took four coloured pens, again from the notes app, and basically checked next to each one whether I thought it was great, good, okay, or bad. And then I just repeated that process until I had, at the time, I think, six that I really liked.

Then I could see what personality they had and was able to then start writing them. And once I had something written down, I was able to fine tune the designs a bit.

This whole show was made in Toon Boom Harmony and I knew it was going to be from the start. I've been using it for about three or four years. And so when I was designing these, I had their character rigs in mind and I thought, “How would this work? How would this person's hair turn with a 360? What would the back of this character's head look like?” 

So you are designing these characters, you're writing the show, you’re creating the rigs and the animation. You have an impressive voice cast, which you are also a member of. And you made an entire five-episode animated series with each episode being six-minutes. That's thirty-plus minutes of animation produced by yourself. I just have one question: How?

DeepBlueInk: Hard grind. I'm starting to learn, now that this is out and in public, that it is maybe a bit more impressive than I thought it was. I've been really getting animating quickly down to a science. And again, that means finding tools like Toon Boom Harmony's Master Controller.

And it's also just getting less precious with storyboarding. If you saw the storyboards for this series, you would cry because they are the roughest, tiniest thumbs, but they do the job perfectly. 

In terms of how I was able to do so much so quickly, I've been animating about ninety seconds to one hundred and twenty seconds per week for about five years now. So I think that lines up with how much time I've spent on Deep Space Discounts. 

I'm surprised how good some of it is. I'm not gonna lie, I struggle with imposter syndrome a lot of the time. And I appreciate that I'm a decent animator. And again, character rigs happen behind the scenes. So I'm quite happy to say that they're decent. 

I'm really happy with the response to the writing. I was really unsure if it was actually any good. I've gotten over two thousand comments on the first video in a week. And they're all shockingly kind and excited to find more. 

You mentioned already that you use Toon Boom Harmony, and you use rigs and master controllers. What does your animation production pipeline or animation process look like? 

DeepBlueInk: So at the moment, especially with Deep Space Discounts, I have a storyboard. I think if I'm being honest, if I showed it to anyone in the industry, they would not call it a storyboard. They would call it thumbs. 

The full process for this project was creating these character designs, then writing the show, sending the script out to voice actors. I had the whole storyboard for the whole show ready before I reached out to Barrett. I actually did a scratch recording of it as well. So there is a version of Deep Space Discounts where it's me doing every voice, which I'm sure I will find a way of releasing somehow. Maybe behind a paywall.

But yeah, certainly for the stuff on YouTube, it's usually just taking the audio, putting it straight into Toon Boom Harmony. I don't use Storyboard Pro, but putting it straight into Harmony, just drawing straight onto the screen, making any storyboard transparent and then animating on top of that. Pretty much every character rig that I use has evolved from the very first character rig that I made of Griffin McElroy.

When I streamed, we had a bit of an ongoing joke that Griffin McElroy is like the common ancestor. They all have master controllers built off of the same twelve or so frames.

How do you feel about your work as an indie animator? Do you feel that you like yourself as your self-imposed boss? 

DeepBlueInk: I've not got anything to concretely compare it to. I've never worked in an animation studio. But I've certainly worked for bosses. I've had jobs. I know what that feels like. So even without that direct comparison, I can feel the freedom in what I do.

I can feel that every decision I make is my own and that I can make it immediately. And that's amazing. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Maybe this is just my fault for being online too much, but the more and more I see of working in studios, the more it feels like being employed in the animation industry is about as insecure as being self-employed in the animation industry anyway.

So it's not something that I am jealous of anymore, that security of work or working under someone. I think the thing that I would like most about working in a studio is having people to bounce ideas off of, or to see what other people's process is. That's something that's missing from being an independent animator.

But otherwise, it's perfect working conditions. It's a lovely life, to be honest. 

Do you have advice for artists who are interested in pursuing independent animation full time? 

DeepBlueInk: Yeah. Again, take all of this with a pinch of salt, because this is coming from someone that's never been employed by anyone in an artistic job.

But my first bit of advice to people just starting or just trying to make money from it is to definitely start a Patreon or something similar to that. A bit of very concrete but niche advice is when you start a Patreon, it tells you not to set up a tier for one dollar because they take a little bit more money when you do that. Don't listen to them.

Set up one dollar tiers. If someone wants to give you money, don't set any boundary to that. If someone wants to give me a dollar, I will happily take whatever eighty-three cents of that instead of ninety cents of two dollars, or something like that. Make it as easy as possible for people to support you. 

And make working as comfortable as possible. If you're going to become a master at something, you need to put in a thousand hours of practice. So make it easy to put in a thousand hours of practice.

If that means taking constant breaks? If that means splitting your job up into five different parts? If that means listening to music and having a sweets dispenser on your desk, like I do, full of M&Ms? Make it easy to want to go to your desk, sit down and do as much work as possible. 

Because if you're going to pursue animation truly independently, as independently as working completely by yourself, you're going to want to be able to put in as many hours as possible. So just try and make it as easy for yourself as possible to actually work. 

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• Deep Space Discounts is available to watch for free on YouTube. Blue also has a second channel where he shares his animation process (and plays Pokémon).
• Interested in following Blue? Subscribe to his accounts on Bluesky, Tumblr, and TikTok. If you're already a fan, you can support his projects on Patreon.
• Ready to animate your own ambitious webseries? Artists can download a 21-day trial of Harmony Premium.