This month marks 10 years since I first made this channel. Here, I go back to talk about the videos that got this channel started. Aka the Minecraft animations.
This post is a transcript of the above video.
Hi there, I’m TempusWare.
If you’ve been subscribed to this channel for longer than three years, or at least before 2020, you might know that I used to make Minecraft animations. In fact, I’ve been making Minecraft animations on this channel since the very beginning, since October 2014. Which means this month, October 2024, right now, is going to mark the 10 Year anniversary of when I made this channel. So I wanted to go back and talk about the old animations that I used to make. In case you haven’t seen them, but also, just as a retrospective of the kind of stuff that I used to make.
So the first few animations that I did were on a different channel, one that I had before this one. And they were mostly animation tests, I guess. Very short animations that were really just to practice using this program. But one of the videos was a recreation of the 9th Doctor’s Regeneration. Which as far as I know is my first Doctor Who video, or at least Doctor Who Minecraft animation. And it’s awful. It doesn’t have any, like, mouth animation. It’s just like someone looking up and down. But hey, everyone gets started somewhere.
And I made that animation and made the majority of my future animations in this program called Mine-imator, which was made by a guy named David just as a hobby project of his. And a lot of people don’t view Mine-imator as like a real animation program. Because if you’re going to make animations, you gotta make it in Cinema 4D or Blender or some kind of formal thing. But Mine-imator was like a really accessible way to get into making Minecraft animations, which is what I wanted to make at the time.
One video that I completely forgot I made is called: ‘Do you want to kill a snowman (Minecraft Parody of Frozen)’ Which is partially a machinima, so it’s like filmed in Minecraft, but it does have animation with it.
But it wasn’t until I made this channel, wherein I started doing Minecraft Doctor Who title sequence recreations, or just title sequences in general, where I would recreate Doctor Who title sequences but in Minecraft style. I first got started doing these because someone in the Minecraft Doctor Who community started a collaboration project where many creators would pick a title sequence to then re-create in Minecraft. And then there was a compilation video where everyone’s title sequences were shown. And that got me started doing this as like, kind of a regular thing throughout this era of Minecraft animations. I made a couple of regular animations, not title sequences, but most of those were very, very short. So the main thing that I did, main projects I would do, were title sequence recreations.
I did one episode of a potential Minecraft Doctor Who animated series called ‘Miney Winey Blocky Wocky’, which… which hurts to say, actually, that’s really cringe. But because of that, technically, the first appearance of my OC Doctor incarnation appeared not in my ‘a 70s Dr Who episode’ sketch, but actually in this Minecraft Doctor Who animation that I made nine years ago. So yeah.
And I also made an animation as a birthday present for a friend of mine who would eventually start making their own gameplay videos on YouTube. And later I made a couple of animations for them based on clips from their gameplay videos for them to then publish on their own channel.
It was around this time that I had met someone who I would know as ‘Retro’ through the Minecraft Doctor Who community. And they would become a close friend of mine and kind of creative partner for a lot of projects for the next few years. And one of the first projects that we did together was a Minecraft Thunderbirds animation. Because Thunderbirds had a reboot around this time. And a lot of people in the Minecraft Doctor Who community started making Minecraft Thunderbirds videos because Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, both British shows. And I had seen a little bit of Thunderbirds when I was much younger. So I made a couple of videos. I made a couple of title sequence recreations and a relatively long animated short.
And then the next year in 2016, I discovered Gravity Falls, which was a Disney cartoon that I had discovered just before it ended. And I made an animation recreating one of the scenes from the first episode. And that blew up. That is still, to this day, my most popular video ever. My most viewed video ever, with I think like 5 million views. But I didn’t make any money off of it. Because I didn’t monetize it because I was scared of Disney suing me or something.
I also made an animated short, unrelated to any IP that starred my friend and I, which was about when someone spoils the thing that you’re watching. Which is a very original idea.
So from 2014-2017, I made just a bunch of Minecraft animations, and Minecraft Doctor Who animations, and… dipped in here and there with different other fandoms that I was in. And every video that I made was for fun. I didn’t make any money. But one of the unavoidable things about putting things online, is the responses; the feedback from other people. And there was this one guy who would comment on my videos criticizing them and giving them ratings. And then also at one point, messaged me on Facebook, calling me a coward or something. And I think that probably discouraged me enough. I don’t know how heavy of a factor that was, But eventually I stopped making them almost entirely.
And right at the start of 2017, Club Penguin came back into the news because Disney announced it was shutting down. So I went back to making Club Penguin videos, which I did before all the Minecraft stuff. So I stopped posting as much stuff onto this channel. But at the end of 2017, my friend, Retro and I, made a Minecraft Ben 10 animation that blew up. I don’t remember how many views it got exactly. The original upload’s been privated since then. But the success of that video, I guess kick-started the direction I would then take, which was Minecraft Ben 10 animations.
But at the beginning of 2018, I think I started having mental health issues. So I took a break from online stuff. And my friendship with that close friend, Retro, began to deteriorate. And then by the end of that year, there was an argument in a group chat. And I was sort of exiled from the Minecraft Doctor Who community. Everyone saw it and joined in and started harassing me. And not long after that, I released probably my best Minecraft Doctor Who animation, which was a recreation of the ‘Breaking the Wall’ scene from the end of Heaven Sent, the Twelfth Doctor episode. But I think because of that, sort of drama, and a general dying of interest in Doctor Who within the community, cause it was 2018, there wasn’t really any engagement with it. And for a long time, that was my last Doctor Who video.
Because throughout 2019 and 2020, I moved away from making stuff to focus on school, and relationships. I made a couple of animations here and there about Ben 10, But I didn’t have any passion projects for a long time. After that Minecraft Ben 10 animation blew up, Retro began to make Minecraft Ben 10 animations on his own. But the audience that he had gathered were just children who were asking for nothing but Ben 10. He got tired of that and removed all the Ben 10 content from his channel. At the time, I saw that and I was like, “You know what? I think I could handle it.” So I started making Minecraft Ben 10 animations. But then COPPA was introduced, which meant comments were disabled and people couldn’t really engage with the content, and monetization was affected. And I got a ton of subscribers who were asking for nothing but Ben 10. And I hated it and didn’t make any money off of it. But I hadn’t learned just yet.
Around the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, I had broken up with my then girlfriend and I had suddenly gotten this desire to make stuff. So I made two pretty big Minecraft Ben 10 animations. And these ones did blow up. But again, because of COPPA, meaning I had to mark the video as ‘Made for Kids’, there wasn’t any engagement or like any response to the videos. So after the disappointment of that direction, I stopped making Minecraft Ben 10 videos, And I decided to return to Minecraft Doctor Who.
So I made a Minecraft Doctor Who: Third Doctor Titles recreation, which was a recreation of a classic title sequence with two animations alongside it. At the time, I saw that as the beginning of this new project filling in the gaps in this series of Minecraft Doctor Who titles recreations that I’d done. Because after that, I only had four more titles that I had not yet made Minecraft recreations of. But, ultimately, that was the last one. I did toy around with making animations for some of the missing episodes. I did around half a minute each for two Patrick Troughton stories, but I didn’t finish those. And I probably never will.
Because at the end of that year, I had another breakup with someone. And this one got me really, really sad. So I called up my friend and I was like, “Hey, can I come over?” And we started making live action sketches. And I found out that I really enjoyed doing it. That’s where my passion is now, to this day, making live action videos. Because throughout those six years, making videos online, I had never shown my face. Because at the time, I had a lot of body image issues. I still do now, But what I found is that doing these live action videos, I’ve grown to be more comfortable with how I look and how I sound. So doing these live action videos, is making me more comfortable with the person that I am. And I just love just making real stuff.
But then I did make one last Minecraft Ben 10 video the next year, which people hated because it was voice acted. But that was my last Minecraft animation video published on this channel. And after that, I pivoted entirely to doing these live action videos.
And since then, I’ve reconciled with that old friend who I’d fallen out with. While we’re not close friends anymore, we’ve cleared the air, and cleaned up the bad blood.
But yes, thank you for watching. Please go out and make your own stuff. Cause making stuff is awesome. And it’s something that only humans can do. Bye.
And I thought I should mention this in case you were wondering, 4,000 subscribers came from that Gravity Falls video. While 6,700 subscribers came from one of the Ben 10 videos. And that’s why I have like 15-or-17,000 subscribers and going down, But like no, no views. So that’s why. Okay, bye.