Creator’s Journal #1 — a place to share the wins, the lessons, and everything I’m learning while building Bad Eggz.
A little over a year ago, I thought making an animated series meant writing funny scripts, creating memorable characters, recording voices, and bringing ridiculous ideas to life.
I was wrong. Well — not wrong. Just wildly underprepared.
What nobody mentioned: making the show would only be half the job. The other half was learning YouTube, social media, SEO, thumbnails, websites, analytics, audience retention, branding, marketing — and enough acronyms to make my head spin.
I signed up to make people laugh. Nobody told me I’d also be starting a small business.
Why I’m Actually Making This Show
From day one, Bad Eggz had one purpose: make people laugh. That’s still the goal today.
Life is serious enough. If someone stumbles across one of my videos after a stressful day and spends two minutes laughing at sarcastic eggs stranded on a survival show, the months of work were worth it.
The views, subscribers, algorithms, and analytics all matter. But they’re not why I started.
What Making an Animated Series Is Actually Like
People sometimes ask what it’s like creating an animated series. The truth: it’s awesome! It’s also exhausting.
One minute I’m writing dialogue for Florentine. The next I’m obsessing over whether a joke lands better with a half-second pause before the punchline. By afternoon I’m researching keywords, redesigning a thumbnail, or trying to figure out why one post reaches thousands of people and another barely leaves the gate.
I thought I’d spend most of my time making cartoons. Instead, I’ve become a full-time student of the internet.
The Part I Got Right: The People
Creative projects start with one person’s idea, but they become something much better when talented people bring their own ideas to the table.
My editor transformed this show. I knew the stories I wanted to tell, but he had an instinct for comedy I didn’t — better pacing, sharper timing, small moments that made scenes funnier than I’d imagined while writing them. More than once I watched an updated cut and thought, that’s so much better than what I gave him.
My character designer gave these personalities a look that felt instantly right. The animators took static drawings and gave them heart, expression, timing of their own.
My incredibly talented cast brought each character to life with their amazing voice acting skills. Timing and personality make all the difference in the world. It is always better with a pro who knows what they are doing.(left to right)top – Dina Sherman, Dave B. Mitchell, Tara Platt, middle – Yuri Lowenthal, Christopher Sean, Michelle Ruff, lower – Daniel Ross,
Then there are the people who’ll never see their names in the credits: friends who watched rough cuts, family who gave honest feedback, and everyone who answered a text that started with “can I run something by you?” and turned into an hour-long brainstorm. Every one of those conversations made the project better.
Making Something You’re Proud Of Isn’t the Same as Getting It Seen
Here’s the part nobody prepares you for: you can spend months on something you’re genuinely proud of, then watch it struggle to find the people you made it for.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve opened YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook hoping for a little momentum, only to wonder what happened. Was it the thumbnail? The title? The algorithm? The time I posted? Or was the joke just not as funny as I thought?
You start asking questions you never expected to ask when all you wanted to do was make cartoons.
Take the running blur gag in Bad Eggz. It’s there because it makes me laugh — an absurd parody of reality TV that became part of the show’s personality almost immediately. Ironically, it may also be THE ONE reason the content struggles to get discovered. The AI bots see the pixels or blur as “Violation of community content”. It’s a site gag on an egg. What exactly is being violated?!?
That’s a strange thing to sit with, not just as a creator, but as a person. When you pour yourself into something, you hope people get the chance to experience it. When they don’t, it’s hard not to wonder if you’re doing something wrong. Those are the days that sting.
What I’ve Learned So Far
Frustration isn’t failure. It’s information.
Maybe I don’t need to change the heart of the show. Maybe I need to change how I introduce it to the world — better packaging, better marketing, better ways to invite people into this weird little universe without losing what made me excited to create it in the first place.
I don’t have that answer yet. And I’m okay with that, because that’s where creativity actually lives — not after you’ve figured everything out, but while you’re figuring it out.
Still Making Cartoons
So that’s where I am: still learning, still experimenting, still laughing, still making mistakes, still making cartoons.
If you’ve found your way here, thank you for coming along on the ride. This journal won’t just be about Bad Eggz — it’ll be about building creative projects, solving problems I never expected to have, celebrating wins, learning from failures, and hopefully sharing a few laughs along the way.
After all, that’s how this whole thing started.