Jan 5, 2013

Here are the most watched online animations of 2012! [UPDATED

The most viewed original online animation of 2012 went viral mainly because people didn't realize it was an animation. I'm talking about this video of a golden eagle snatching an infant from the ground:

The short animated clip was viewed more than 41 million times in the two weeks after it was posted online. Both the eagle and the baby are CG characters, and the work was created as a student exercise for Antoine Seigle, Normand Archambault, Loïc Mireault, and Félix Marquis-Poulin of the Montreal-based Centre NAD.

The success of this animation is a reminder that companies remain clueless about what viewers want to see online; YouTube spent $100 million last year in a backward-looking attempt to create a niche "channel" like cable TV. The animations, created by students as part of their classes, had more viewers than 76 of the YouTube channels. While I don't claim to have the answer as to what people want to watch online, it is clear that the entertainment industry's cynical top-down approach of mass producing content for a narrow demographic has become irrelevant.

[UPDATE:] Brew reader Justin Goran points out that the most watched online animated film title of 2012 belongs to the animated Minecraft world-based music video parody "Fallen Kingdom," he noted. The film was posted online on April 1, 2012 and has now been viewed over 45 million times: