Ben Zurawski’s Flipbooks

So you’re a 23-year-old unknown animator and you’d like your work seen by millions of people on national TV. How do you do it? For Detroit-based artist Ben Zurawski, it was as simple as drawing some flipbooks and posting them onto YouTube. A few weeks ago, one of them was shown on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Here’s the segment:

Zurawski has posted nearly thirty flipbooks so far onto the video sharing site. Some of them take on pop culture figures like Steve Irwin and Stephen Colbert, while others are fairly ambitious graphically and accompanied with sound, like My Disastrous Little Flipbook. His most viewed flipbook, nip-slip flip book (safe for work) has received over 450k views. Ben also accepts commissions to create custom flipbooks, starting from $55.

In this day and age of whiz-bang gadgetry and powerful digital software, Zurawski is proof positive that a lo-fi approach to animation can garner success online, and even get your work featured on late-night talkshows. Here is a link to a recent interview with Ben about his artwork in general.