Grickle!

July 25, 2023 1:03 AM

Grickle is Eisner award-winning artist and animator Graham Annable, featured on Metafilter twice before, that second time by missing, and missed, Mefite oneswellfoop. He worked for Lucasarts and created the award-winning two-game Telltale series Nelson Tethers Puzzle Agent. He's made two books of his frightfully funny artwork, The Book of Grickle and now Eerie Tales From The School of Screams. He has a terrific Mastodon account and a channel of funny/creepy Youtube animations. Favorites: Space Wolf (1:42), The Last Duet on Earth (3:54), The Hidden People (3:27), We Sing the Forest Electric (1:51), The Smartest Dog in the World (4:34), Soup Leprechaun (2:51), Blower (6:13), Pickle Sandwich (3:20), and... Maybellene (2:28, Maybellene was everything, and everything was Maybellene)

Grickle is also known around Hollywood. He directed The Boxtrolls!

A selection of other videos, of varying degrees of humor and horror:
Flight 851 (1:21)
Lunch (1:54)
Dummy (4:56)
The Webb (4:42)
Dreams of Venus (2:51)
Channels (2:01)
Change of Scenery (1:29)
Grand Finale (1:08)
Don't Mess With Delaware (1:43)
Zoo (1:48)
Sasquatch (0:50)
Botched (1:33)
Closet (2:34)
Day Off (1:07)

Christmas
The Grickle Christmas Collection (10:19)
Holicraze (2:30)
Down by the Bay (1:39)
Lakeside (1:06, featuring the Hidden People)
Santa's (1:57)
'Twas the Night (1:59)
Arctic Holiday (1:30)
Far, Far, Far, Away Up North (1:01)

Halloween
Pumpkin Scrap (1:13)
Joy to the Weird (1:32)
Halloween Madness (0:41)

Collections:
Grickle Television (a collection of Vines) Volume 1 (2:47)
Volume 2 (2:49)
Monkey Screams Collection (9:30)
From Whence Before Times (3:49)

Events in the "life" of sad, bony Principal Skeleton:
the first (2:06)
Performance
V Day (2:58)
After Hours (2:24)
About Face (4:27)

posted by JHarris (8 comments total)

Annable's game Puzzle Agent is great. It got a glowing video review from Ross Scott (Freeman's Mind, previously 1, 2), which is how I first came across his work. If you don't want to sit through a 17-minute video, Ross gives a cute summary from 2:34 to 2:51 :)
posted by a car full of lions at 2:31 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Annable didn't make all of Puzzle Agent, of course, he co-wrote the story and did the art. But the Hidden People come up sometimes in his other work. And I disagree with Ross Scott about Puzzle Agent 2, while a new setting would have been nice (maybe some time in the future?), and the mystery of the ending in PA1 did have an appeal, there were a lot of loose ends left by the ending of the first game. They feel like two halves of the same story. Sadly, the implosion of the original Telltale Games implies we probably won't ever get another one.

Graham also worked on a couple of Telltale's Sam & Max games, and on the underrated, aborted Bone game series, as well as Lucasarts adventures going back to Full Throttle!
posted by JHarris at 4:37 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

(Ah, the Christmas Collection video, like the only one I didn't watch all the way through, seems like it's just a compilation of the others.)
posted by JHarris at 4:42 AM on July 25, 2023

He’s so prolific and consistent. I don’t know how he does it, he’s a marvel.
posted by TangoCharlie at 8:18 AM on July 25, 2023

See also his work in HICKEE, a a strange and wonderful comic anthology series from the early 2000s with Scott C (of Double Fine, The Great Showdowns, and more), as well as many other doubly-fine and very funny artists/cartoonists.
posted by TangoCharlie at 8:24 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I always liked "Performance". That is exactly the sort of performance art I would have done.
posted by boilermonster at 10:47 AM on July 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Absolutely follow him on Instagram. He posts constantly and it's always worth a grin.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:21 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

If Mastodon is your vibe instead, he posts the same things there it seems! I linked his feed in the FPP. Grickle's always had good social media game.
posted by JHarris at 2:03 PM on July 25, 2023