After watching Mr. Babaloo over and over I am starting to think the pacing is running long. After all it is meant to be a quick gag.

I have an equation that I have come up with. It is "XHumor + XTime= Payoff". Really it can all be filed under "timing". However If you doing an animated short that has a gag ending you have to be aware of Humor + Time= Payoff. Will the viewer find the payoff (gag) at the end worth the amount of time they invested watching it. This rings true especially when it comes to animation on the internet. You have to realize people have a very low attention span when surfing the net and are NOT a captive audience. So you have to constantly ask yourself "Is the end funny enough for the time it takes to it set up?". Sometimes the exact same gag can be funny depending on the set up time. If it took only 15 seconds to get to the gag people may feel they did not invest a lot of time and find it funny. The same gag could fail if it takes 45 seconds. That's where the tough part comes in. Is the gag funny enough? Funny enough to make people wait a minute of set up? If not, is it possible to set it up in less time and still have the viewer understand and follow in a believable manner? In the case of Mr. Babaloo there is a abrupt ending. If it is short I believe viewers will get it and find it funny. If I make them wait too long they will feel gypped like there should have been more. So now I have to decide if I cut out a few seconds of animation for pacing.

On side note I changed the color of the carpet for the background. It was brown. I felt the overall background was too warm color wise. So I changed it to add some cooler colors to the pallet. To see the old one you can scroll down to an older post.