This self-proclaimed 'bad animator' made his way to Forbes 30 under 30 with his endearing videos.
Meet Danny Casale, AKA CoolMan CoffeeDan, a wildly successful animator who uses his signature blobby characters to put a smile on the faces of his 1.7 million followers.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DANNY CASALE: I was definitely a creative kid. The teachers would say I daydreamed too much. I drew way too much since, like, pre-K. It was an issue, and my teachers would have to tell me to stop, and that never went away, that feeling, that feeling of just I have something in my head and I have to manifest it. I don't know. There's some, like, feeling inside of me that I just got to let out and express, and I really just can't picture my life any other way.
My name is Danny Casale, a.k.a. Coolman Coffeedan, and I am a self-proclaimed bad animator.
- I was working on this dance for a little bit. I was hoping you could tell me what you think. Here I go.
- You're looking pretty sharp.
- OK, first text to this girl. Hello. Too formal.
- I just need one more coffee to get me through the door.
DANNY CASALE: I would describe the style of my videos as overtly simple, colorful. You know, many of my characters are very blobby. I try to have it be like a very short dose of, like, positivity, whether it be laughs or something else.
I'm kind of nervous, dude. Like, what--
Although it is simple animation, bad animation--
- I'm feeling armless. I'm feeling--
DANNY CASALE: --I pride myself in the jokes, in the stories, in the ability to have this human connect with some blobby character. It's cool. It works out.
I just made up that whole thing, dude. It's like a whole new episode right there.
One day in 2017, I just had this visual of a snake and a pink background. So I drew it on an index card, and I took a picture of it on my phone and vectorized it and colored it on my computer. And I ended up making this animation called "SNAKES HAVE LEGS."
And that went stupid viral. It turned into this totally nonintended political cartoon piece in arguably the most politically charged summer of recent times, and it was about not believing everything you read on the internet.
- I heard that you have legs, man.
- That's some dumb shit.
DANNY CASALE: It got huge in Brazil because they were undergoing a political shift at the time. Teachers were showing it in their classrooms.
- Did you get this information from a reputable news source?
- Yes. It was called The Daily Testicle.
- The Daily Testicle?
- Yeah.
DANNY CASALE: So I was like, OK, this is what I'm doing now. That obviously worked, and I kind of-- I kind of still don't know how to animate.
It hasn't changed that much at all because that is the charm. To change it to take a, you know, animation course would, I feel like, cause me to lose some of the magic, some of the simple magic that is a part of the videos.
So I grew up on Long Island in a town called Glen Cove. It was a little boring, so I sought to make my own adventures, often through imagination and my weirdness and filming home movies, and I would also, like, sit in my basement and set up these amazing hour-long domino lines. And I would upload those to YouTube. I would upload my short films to YouTube. YouTube was like my main medium since I discovered when I was 11.
I actually saw a comment the other day about how people think I'm an overnight success because I kind of came out of nowhere with this animation. Definitely not the case. I've been creating content for so long. I really never stopped once I started. I guess it's been over a decade of me uploading to YouTube, which is insane.
The dream was always to draw and get paid.
What's up, boys?
- Whats up, dude?
DANNY CASALE: How's it going?
- Good to see you.
- What up, dude?
DANNY CASALE: 10 years later after I discovered YouTube I'm like, I hit this jackpot. And I find the medium that I like most, and coincidentally, it's what people vibe with most.
- Make it, like, really pink.
DANNY CASALE: It's a dream come true. It really is.
- Hey. You have to know something. You have to know how much good there is out there. If far outweighs the bad.
DANNY CASALE: A few months into my newfound animation page, I realized that there was more to this than just, like, goofs. Like people genuinely found, like, value and help. And, like, that was when I kind of took on a greater responsibility.
I really love my character Blue Dude. Accidentally figured out that people really need to hear that they're loved and that things will get better. I made this character called Blue Dude after the shootings in Las Vegas, and this made them feel better. I just want to be able to speak to as many people as possible through my art, through my content, so I can't help but feel as if I am responsible to at least change the world a little bit.
If it's as simple as making someone smile and as reminding them that the world is mostly good, and if I'm able to do that and maybe make your week better, make your month better, make your year better, I'll do it. This art form is a bigger thing than just bad animation.
