Summary

Ole Adam Johnson is a Wisconsin based filmmaker, cartoonist, and actor. He is responsible for such things like The Penguins - Detectives At Large, Tanner Weinstein Conquers The Demons, and Weird Kid Comics.

History

I was born on November 17th 2007, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, colloquially known as "Ke-nowhere". The city of Kenosha I believe played a fundamental role in my development as an aspiring artist: the architecture, it being a coastal city, the local art scene (shoutout to Donovan Scherer and Ken Stouffer), and it just being a small city in general. Well, small in population, I suppose.

I don't know what exactly made me want to be an artist, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with growing up watching old Looney Tunes cartoons and old Cartoon Network shows, like Courage The Cowardly Dog and Dexters Lab. My style of drawing (and humour) was greatly influenced by Invader Zim, which happened to be another show I watched at a very early age.

When I was five years old, I watched Jaws for the first time. Even though the opening scene always scared me (y'know, when the girl gets attacked by the shark, pushed and pulled, screaming and all that), I loved the film. Maybe it had something to do with my obsession with sharks, but nonetheless it was the film that made me want to make movies.

In 2012, I made my first YouTube channel with the help of my eldest sibling, who at the time was making Minecraft gaming videos. I would make silly little videos of me trying to imitate my favorite YouTube channels, which would've been EvanTubeHD, Annoying Orange, and Lil Fred (anyone remember Lil Fred?). But in 2015, I would discover a YouTube channel called SuperMarioLogan, which, for better or worse, had a huge influence on me. Almost immediately, I tried making his kind of videos on my own, which I later learned are called plush videos. I did that for, I'll admit, way longer than I should have. But whenever I wasn't getting dragged into useless drama with other plushtubers or subjected to weeks of relentless hate comments from random people on the internet, it was a lot of fun. Though the fact that I was subjected to so much hate all at once did a lot of damage to my ego and pysche. I eventually moved on, but I still carry the weight of that experience.

But the good thing is that over those ten years of playing with Mario plushies in front of a camera taught me priceless knowledge about the basics of composition, and most importantly, video editing. But by far, the thing that helped me become a better filmmaker was learning how to animate. Since 2018, I have been making animations using Adobe Flash and posting them on Newgrounds. Animation forced me to think more critically about timing, visual flow, and direction. The skills I picked up through both filmmaking and animation have become the backbone of everything I create. I owe a lot of that inspiration to Alan Becker, whose work first made me want to pursue animation seriously.

In 2019, back when every animator on the internet seemed to be making their own series (most popular example was Vivziepop and Hazbin Hotel), I decided to try making my own. This took the form of Tom & Jon, a show that was almost a complete rip off of Invader Zim. But through a series of events that I don't feel like going that too deep in, it eventually morphed into my most "popular" thing to date: The Penguins - Detectives At Large, an action-crime-comedy following a trio of private investigators as they struggle to draw the line between good and evil in a city sopping with crime. I consider this stupid little comic series my most cherised creation (well, until the next one comes around) and I'm currently working on getting the first season of comics finished and published.

Speaking of publishing, I also created Weird Kid Comics back in... I think 2024? It’s not an official company, but rather a label I use to group together my creative work. Someday, I hope it will grow into something more concrete. For now, though, it’s simply a personal brand, a way to give my projects an identity.

I think that's it. Thanks for reading this far! You've earned yourself a treat!