When Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch saw a throwaway character on their show You Suck at PhotoShop — Sandy, a friend of protagonist Donnie Hoyle — get 2,000 Facebook friends, they knew they had a hit on their hands. Web video series YSAP chronicled the life of frustrated PhotoShop user Hoyle through his deadpan asides and stunts that included posting his wedding ring on eBay. But it was Hoyle’s elaborate backstory that drew viewers in, entertaining them while simultaneously teaching them how to master the desktop publishing program.
Bledsoe and Hitch are sticking to the winning formula with their new web series, Big Fat University. The idea behind Big Fat University, the two said at a Web TV/Internet Week Meetup last night at For Your Imagination’s studio in New York, is to teach things they know, like filmmaking and music.
Bledsoe said they have three criteria for their shows: They have to be funny, they have to teach something, and they have to create a connection with the audience. “YouTube broadcasts,” he said by way of comparison, “allow a simple community, but prevent real interaction.” Bledsoe and Hitch create rich context for the characters of their shows, context that spans the entire Internet — including Facebook profiles, Skype accounts, and web sites for the characters’ companies.
And that’s where BigFatUniversity.org comes in. The university, which is “based” in Bledsoe and Hitch’s hometown of Covington, Ky., has a detailed history checkered with just enough real facts to completely confuse the audience. For example, Hitch said, “Where other web sites call it content, “we’re calling it ‘courses,’ and ‘professors’ issuing challenges.” He hopes to get sponsors to form the “university’s” endowment — but says that the sponsors would have to really understand their concept, since it’s not as measurable as traditional web analytics are. The free courses will also follow the same model as You Suck at PhotoShop: web videos that beg for interaction by asking the audience to complete “assignments.” For a guitar class, for example, students could send in different tracks that would be combined to create a song.
The key to YSAP‘s success, Hitch said, was that it was a two-way conversation. Posting a video with Boyle answering a Skype call from Sw4shbuckl3r, a friend of Doyle’s from World of Warcraft, for example, would result in people starting WoW Sw4shbuckl3r guilds and logging on to Skype to chat with him. Showing Facebook messages from one of Doyle’s friends would yield her 2,000 Facebook friends by the end of the week. “People would go to see if she was real,” he said. “And that is far more valuable than saying ‘Come look at my Facebook page!’ It gives people more ownership.”
Bledsoe and Hitch also incorporated content based on both the positive and negative feedback they received. From the first episode of YSAP on, commenters debated whether or not the voice-over on the show was done by comedian Dane Cook. The creators said they got an e-mail from Cook saying that he loved what they were doing, but that he was getting tons of emails every day asking if he was the voice-over. So for the show’s final episode, he made a cameo appearance.
Meanwhile, as people got hooked on the story, the creators realized that they, too, were learning PhotoShop. And from a sponsor’s perspective, that’s powerful. “You have people there already interested in your product,” Hitch said. Adobe approached them and loved what they were doing, he said, but ultimately decided that it was a little too PG-13 for them to get officially involved. (Donnie Hoyle has a bit of a potty mouth.)
Bledsoe and Hitch were then asked by Adobe to create a show called Agency of Record, a parody of ad shops. But while the two said they loved the opportunity, it just wasn’t the same as creating something on their own, without direction from anyone else. Being both picky and potty-mouthed, however, is a hard row to hoe; hopefully they can make it work.
Pictured: Troy Hitch and Matt Bledsoe. Photo credit Karoline Barwinski.

{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2009\/06\/04\/do-you-suck-at-photoshop-go-to-big-fat-university\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_8a2297dbfe05c675be690c193d9e64a7","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}