James Muckle (born: September 26, 1995), better known online as Blue Monkey, is an English YouTube animator. He animates videos based on the video game Minecraft. As a sort of reference to his name, Blue Monkey often calls his subscribers "Chimps". He also joined the animation crew of Team Crafted along with WeedLion. However, he left TC on March 6, 2014.
YouTuber career
Early career
On 24 August 2012, Dan joined YouTube with the Blue Monkey account. He started to make Minecraft animations on the channel. His first video was "The Meteor" which was a Minecraft animation. Almost all of Dan's first videos have more than one million views. Animating for his channel quickly became his full-time job.
Blue Monkey became very popular for his video "Ender Troll" about the very common situation in Minecraft where a player finishes a masterpiece that they've been working on for a long period of time and then an Enderman comes along and wrecks it. However, he later became more popularly known for his video "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" making a reference to the popular movie Frozen. In the video, a little girl walks up to a big wooden door while it's snowing, says "Elsa's" name and knocks on the door. When the door opens, she sings the lyrics, "Do you want to build a snowman?", but gets no farther after whoever is behind the door makes her stop singing with a snowball to the face.
Team Crafted (2013-2014)
In 2013, Blue Monkey joined Team Crafted. He was a part of the animation crew of Team Crafted alongside WeedLion and Deceptibonk. Blue Monkey was also a part of animating Team Crafted's first animation video. In the video, members of Team Crafted are racing and during the race, Blue Monkey throws bananas which causes SSundee to slip and lose the race. On 6 March 2014, Blue Monkey left Team Crafted stating that an animator in a Let's play group doesn't make sense.
Alex and Steve Life (2017-present)
In 2017, Blue Monkey started a Minecraft animation series called Alex and Steve Life. The videos gained him a lot of popularity and on May 11, 2020, Blue Monkey received 2 million subscribers.
Characters
There are a couple characters that Blue Monkey commonly uses in his videos. This is a list of the ones he uses most frequently.
Billy
Billy is a strange young boy with a high pitched voice that always appears to be wandering around the Minecraft world with no real goal. However his wanderings often get him into some very strange situations.
Billy is voiced by AdamRodriguezGamez.
Dave
Dave is a "hero" that only has a head and legs, no arms or even a torso.
Dave is voiced by TheFearRaiser.
Oswell and Taz
Oswell and Taz are two pigs. They can often be mixed up, however they are distinguishable by their eyes; Oswell has blue eyes and Taz has brown eyes. They are both very curious characters, however their curiosity often gets them into trouble.
Oswell is voiced by ZoxinTV and Taz is voiced by BrendanielReads.
Alex and Steve
Alex and Steve are the two default skins in Minecraft. They have a series documenting their interactions that has become the main focus of the channel. Alex is voiced by Emichwan88 and Steve by ShadyVoxYT.
Spooky
Spooky, also referred as Spooks, is a scarecrow and a friend of Steve. Sometimes Spooky always giving Steve an idea, even though it is his idea. Spooky's first appeared in "STEVE ALMOST KILLED ALEX?!" video. However, he is a minor character of Alex and Steve series.
Trivia
- James is 6'1".
- He is the Lead Animator for Hive Games since the start of the Hive's Java Server (which is now closed) to Hive's Bedrock Server.
- The villagers' voices in his videos are provided by Dan Lloyd from Element Animation.
Channel milestones
Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade. Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.
Subscriber milestones
- 1 million subscribers: June 4, 2017
- 2 million subscribers: May 9, 2020
- 3 million subscribers: April 11, 2022
- 4 million subscribers: December 25, 2022
- 5 million subscribers: January 4, 2023
- 6 million subscribers: April 6, 2023
Video view milestones
- 1 billion views: February 17, 2023
Gallery
