Joshua Palmer (born: April 15, 1986), better known online as Zeurel, is a New Zealander YouTuber, artist, and animator. He is best known for his frame-by-frame 2D Flash animation, work on Newgrounds, DeviantArt, and Albino Blacksheep, his multi-animator project The Dover Boys Reanimated Collab, and he is also the creator of the indie animated web series Monkey Wrench.
History
He uploaded his first video "Kirby Adventures" on January 1, 2010.
He uploaded his most viewed video "Team Fortress 2 - Sandviches!" on September 27, 2011.
He uploaded the first Vargskeletoon, "Joel needs MILK!" on Christmas Eve 2018 (December 24, 2018).
Monkey Wrench
On July 18, 2022, Zeurel released the first episode of his Monkey Wrench animated series, featuring his characters Shrike Sanchez and Bulldog "Beebs" Browns, which are members of a low-level mercenary group named "Monkey Wrench" trying to get by. The pilot is about the duo having to escort their newest client (a paranoid bird-like alien) to safety while avoiding bounty hunters that are after him. The pilot has been in production since 2015, and future episodes will be funded by Patreon.
Shrike and Beebs have actually been around for much longer, with a few animations featuring the characters, circa 2008. These animated shorts were part of The Colosseum, an Original Character tournament on DeviantArt held by kilojara16.
The tournament, as implied by its name, was between original creations by many animators and artists on DeviantArt. While the duo didn't win the original tournament (thanks to Baby's interference in their latest match, accourding to a comic), Zeurel grew to like them and decided to expand on their world and stories outside of these tournaments.
The duo had vastly different designs and personalities in these old videos, with Shrike being more hyperactive (and having a creature named "Baby" living on a third eye on his forehead) and Beebs being more of a "dumb muscle", but the duo otherwise show great skills in combat. They were also accompanied by their manager, Mellony "Mini Mel" Meadows, a 6-year-old girl with the intelligence of an adult, but mostly acted like a regular child.
In 2009, the duo has been featured in an audition named Down to Earth, made for a crossover flash animation event on DeviantArt called Civil War. In this short, Shrike and Beebs, as well as Mini Mel, were accompanied by a human boy named Diz Marekenwire, which served as their voice of reason for the crew.
The plot, taking place after the events of The Colosseum tournament, was about the team crash landing on a devastated version of Planet Earth, where most humans have gone extinct and the few that survived are currently on war. The episode finished with the group being offered to work in a faction of the war (the tournament itself) with the repairment of their ship as payment. The audition failed to get them to the tournament.
The most popular video of the duo is a 2012 animation test called Lard Ass, which features audio from the 1978 Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke film as the short's audio track.
It's currently unknown if elements and characters of these old shorts will be implemented on the new Monkey Wrench, as Mini Mel, Baby and Diz have yet to make an appearance on the new continuity, assuming it's not a complete reboot from their tournament days (since Shrike seems to lack his third eye, therefore being impossible to hide Baby on it). But there is concept art for who it seems to be a grown-up version of Mini Mel on the current style of the show, so it's anyone's guess.
On August 18th, 2022, Zeurel announced that the storyboard production of episode 2 has begun.
Trivia
- Zeurel has collaborated with Vinesauce and Nico Animations' Ollie and Scoops.