Donnie’s Back Cause You Still Suck (and Demanded It)

I’ve loved every episode of You Suck at Photoshop, not only because it mines laughs from the protagonist Donnie’s pathetic victories. I also think it’s innovative, one of the first web video things I’ve seen that would only work on the web - a first step beyond the “radio with pictures” days.

The format itself - a software training screencast - could be on TV, but that type of video naturally works best right there on your desktop. Because that’s where you’re going to use the software in the first place. Combine that with the use of other applications and web tools, and there’s a rich sense of Donnie’s life (or rather, non-life) just from what we see on the desktop.

And I think that’s also a key - the series uses one of the unique traits to most interaction on the web - anonymity. It elicits the same level of imagination you’ve had when you’ve talked to some troll in a message board forum or a blog comment. You want to fill in this picture of why this guy is being such a tool.

So it’s great to see it back, particularly after what looked like a conclusive tenth episode. But demand was too great, so here we are again with Donnie and a lesson on Smart Objects.

As always, its impressive how they can both teach a function in the program and tell a story. I actually learned something from this.