Animation sensation: Battle for Dream Island goes viral in India

Battle for Dream Island (BFDI) is an award-winning web series distributed on YouTube by independent animation company Jacknjellify LLC. Sutton Hull has established a reputation as one of the most influential lead animators for the company, having worked on 23 episodes since 2020. Over the following years, Hull’s work collected 188,988,923 views worldwide, with 1.5 million viewers in India alone.

Hull’s contributions to the franchise’s success stem from his skill and efficiency as an animator. As one of the fastest animators for the Jacknjellify company, Hull animates more scenes per episode than anyone else and helps keep the channel on schedule with monthly episode uploads. In this way, Hull ensures the show maintains its relevance and viewership momentum with audiences.

Hull’s animation has also spawned some of the show’s most memorable and revisited moments. For example, in “BFDI:TPOT 6: The Great Goikian Bake-Off,” Hull was tasked with animating a musical montage sequence requiring many intricate cuts timed to the music. Upon the episode’s release, the scene quickly became an audience-favorite due to Hull’s unique animation style. The episode accrued 5.9 million views on YouTube (40,000 from India), and Hull’s montage scene itself received an additional 2.4 million views when it was repackaged as short-form content for Jacknjellify’s “YouTube Shorts” page. 

The aforementioned episode also saw success outside of YouTube, as Jacknjellify screened it at select theaters in Los Angeles and New York in the summer of 2023. Jacknjellify sold 3,300 tickets for the screenings, demonstrating the power of Hull’s animation to draw in a crowd. 

The very next summer, the event was expanded to include more cities in the US, including Houston and Seattle. In these locations, Jacknjellify showed the episode “BFDI:TPOT 12: What’s Up Bell’s String?” Hull not only animated for this episode, but also acted as a script/story consultant as well, putting both his writing and animation on the big screen for live audiences to enjoy. Throughout the summer of 2024, 15,000 tickets were sold for live screenings, marking tremendous growth in BFDI’s brand since the previous year.

Even though BFDI is produced in the United States, the series has massive global appeal, with just over half of the channel’s viewership coming from outside the US. Recently, Jacknjellify has been taking strides to improve the show’s accessibility to international audiences by releasing episodes translated and dubbed into Spanish. With these translated episodes and shorts already receiving over 100,000,000 views, Jacknjellify plans to release versions in other languages as well, including Portuguese, Japanese, and Hindi. These translations are sure to increase BFDI’s global reach, especially in India.

Sutton Hull’s leadership in animation for BFDI has grown the show into the viral sensation it is today, and cements his place in the pantheon of successful content creators, both in India and the world at large.