Animator and special-effects expert Ryan Jonathan has wowed South Africans with his "Splash (The Last Drop)" video, a parody horror-movie trailer sending up the universally derided national water-saving mascot, Splash.
Besides the inspiration he gets bouncing ideas around in a WhatsApp group with a small number of friends, he says "the best ideas come at two o'clock in the morning, when I am listening to music or busy working on something."
Jonathan says the "Splash" concept came about after he saw jokes on social media about how scary the anti-drought mascot was.
Splash is #CapeTown 's new Mascot. His goal is to inspire you to save water...Or generate water with your tears of terror... pic.twitter.com/d3qJqf0zDq
— Pierre Pienaar (@PierrePienaar) February 19, 2018
"I obviously saw the memes on Twitter and all the posts about people making fun of how scary the water-saving mascot looks, and I [thought] it would be cool to make a video out of this – take the scary side of the character a bit more seriously and portray him in a horror movie trailer," he said.
The creator says he had no idea whether the video was going to turn heads.
"With this one, I was scared I was spending too much time on the creativity and I was missing the fun aspect completely."
He rates his first meme video as one of his best.
Despite the backlash he sometimes receives, he says: "Cape Town is going through a water crisis and a difficult time – it is always is a good thing to try to make people laugh."