Joel Veitch

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Joel Veitch is an English web animator and member of the B3ta collective. Veitch is owner of the web site rathergood.com, where he showcases many of his animations. He is most famous for the use of singing kittens both on his website and on television. Joel has also created the Mr. Stabby animations in collaboration with Jonti Picking, and his early work includes several instalments of Tales of the Blode.

Joel's working pseudonyms include "Crab Bloke" (which is the name of his user account on B3ta), "The Crab of Ineffable Wisdom" (which he uses to share important metaphysical information with members of the public, via his website), and Stallion Explosion (as lead singer of the band 7 Seconds of Love which he promotes heavily on his site by making music videos for them).

Veitch was once threatened with lawsuit by Gullane Entertainment Inc. for uploading a flash cartoon which was parodying Thomas the Tank Engine. As a result, Veitch removed the animation from the site; although the link is still present, it now points to an explanation of why the animation was removed. Several of Veitch's movies, including one featuring a mostly instrumental remake of Destiny Child's Independent Woman [1] by Elbow, are played and sung by kittens, practically identical to the ones in the Crusha adverts (see below). This particular movie is not to be confused with another of his movies[2], also featuring Independent Woman (the actual song, not a remake), and starring the head of Alf Garnett. Some of Veitch's other movies (including the aforementioned movie featuring Alf Garnett's head) feature actual songs by artists such as Madonna, with either slightly edited lyrics, and/ or with modified subtitles, and always with fitting, and sometimes mildly disturbing[3], animations.

In December 2006, Veitch and his band Seven Seconds of Love produced their own version of the "12 Days of Christmas" song, in support of Tommys the Baby Charity.

In January 2007, Veitch reached a settlement with Coca-Cola after they used 7 Seconds of Love's song 'Ninja' on one of their adverts without permission. ^[1]

1 Commercial work
2 Charity work
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Commercial work

Veitch is responsible for many adverts and other spots on both British and US TV.

Switch/Maestro adverts featuring singing penguins.
Crusha adverts featuring singing kittens.
Quizno's Subs advertised by the Spongmonkeys (through the song "We love the subs", based upon "We like the Moon").
Virgin Trains viral online ads at www.littlerbritain.co.uk, featuring only-barely double entendres about large things wreaking havoc on a "Smaller Britain"
VH1 promo spots featuring singing kittens with songs such as "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses and "I Love Rock 'N Roll" by Joan Jett.
The television programme Rathergood Videos featuring his own and others music videos, which aired early in the morning on Channel 4.
Various animations of his were featured on the Channel 4 music programme Born Sloppy.