Kevin Temmer is an American independent animator, artist, composer, singer, and songwriter best known for Kevin Temmer Tunes
, his personal YouTube channel dedicated to animated shorts and music videos.
Outside his personal work, Temmer worked at Blue Sky Studios on films such as Ice Age: Collision Course, Ferdinand and Spies in Disguise. Since January 2023, he has served as the lead animator at GLITCH Productions on web series including Murder Drones and The Amazing Digital Circus.
Kevin Temmer's works contain examples of the following tropes:
- Anthropomorphic Personification: It ranges from putting googly eyes and a mouth on an ordinary object to personifying nonphysical concepts like intrusive thoughts.
- Beware the Silly Ones: The Moon is one of the goofiest-looking and sounding characters on the channel, but when he drops the act, he really drops the act. He plots to annihilate the universe, and is able to grow to superstellar sizes and destroy multiple planets at once with his Eye Beams.
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: The subject of "Quirky Bird Murderer", which has a girl sing an upbeat song about killing birds, to the horror and disgust of a nearby boy.
- Blatant Lies: In "I Met Weird Al", Kevin obsesses over how close he thinks he and Weird Al are, before suddenly interrupting himself with the line "This is not unhealthy!"
- Boy Band: "Delete This Tweet" is sung by The Trash Binz, a Backstreet Boys-style boy band composed entirely of antropomorphic garbage cans, complete with followed archetypes.
- Dance Party Ending: Lampooned in "The Dance Party at the End of the Film", where even though the film's over, there's still minutes that need filling, so the executives force in a cliché dance party to contemporary music and outdated dance moves.
- Excrement Statement: In "Thanos: The Musical", Thanos expresses a desire to show dominance towards Galactus by peeing on him, which the chorus calls out as weird.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Mr. Protagonist, Mr. Deuteragonist, and Dr. Antagonist are The Protagonist, the Deuteragonist, and The Antagonist respectively.
- Exposition: Lampshaded in a song throwing shade at the most egregious examples of exposition.
- First-World Problems: In "Jack Horner's Song", Horner complains about the trials and tribulations of his privileged, wealthy background.Jack Horner: I never had much growing up
Ethical Bug: Oh my God...
Jack: We were scraping by
On our bakery pie
Only millions to live on
Ethical Bug: Uh, what?
Jack: Can you imagine, only millions to live on?
When some people had billions! - For the Evulz: The Moon doesn't explain exactly why he wants to destroy everything, even when he asks "Why must I do this, why" he answers with the chorus stating "Cuz I'm the moon." Sun lampshades how this explanation makes no sense.
- Homage: As revealed in "Using Inspiration in My Work", the "Somebody Else" video is largely inspired by The Producers, The LEGO Movie, La La Land, West Side Story, the music video for Bohemian Rhapsody, The Producers again, the opening to The Muppet Show, the Dexter's Laboratory episode "LABretto", the slide levels of Super Mario 64, the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "No Free Rides", Toy Story 2, "West Covina" from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Little Shop of Horrors and a commercial for Super Mario Bros. 3, in that order.
- Hypocritical Humor: In the music video for The Trash Binz's hit single "Delete This Tweet", the Binz themselves are shown getting to ready to enjoy all sorts of gourmet garbage including rage bait, toxic fandoms, billionaires' opinions... and "this song", despite how their song is allegedly about how they're mock the viewer for having bad opinions.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Martha from "What's the Matter Martha" has a very feminine appearance and wears a pink dress, but as shown in one of the clips featured in this video, she waves a gay pride flag, confirming her to be gay. This is further confirmed by a pinned comment from Kevin Temmer himself.
- Lyrical Dissonance: His songs are often filled with this, often featuring depressing and realistic topics juxtaposed against very upbeat and cheerful music. Perhaps the most noteworthy example of this is Somebody Else, which is a very upbeat and cheerful song about an existential crisis.
- Medium Blending: "Venom the Musical" has both live-action and animation used at the same time.
- Musical Exposition: Parodied with the Exposition Song.
- Odd Organ Up Top: A protagonist of "The Character Arc Song" starts off looking like a normal human, but then his face is replaced with a butt.
- Piss-Take Rap: Done for comedy on a couple of occasions, one by a banana bemoaning its immobility and another by the Moon.
- Solar and Lunar: The Sun is a relatively normal guy who just wants friends, while the Moon is a planet destroying Cloud Cuckoo Lander who sings about how he'll destroy everything for no reason.
- Spoiler Title: For Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. The video for the Wolf's Villain Song is titled "Death's Song."
- Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Used in "Jack Horner's Song", a Villain Song for Big Jack Horner from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.Jack Horner: I deserve the whole world, so don't give me sass! I'll find that wooden puppet and chop off his--
Ethical Bug: Jack! - Starving Student: Temmer expresses his exasperation with student loans in the form of a musical number.
- Take That!:
- "The Inevitable Vision Spinoff" is a jab at Disney+, the subject of the video being an advertisement for a hypothetical spinoff of WandaVision focusing on The Vision that uses a cheaply-made puppet and accuses viewers who aren't interested in paying for the streaming service of hating kids.
- "Delete This Tweet" carries a few as the singers outline sources of garbage tweets; while things like "Toxic Fandoms" and "Rage Bait" are too general to be one, things like the garbage bag labeled "Bootstrap Mentality" and the giant garbage truck full of "Billionaire Opinions" has to count for something. Of course, the singers themselves are portrayed as gorging on these things, so the video at its core makes fun of those who actually insist that others backslide on their speech.
- Mr. Protagonist's songs are jabs at cheesy animated movies for kids.
- The End Is Nigh: Featured and quickly vindicated in When You Predict the End of the World.
- Throw It In!: Invoked in "The Dance Party at the End of the Film" when Mr. Protagonist states that the creators of the movie have minutes to fill, so they force a nonsensical Dance Party Ending.
- Took a Level in Kindness: "The Character Arc Song" has the protagonist remark about how he used to be a jerk who threw trash at children and how he has improved since then. Should be noted that the song calls this a "personality replacement."
- Totally Radical: In "The Dance Party at the End of the Film", Mr. Protagonist sings about the Dance Party Ending being done with outdated dance moves. He also mentions throwing in a Fortnite dance and spreading it with links.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: While most of his songs are full of Lyrical Dissonance, it is usually played for comedy. "Death's Song" is an exception however, being a menacing Villain Song without any element of humor.
- Villain Song:
- The Moon Rap has the moon disturb the sun by rapping about his plans to destroy the universe.
- Kevin's YouTube channel includes several songs for a work-in-progress musical called Employers from Outer Space, which is about a pair of alien businessmen recruiting Earthlings to work for them as part of some sinister goal. The available songs that best fit this trope include "Best Boss Friends" (where the aliens try to paint themselves as not being your usual predatory employer) and the apparent opening number "Out in the Galaxy".
- Jack Horner's Song involves the titular Jack Horner proudly going into detail about his own villainy.
- While Rome Burns: When you're a potted plant, you can't really do anything other than Watching the World Burn
- Who Writes This Crap?!: Mr. Protagonist's songs make fun of animated movie clichés while sarcastically stating that they're good. Tropes being made fun of include:
- Exposition Dumps starting with "welcome to the world I live in...", spoken by the protagonist through a disembodied voice, and dumping all the necessary information in the beginning.
- Third Act Misunderstandings happening just because the plot wants drama. Mr. Protagonist wonders why he has to fight with Mr. Deuteragonist from a narrative perspective.
- Dance Party Endings filled with outdated dance moves and serving as filler between the renouncement and the credits. Mr. Protagonist admits that it hardly makes sense, but the people behind the movie have minutes to fill.
