Submission 16,193

About

Andrew Bowser is a comedian and director known for his work on music videos and online sketch comedy work, particularly his "That Weird Guy" character which appeared in a number of popular online videos.

History

Bowser was born January 4th, 1982 in Bowie, Maryland.^[1] After graduating The School fo Visual Arts, he began work directing music videos, and directed videos for artists including Butch Walker, SR-71, and Gym Class Heroes. After working on more music videos and independently funded projects, Bowser, along with his friend and collaborator Joseph Petrick, were hired by MTV to make a sketch comedy show. While their pilot wasn't picked up, several of the sketches featured on College Humor and Funny or Die (example shown below).

On December 31st, 2012, Bowser started his YouTube channel, BowserVids.^[2] There, he created several popular sketches in which he inserted himself as an on-site interviewee for a news broadcast. The most popular of these, titled "Weird Arby's Guy," gained over 4.4 million views (shown below, left). Another popular video in which he played a similar character gained over 1.3 million views (shown below, right).

He has used that character in an ongoing series for Nerdist parodying YouTube video game and film critics called "Welcome to the Shadow Zone." In the series, the character is named "Onyx the Fortuitous – Slayer of the Bright Realm."

Online Presence

Bowser has a relatively significant following online. His Twitter^[4] account has over 8,200 followers and his YouTube channel has over 174,000 subscribers.^[2] The Facebook page for Onyx the Fortuitous has over 15,000 likes.^[3]