Ever since he was a little kid, Mijares was fascinated with the field of animation and hoped to make a cartoon of his own some day. He'd always come up with all kinds of ideas for shows. eventually, he came up with the earliest ideas for 'Funny!' and in 2019, production for an early pilot began. Now, there were many revisions of the Pilot for Funny! Even going through different animation styles. One of the earliest being stop motion claymation

Below is a title card for the earliest known pilot made for Funny! dated November 2019.

There is no doubt that Funny!'s history has been nothing short of rocky. Many pilots have come and gone, in fact, around 10 pilots were made before the final script was finished and eventually used for the 2022 debut of the series.

During 2021, Mijares would eventually become the founder of his own company. An over the top streaming service called Ysogood. A service where indie animators could get their shows online and pushed to a broader audience.

The Ysogood Days

Shown above is the Ysogood logo used through it's lifespan

Ysogood began as an idea Yaakov had. It began development in June 2021 and he had big ideas and dreams for it to become a TV network, with the only show on it being Funny!, but eventually he settled for it to be a streaming service. It constantly went in and out of production. During the second round of production, Mijares managed to get other shows from small indie animators on the network such as "Polaris and Ford", and "Family Sized" And it was eventually announced again that production for Ysogood would cease, as a result, Funny! was moved to youtube along with other shows. Development eventually resumed in April of 2022 and Ysogood launched on June 3rd, 2022 for $1.99 a month.

Sadly, being ran by a young Yaakov as well as many other young individuals paired with adults, the company wouldnt be without it's flaws

Controversies

Now, a lot of the controversies happened due to some of the creators of shows being problematic. An example of this would be the creator of the show "Better World" being a controversial figure, during a Discord exchange he had stated that the age of consent should be lowered. He was of course, kicked from the Ysogood crew.

Generally, the public opinion of Ysogood wasnt great either. The site was undermanaged, and many show schedules weren't made clear, the company wasnt going in a great direction and eventually, on February 1st, 2024, it was anounced that Ysogood would shut down. It took effect on February 17th. For some reason, it was quietly returned on March 28th, 2024, following the cancellation of Funny! and for 2 months it remained before its final shutoff on May 17th, 2024.

Fortunately, better things were coming for Mijares.

Meeting me & The Creation of the new Funny!

Yaakov Mijares would begin his freshman year of high school in 2023, nearing the end of Ysogood's lifespan, where he would meet a 14 year old me. Having to deal with bullying in middle school, I would strive to have a more positive outlook on life. It was at this point where Yaakov did not like me, in fact he had grown a strong distaste for me, most likely due to my overly loud attitude. Yaakov also didnt like the fact I wore a specific SpongeBob shirt

Above is the shirt in question.

We would rarely speak to each other through freshman year, other than a few minor hostile exchanges, and Iunknowingly lived through Ysogood's shutdown. Things wouldnt change until sophomore year when Yaakov began hanging out with me. An old friend of his would come to school late and my old friend would as well. Due to this, he'd find only me at the breakfast tables and he'd interact with me occasionally. I found this strange due to our previous interactions being less than pleasureable, but I let him stay. In the back of my mind I wanted to say "Why are you even here dont you hate me??" but im forever glad i didnt. One day, in September 2024, he had asked me if I wanted to come with him after school to Fat Kat's, a local sandwich spot near our school.

Shown above is a selfie he took the day we first hung out

As you can see in the photo, I look unhappy, or nervous, that's because I was, in fact, one of the first thoughts that ran through my head was "Is this dude going to jump me???" Luckily, he didnt and he was in fact, very friendly and bought me a meatball sub. After the fact, we went back to the schoolgrounds and he had told me about Funnyville, the new show he was making. I was already aware of it, through instagram posts, but he had given me an offer to work on it with him, and I simply couldnt refuse. Earlier in August, I had to cancel a passion project with my ex-best friend, and as such, I was very eager to work on this project with him. We would sit on a bench with his ThinkPad T450, coming up with episode ideas. Sadly, through the rest of the semester, we wouldnt do anything with the project. Happily though, we'd hang out quite often and get food. I could never thank him enough for making an otherwise bad year, much much better.

Pictured above is one of the many hangouts we shared

(LtR - Yaakov Mijares, Randy an ex friend, Binyamin Mijares, and me)

Eventually near the midpoint of the second semester, I would release East's End, a personal project for me at the time. And it would eventually go on to inspire Yaakov to resume production on Funnyville.