Even if you're archnaphobic, you can probably agree that Lucas the Spider is a fairly adorable creature that came in the lives of tens of millions in 2017. Created by Joshua Slice, a 3D animator who has worked on animated films like Zootopia, Big Hero 6, Frozen II, Soul, Turning Red, and more, viewers immediately fell in love with Lucas.
Named after -- and voiced by -- Josh's nephew, the internet sensation started small with very short animations that Josh did for his own fulfilment, but it soon took a turn with his little project amassing 10,000 subcribers in a single week and has since amassed 3.6 million. While talking with AWN, he admitted being kind of shocked.
“It started as just a personal project for my own fulfillment, but once I got it on the internet, those first couple days of it getting attention were pretty shocking. That’s when I figured I should probably make more of these. Every day since then, it's just kind of kept going up and up and up and I’ve just been walking along with it every step of the way.”
In 2020, a big thing happened -- Lucas went on the small screen. Slice's silly little creation wound up becoming a new series on Cartoon Network's preschool animation block, Cartoonito. Each episode features the notable hyper realistic 3D animation it's been associated with alongside its protagonist going on adventures with different characters.
The series is even still going with its latest episode airing just yesterday. Perhaps Lucas the Spider will go the route of other iconic animations where they simply will fizzle away, but not for a while.