Animated Actors / Webcomics

• Sam Sprinkles, from Zebra Girl, is a deconstruction of the trope, as he's a Funny Animal rabbit actor from a parallel universe which seems to exist mostly to create cartoons for the main universe of the strip. After his show was canceled, he became a homeless, manic-depressive alcoholic. Of course, his experiences as an actor have left him impossibly Genre Savvy.
• Implied a couple of times early on in Sluggy Freelance, with the implication that the characters are themselves but also acting their parts (though in the story at large, they're not). The biggest use of the idea was in "Sluggy Freelance, where are you?" where a number of guest artists teamed together during Pete Abrams's "paternity leave" to draw a filler story in which the original cast had gone missing and characters from other comics were hired to act their roles.
• Used constantly in In Wily's Defense. The author decided near the end of the first "season" that his webcomic was a TV Show and stuck with it in every breach of the fourth wall from there to the end.
• Done a few times with Sore Thumbs.
• City Face. The commentary below each page speaks of the characters like actors playing roles. And the Shout Box below these pages featured commentary from these in-universe actors rather than from Real Life readers.
• Gunnerkrigg Court features a number of chapter-ending bonus pages with Tea, the secondary narrator, explaining background details to the audience. At the end of Chapter 38, the bonus page shows Tea reading her scene's script and questioning the off-screen director. "This is what we're going with? You sure?"
• The premise of Greystone Inn is that comic strips are produced like television shows, à la Roger Rabbit. The webcomic follows the behind-the-scenes business of the fictional syndicated comic of the same name, of which we are shown very little.
• Checkerboard Nightmare follows the titular character (usually just called "Chex") throughout his comic book adventures. While the series is mostly a No Fourth Wall story, there are moments where even that premise is broken and they step out of "character" to talk about production of the comic... which itself is about the characters sitting around talking about the comic.
• El Goonish Shive: The non-canon NP stories sometimes use characters as animated actors.
  • In one EGS:NP strip Tedd (who is 17 in-story at the time) claims to be 21 outside continuity due to Webcomic Time, creating a sort of Animated Actors Dawson Casting.
  • The "Pizza" story arc opens with a Kitty discussing the story's script with the author, and asking why she was cast in the role she was. She also found time to complain about the lack of cat girls in the script.
• The Order of the Stick #227: An expository flashback ends and we cut back to the main cast taking a break. When Celia points out that the flashback is over, everyone rushes to get ready. Elan complains that they're supposed to get a two-panel warning and Vaarsuvius states that they will be calling their agent as soon as the story arc ends.
  • In Redcloak's preface for "On the Origin of PCs", he mentions that he and the other NPC villains just sit around and wait for the heroes to show up. Unless they have a scene.
• In a few strips of Dark Legacy Comics, Keydar the rogue is shown to be the cartoonist. In two strips, Donald draws the strips instead.
• The Cartoon Chronicles Of Conroy Cat takes place in a world where all toons are actors, and Conroy's many jobs involve working behind the scenes of several cartoon series.
• Shadowgirls did this once, giving a behind-the-scenes tour guided by Lindsey.
• MegaTokyo frequently features its own characters in non-plot-related comics, both the serious and the parodies. Notable examples are Seraphim's Corner, Full Megatokyo Panic, Circuitry and unMod.
• MS Paint Masterpieces uses this in Fourth Wall breaking fillers with DisgruntledFerret interacting with the cast. Hilariously done with Metal Man taking over the strip from DisgruntledFerret in a massive show of hubris.
• The bygone Inc'ed was all about the lives of actors in a comic strip.
• Mr. Boop: Implied to be the case with Betty Boop.
• The Whiteboard: This strip and several of the following strips show the crew at Doc's Machine shop getting back into action after the artist / author took a short break.
• Oglaf: In "A Likely Story", after a man rejects two women (one with green skin and one purple) in his own sexual fantasy because the whole thing seems too unrealistic, they contemplate going to work in nightmares instead. Which bizarrely kind of verifies the guy's notion that it's a possible state of affairs they would not really want him, since even though it's just a fantasy, they don't exist solely for it.

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