Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Web Animation / Animator vs. Animation

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/theshowdown.png
(Most of) the main characters of the series.note 

"I make stick figure animations that take place on a computer desktop screen. There is no dialogue, but a lot of humor and emotion. Hope you enjoy!"
— Alan Becker from his about page

An animator is pitted against his creations, the animation. For the first few entries, at least.

That's the work in a nutshell. But the fun part? The craziness goes on a higher level with each new installment!

Animator vs. Animation is a long running YouTube web animated series posted by Alan Becker, aka noogai (who, by now, is not at all a new guy). It stars himself as the animator who'd draw a stick figure to fight for fun on his computer prompting them to fight back. That all changed with the fourth installment, where the two sides are now friends instead of enemies and the series now primarily focuses on the stick figures exploring many video games and fighting many new adversaries. The entire series can be watched on Alan's YouTube channel.

Throughout its timeline:

  • After a three-year hiatus, a successful Kickstarter campaign caused the fourth installment to be released on October 2nd, 2014.
  • In 2015, a spinoff episode called "Animation vs. Minecraft" was announced, along with a Patreon page to fund the animations.
  • In December 2016, it was announced that a second spinoff episode, "Animation vs. YouTube", is in production, and a three-minute preview was updated, followed by the full episode in early August 2017.
  • In November 18th 2017, a short called "The Rediscovery - AVM Shorts Episode 1" was released, along with the announcement that new episodes of this series are to be expected monthly.
  • In November 21st 2017, It was announced that Insanity Games collaborated with Alan to make a card game of Animator vs. Animation and made a Kickstarter campaign within a timeframe of 23 days. Weeks later, Alan made a video on how to play the card game which features the main characters and many of the weapons featured before on the series.
  • In July 2018, AvA Shorts, with "AvA" standing for Animator vs. Animation, was announced. These shorts would follow the life of the Second Coming along with the animator after Animator vs Animation IV. The AvM Shorts series will not be cancelled, but they will air concurrently. These shorts were later compiled into a longer video titled Animator vs. Animation V.
  • In December 2018, Alan started a new gaming channel with his friend DJ Welch, who had previously done work for Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network. In addition to gaming, they also reacted to Alan's videos from as early in the series as Animator vs. Animation IV. In these reaction videos, Alan occasionally provides commentary detailing the creation process and how things work in-universe.
  • In September 2022, Alan launched a new series called the Actual Shorts; less-then-a-minute long videos posted as YouTube Shorts. Originally a weekly series, it's been then changed to coming out once per two weeks.
  • In April 2023, Animator vs. Animation VI began airing, technically a Season 2 of the AvA Shorts but having dropped the title.
  • In June 2023, an episode called Animation vs. Math was released, with Alan later confirming it's the start of a new Animation vs. Education subseries.

Entries

    open/close all folders 

    Main Series 

    Animation vs. Minecraft 

    Animation vs. Education 

    Other Spin-offs 

    An Actual Short 

    Other 

(For tropes regarding each individual episode, check the "Recap" page)

Tropers vs. Tropes

    Tropes #-L 
  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Some scenes in Animator vs. Animation VI features 2D animated stick figures in environments rendered in 3D.
  • Abuse Mistake: In the short "My Ghast Friend", Blue mistakes the titular ghast that it was hurting Yellow when the latter started to tickle his ghast friend which lead to ghast tickling Yellow back. This causes Blue to shoot it leading to Yellow to mournfully stare at the ghast tear drop.
  • Adaptational Badass: When a video game character isn't being controlled by a player, most of the time they have more unique skills than what's seen in gameplay. This applies to some mooks as well, a few Minecraft mobs being nearly as skilled as the average player.
  • Aerith and Bob: Played With in the sense that by stick figure standards, most stick figures identify by their color (with the exception of King, assuming King is his name.) while Alan's stick figures are generally given more elaborate titles. To put it into perspective, the names of the main cast are Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and The Second Coming. That said, TSC does go by Orange.
  • Aliens Speaking English: The stick figures in-universe are capable of understanding English despite the fact they don't seem to communicate verbally when talking to each other and some of them are made into existence. A very notable case of this is the Second Coming, who is the only stick figure so far to actually speak with words popping out when communicating with Alan Becker.
  • All Just a Dream:
    • In Blue's New Superpower, Blue has the ability to turn banknotes into trees by planting them when he sells chocolate bars & hotdogs. This gives Blue's friends the idea to plant every banknote throughout the cities and the environment. It turns out, it was all just a dream from TSC giving him the idea to donate to Team Trees.
    • In Animation vs. Trash, the same thing happens again but only this time, Blue can make trash disappear using banknotes when selling popsicles & snow cones. Like before, this gives Blue's friends the idea to remove every trash polluting the oceans and beaches. Similarly, this prompts TSC and his friends to donate to Team Seas.
    • In An Actual Short "Basketball", Both Green & Blue are playing a game of basketball but their ball gets stuck in a "basketball net" (which is actually just a cobweb) so they find a way to find another hoop. Their friend, TSC, has a ring-shaped head giving them the idea to use him and stuff him in a dispenser atop the tower allowing Green to slam dunk the ball through his head. TSC jolts awake realizing it was all just a nightmare.
  • Ambiguous Gender: The only stick figures who's genders are explicitly stated are the Chosen One (who's called a "he" by both the Animator and Yellow), King Orange (it's King, not Queen), and Purple's parents (Pink Girl, Blue Boy), though Alan refers to everyone else as guys in the reaction videos.
  • Anachronism Stew: Minor example in Season 3 of AvM, but despite being set post Combat Update, the two zombie villagers that appear there (Zupay in "Monster School" and the one from "Note Block Universe") are using their pre-1.9 textures.
  • Annoying Pop-Up Ad:
    • InAnimator vs Animation II, the Animator enslaves the Chosen One into a glorified pop-up blocker.
    • In Animation vs. YouTube, the stick figures have to deal with a few ads that pop up while they are watching YouTube. Later when they are fighting the website itself, ads interrupt the fight, and both sides express their disdain before skipping the ad and resuming their fight.
    • The Actual Short "Pop Ups" shows the Second Coming getting increasingly frustrated with pop-ups appearing on the animator's computer. When one appears that steals clips from the animations to promote a mobile game, the Second Coming gets so infuriated that he starts smashing them all with a giant hammer.
  • Arc Villain:
    • The Animator himself was the series' first villain, spending the first four entries as nothing but a heartless man looking to fight and torture his creations, leading to them rebelling against their creation. After a Heel–Face Turn in IV, however, he became the Big Good instead.
    • The Chosen One technically served as this in the original series as the Villain Protagonist, being in a Big Bad Ensemble and fighting against the Animator while being no better than him, killing the innocent computer icons.
    • The Dark Lord returns as the villain of the AvA Shorts, later AvA V, trying to destroy everything with his army of Computer Viruses and being the first real villain faced by the Stick Gang.
    • King Orange serves as this for Season 3 of the AvM Shorts, seeking to destroy all of Minecraft by stealing the Stick Gang's Game Icon and using it to launch a black hole, as revenge for losing his son Gold in a simulation of the game.
    • victim seems to be this in Animator vs. Animation VI, having placed a bounty on the Chosen One to get him captured as well as running a mysterious organization and a clear vendetta against the Animator.
  • Art Evolution: Compare the animation styles of the first three installments to "Animator vs. Animation IV''. Also, some later installments feature detailed custom backgrounds rather than just an empty white expanse or Windows desktops.
  • Artifact Title:
    • The Animator and his animations haven't been hostile to each other since Animator vs. Animation IV, so most entries taking place after it are titled "Animation vs. [media name]" instead. This is eventually subverted with Animator vs Animation V series; the Animator is still allied with his creations, but fighting a virus that has infected his computer, except it turns out the virus' creator is one of the Animator's creations, meaning he must actually fight an animation.
    • The AVM Shorts eventually became this since some episodes are actually longer than the original Animation vs Minecraft video. "The King", while officially a "short", clocks in at over 30 minutes, becoming the longest single-episode animation on Alan's channel as of December 2022, beating out even the climactic mainline episode "The Showdown" by barely twice its runtime. Additionally, the AvA Shorts also count since they aren't any shorter than the original trilogy, and the runtime of "The Showdown" is par with IV, being approximately 15 minutes long. Alan seems to have realised this, as the second season is titled simply Animator vs. Animation VI, no "shorts" in the title.
      • This is lampshaded with the real short videos, Actual Shorts, which aren't even a minute long.
  • Artificial Human: Stick figures are sentient humanoid creatures who can be created in an animation program like Flash. It's later revealed stick figures can reproduce by themselves, Purple having parents and King Orange having a son.
  • Author Avatar: The Animator is none other than Alan Becker himself, fictionalized to be part of his own series. Inside the world of his PC, he is represented as his mouse cursor.
  • Birthday Episode: On March 18th 2022, one of Alan Becker's animators made an animation posted on Twitter dedicated to celebrating Alan's birthday with the Stick Gang making a cake and huge sign reading "HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALAN BECKER" alongside some birthday music.
  • Breather Episode: The entire Season 2 of the AvM Shorts could be considered one for the spin-off, given that the second half of Season 1 involved a story arc and Season 3 had a story arc since the beginning. The same then happens with Season 4.
  • Canon Immigrant: By proxy. Several elements such as Herobrine and the Lucky Block are not original to Minecraft, being a fan character and a Minecraft mod respectively, but are treated in the world of Animation vs. Minecraft as if they've always been native to it.
  • Central Theme: The latter half of Season 3 of the AvM Shorts has one in the form of whether anyone could be truly beyond redemption; nearly every member of the Stick Hang makes an ally out of a mob that's normally Always Chaotic Evil in Minecraft— The Second Coming befriends the Warden by realising it's fallen into madness and needs to remember who it was; Red befriends a skeleton, a spider, and Enderman by simply being nice despite their ungratefulness; and Blue and Yellow befriend a Titan Ravager by accepting it's just an animal that can be tamed and wants to avenge its family. This culminates with Green forgiving Purple for his actions upon realising his backstory and how much he regrets what he's done, and King Orange himself being redeemed upon realising how far he's fallen.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: Animator vs. Animation originally started off as a rather somewhat comedic and episodic series with not much of a concrete storyline with the first three installments mainly a stick figure fighting its creator. That all changed with the fourth installment which saw the introduction of mainstay characters becoming the central protagonists of the series, as well as the introduction of the AVM and AVA shorts where it created many new story arcs, saw the return of older characters, expanded the worldbuilding, and brought major conflicts caused by villains old and new.
  • Cheer Up Episode: In "Feel Better", Alan was feeling upset and is unengaged with his computer. The Second Coming notices and tries to get his attention but gets ignored. TSC's friends also notices and see he's in distress, so they all have an idea to go to Adobe Photoshop to draw up a picture of him to make him feel better.
  • Cherry Blossoms: In the short "Cherry Blossoms". Purple is in the Minecraft world where he is picking up a branch from a cherry blossom tree who then leaves Minecraft to his homeworld, the outernet. It's later revealed those cherry blossom branches are for his late mother, Pink, to whom Purple mourns. Cherry blossoms symbolize love, death, and spring (the season the short was published).
  • Cherry Tapping: The titular mob in the short "My Ghast Friend" is able to use its infamous fireballs to cook a piece of raw beef without harming Yellow.
  • The Chosen One:
    • One of the main stick figures in the series is actually named "The Chosen One". He wasn't chosen by gods nor does he have any quests, however. His name seems to simply indicate his power level, because the Animator intentionally created an over-powered stick figure to fight for fun. It took years of real time to see him do something heroic, which was stopping a virus from infecting every computer in the world, starting with the Animator's computer despite the animosity toward each other they used to have, only then becoming a Messianic Archetype.
    • Alan's orange stick figure is named "The Second Coming", but unlike The Chosen One, we don’t know where the name came from - Alan never even turned him into a named symbol. He also fits the role of hero much more cleanly than The Chosen One, being a Friend to All Living Things with a Superpowered Good Side, an ally to Alan, and The Leader of his group of friends; and he’s been on multiple adventures to save his friends and the internet, even singlehandedly defeating the Dark Lord.
  • City with No Name: As of the episode "Wanted", the city located within the "Outernet" appears to be unnamed and it doesn't help with the lack of dialogue in this franchise. It also extends to the world the city is located beyond the boundaries of the internet as the term "Outernet" is a placeholder name and Alan has an official name that is kept secret.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • In several episodes outside of the AVM Shorts series, the empty spot in the taskbar where the Minecraft icon originally sat is missing. It's back as of "The King", where it's finally returned to the spot it was originally removed from in Animation vs Minecraft; fittingly enough, it's visible on the taskbar in Animator vs. Animation VI.
    • Several Actual Shorts take place within the world of Minecraft itself rather than within the desktop, a nod to the lesson the Stick Gang learned in Season 3 that staying exclusively at home in the desktop for the sake of safety would be too boring.
  • The Couch: A recurring beige furniture that appears inside Alan's computer where the main cast sit. It's typically used for watching someone play a video game, watching a movie, or whenever they're on their electronics. It first debuted in Animation vs. YouTube.
  • Cowboy Episode: In the short "Gunslinger", Blue's testing his crossbow accuracy skills with Yellow's assistance until Green challenges Blue to a duel; complete with a western soundtrack, cowboy boots, a hat, how Green positions his crossbows as if they were revolvers, and even a rolling tumbleweed in a computer setting. Blue accepts his challenge and the two stay in a standstill until they draw. Blue ends up hit and he dramatically "dies" so Yellow steps in to challenge Green. What does Yellow do? He shoots a crossbow that shoots Green.
  • Crossover: An inevitable one with the Animator vs. Animation series and various popular media given that the stick figures live in a Windows desktop, allowing them to directly interact with several forms of media. Minecraft is the first and most common example, items from that game sometimes being featured in a few "Actual Shorts" which are otherwise unrelated to Minecraft.
  • Cross-Popping Veins: In the short "Cup Song", Green has this expression when he accidentally get his hands stuck on a cobweb due to Blue tricking Green into playing with it thinking that it was regular instrument of his "Cup Song".
  • Cyberspace:
    • Pretty much where the series takes place. First, the animation and the animator duke it out on the Flash program, causing a lot of damage to the interface. Then, in the latter two installments, the animation hops out of Flash and wreaks havoc on the animator's desktop. In IV and the spin-offs, it's shown that stick figures can travel through other devices from the computer such as Alan's cellphone or his gaming consoles.
    • Outside of the desktops, video games, and websites, there is a world called the Outernet where stick figures which are shaped like the Fighting Stick Figures live normal lives similar to people in real life Earth. It first appeared in Animator vs Animation V as the location of the final battle between the Chosen One and the Dark Lord, then appears again in "The King", revealing King Orange's old life with his son Gold before the latter's death triggered the former's Start of Darkness. As the world is part of the Internet, anything that is connected to the Internet creates a gateway between the world and the desktop/website/game, allowing anything to come to and from the world.
  • Death Is Cheap: Or at least, it is when the stick figures are operating on Minecraft logic, as "PVP" demonstrates. Additionally, anything from a web page that is damaged or destroyed can be restored by refreshing the page, including deleted individuals. Subverted with the Chosen One, who escaped (off-screen) to the internet before Alan's first computer crashed.
  • Dropped After the Pilot: victim was the first ever stick figure, having appeared in the series' first ever installment Animator vs. Animation [I]. His presence would set the precedent of a stick figure rebelling against their creator, but his death at the end of AvA I meant that's the last we'd see of him. This gets subverted hard in Animator vs. Animation VI, having returned 17 years later to claim revenge on the Animator.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Considering the airdates of the older videos, they pretty much show how dated they are; one example being low SFX quality.
    • The stick figures were a lot taller in the earlier AvM Shorts and Animation vs Minecraft; they've shrunk from being four blocks tall to three blocks in "The Roller Coaser", until "Build Battle", where they're two-and-a-half blocks tall.
    • The Pokemon characters in Animation vs. Pokemon had an animation style that's closer to classic sprite animations you'd regularly see on Newgrounds, involving more squash and stretch and rotating limbs. Later video game entries gave the pixelated characters better animation more akin to what you'd see in indie games.
    • In a preview of Animation vs. Minecraft, the blades on the windmill were spinning naturally whereas in the finished project, they were rotating in a more blocky pattern.
  • Easily Forgiven: In the main "Animation vs. (Video Game)" videos (not counting the AVM Shorts), the antagonist is always forgiven by the end of the video (except for Herobrine, who they barely noticed the existence of, until he returned in Season 3 and still got forgiven).
  • The End: A typical occurrence in a lot of these videos usually with an intertitle card of a blank screen and the words "THE END" at a video's conclusion.
  • "Everybody Dies" Ending: Animator vs. Animation III ended with the computer's total destruction, every program in it being destroyed via Blue Screen of Death; the only surviving character is the Animator, simply because he's a real person and not a program, but the cursor used to represent him was still destroyed. While the Chosen One and the Dark Lord return years later, it was via retcon and they were originally supposed to have perished.
  • Everybody Lives:
    • In Animator vs. Animation IV, no important character dies with the Second Coming's friends resurrecting. While we never see the Facebook emojis again, it's easy to assume they were also revived due to how the story's rules work.
    • Downplayed in Season 3 of AvM Shorts. Save for the zombified piglins, several hostile mobs in the desert, a handful of piglin brutes who worked for King Orange (all of whom are background characters), Pink and Gold (both of whom died long before the season started) nobody who played at least one major role in the arc doesn't get to survive in the end, as anyone who got sucked into the Minecraft game icon or the void that King Orange created were spat right out once the void was destroyed, and the Titan Ravagers that King Orange actually killed were revived at the end.
    • All of the Animation vs. [x] episodes feature not even one death, and those that do are resurrected sooner (The Arcade Game Protagonists) or later (Herobrine). The one exception might be YouTube's avatar, but the end of the episode implies it also came back.
  • Evil vs. Evil:
    • Downplayed, depending on how you interpret the conflict between the Animator and the Chosen One, which is a much more gray area then his conflicts with Victim or the Second Coming. One can easily interpret that both the Animator and the Chosen One were completely flawed in their moral qualities; The Animator was at fault due to his Lack of Empathy to his stick figures, confining the Chosen One and only creating him for a fight, but he was right to contain him as his creation had gone out of control with his destructive powers, annihilating everything and everyone to the point of destroying Alan's computer.
    • Herobrine, the Big Bad of the original Animation vs. Minecraft, battles King Orange - the Arc Villain of Season 3 - in "The King". Unlike say, the Chosen One, Herobrine didn't pull off a Heel–Face Turn and is simply the lesser evil.
    • Invoked in An Actual Short "King Orange vs. The Dark Lord" with two of the strongest villains pitted against each other in the Nether. The fight ends with a biblically-accurate angelic version of a pig interrupting the fight and killing both, where it turns out that both Green and Yellow were imagining the fight with toy versions of the villains, with Red interrupting them with his pet pig.
  • Exploiting the Fourth Wall: These videos are based on this trope. The stick figures interacts with everything from various applications' interfaces to icons on the desktop to system menus, trying to destroy the animator.
  • Extremely Short Time Span: Animation vs. Minecraft Season 3 - In Real Time shows that the entirety of the adventure took place over an hour and 20 minutes. If you convert it into Minecraft timenote , however, the events of Season 3 spanned across 4 days.
  • Fishing Episode: The short "Fishing Trouble" serves as one where the fighting stick figures are fishing; Red & Yellow barely have a couple fish while Blue & Green have reeled in plenty. Yellow suddenly catches a big one later revealed to be an elder guardian. Unfortunately for them, it charges a laser that blows up all four of the stick figures.
  • Five-Man Band:
    • The Second Coming: The Leader and The Hero. From his first encounter with the Fighting Stick Figures, he takes on the role of team lead, helping them escape their animation and showing them the bigger world outside. He is also the most level-headed of the bunch and tries his best to keep them all out of trouble or danger, and when it's time for a hero to step up, TSC is always the one to volunteer (he tries to face off against the Dark Lord all by himself in "The Showdown", is the one to carry King Orange's staff to the final Nether Portal in "The King", and battles the Mercenaries in "Wanted").
    • Green: The Lancer and The Face. He is the first to engage with most newcomers or outsiders (including Purple and even TSC himself). He is also TSC's main foil and rival, as well as his best friend (the two of them go from watching to taking on YouTube together in the eponymous episode).
    • Blue: The Heart. He is the group's pacifist and tries to defuse tensions whenever he can. (Not to say that he can't fight - he just usually does so at range with bows or crossbows.)
    • Yellow: The Smart Guy. From the very start of the Minecraft series, he displays a knack for engineering and programming. He is a genius with redstone and command blocks, and he's usually the one to troubleshoot a solution to the group's latest problem. He even manages to reverse-engineer a Lucky Block in "Lucky Blocks" and gives the Animator an avatar in the Outernet in "The Showdown".
    • Red: The Big Guy. While Word of God states that Red is the youngest member of the team, he still fits the Big Guy archetype because he fights exclusively in melee combat (where Blue uses ranged weapons, Green specializes in movement, and Yellow defaults to a support role when he can). He also has elements of the Heart, however, since he is the most affectionate and lovable member of the team.
  • Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras: A lot of the majors characters either have brighter colors or have unique designs that help them stand out, whereas all of the extras, namely the stick figure citizens, have more neutral or obscure colors.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Almost constantly, from the second installment onward. Throughout all the intense action, there are often Easter eggs to be found in the background.
  • Gelatinous Encasement: In "Slime Trampoline", Yellow, Blue, and TSC get trapped in the huge slime block trampoline they built, much to the disappointment of Green and Red.
  • Gelatinous Trampoline: The entire premise of "Slime Trampoline" which revolves around Yellow, Blue, & TSC all bouncing on a huge block of slime blocks from Minecraft and accelerate the higher they jump. Unfortunately, things don't end well for them.
  • Grammar Nazi: In "Autocorrect", all of the main stick figures serve as this correcting Alan's letter to DJ; fixing the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. However, this leads to a point where they start to rewrite Alan's letter, turning it into a formal letter, leading Alan in all-caps telling them to stop and just let him type, prompting Yellow to add a period at the end of Alan's sentence.
  • Grave-Marking Scene: Purple visits the cemetery of his late mother, Pink, where he places a cherry blossom branch atop of her grave.
  • Green Aesop: Blue's New Superpower and Animation vs. Trash has Blue use his money-powered abilities to grow trees and clean up garbage respectively as a metaphor for donating to their respective brands, #TeamTrees & #TeamSeas.
  • The Ground Is Lava: The short "The Floor is Lava" has the entire bottom of Alan's desktop flooded with... well, lava, allowing Red and Green to have their own lava parkour course, something Alan seems to be okay with. What Alan is not okay with, however, is having his important documents and family photos burned to a crisp, something both Red & Green learn the hard way.
  • Half-Arc Season: The entirety of the AVM Shorts Season 1 is this as the first few episodes were centered around the main cast learning many different aspects of Minecraft, until "The Nether" started the series' first proper story arc by having the gang explore various Minecraft dimensions.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: All five of the main cast - TSC, Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red - use swords as their primary weapons besides their fists. Justified, given that swords for a player are one of the most common weapons in Minecraft where they visit and it is where most of their adventures take place. This is eventually subverted for Blue and Yellow, as while they are good swordsmen, they ultimately turn to bows and being a support party member, respectively.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All of the standalone adventures follow this type of formula, with each video being titled Animation vs. [Noun]. The "noun" is typically replaced with the title of a video game, but other videos can be something else such as Animation vs. Trash, Animation vs. YouTube, Animation vs. Math, etc.
  • Improvised Weapon: All of Alan's creations use whatever they can use on the desktop as weapons.
  • Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Nearly anything that gets drawn in Adobe Flash/Animate comes to life, especially the stick figures. This is also true for the video game characters, who start breaking their rules due to either an outside interference from a foreigner or having developed their own desires on their own.
  • Interface Screw: Everything the animations ever do when fighting the animator causes damage to his computer's GUI, to the point where both sides end up weaponizing it to some extent.
  • Invisible Anatomy:
    • The stick figures have faces, but they're never visible. The sole exception is The Chosen One, but only when opening his mouth to eat text and breathe fire.
      • The "Faces" Actual Short averts this when Alan draws the Second Coming a face, which prompts the excited stick figure to draw different faces for his friends. This continues in "More Faces".
    • The gray stick figures are very notable case of this as they're the first ever and only stick figures to ever show having fingers when they are buying snow cones. Both Alan and DJ joke about this saying that gray people with fingers is lore now.
    • "Primal", one of the four mercenaries, is shown to have actual hands with fingers in a few shots.
  • It Began with a Twist of Fate: The entire plot of "The Piglin War", and by extension practically all of Season 3 would not have happened if Blue just used the Game Icon or Creative Mode to get more nether wart instead of going to the Nether to get some. Alan himself was aware of it.
  • It's the Journey That Counts: Bored with their basic Minecraft cooking repertoire, "The Chef" revolves around the group going to get a recipe book from the titular chef in a village, who agrees to give them the book if they can cook a few simple items. They mess up at the last minute, failing the task, but out of pity are given a second chance if they make a bunch more items that are more complicated and with no recipe given. They journey around the world, learning recipes from villagers in pseudo France, Asia and Central America, and return to flawlessly recreate the recipes. The Chef reveals the recipe book was empty all along but the recipes they learned can now fill it up, a message Blue takes to heart. Green immediately walks over, decks the Chef for wasting their time and they all start scarfing down the food they made, apart from a nonplussed Blue; only he was actually interested in cooking as an art form, the rest were just bored with cake, roast chicken and watermelon.
  • Jealous Pet: In the short "Fox", Red is playing with his pet Minecraft fox, which has the Firefox yearning for attention as well, and Red decides to include the digital fox in. This, however, causes the Minecraft fox to be jealous that the other fox is stealing the attention away from its owner which causes conflict between them while Red tries to defuse the situation. The normal fox's aggression proves unwise, however, because apart from being cute, the Firefox logo also breathes fire and has no problems using it if annoyed.
  • Living Drawing: The series is about animated stick figures coming to life and rebelling against their creator. It also extends to drawings created by other drawings such as The Second Coming (a stick figure) drawing a wide range of animals and humanoids.
  • Living Program: This animation series is about stick figures drawn in Adobe Flash becoming sentient as they are created. They live inside a computer and interact with their animator. Desktop icons and anti-viruses can also spontaneously become sentient. The same can be said for the video game characters, who begin displaying their true personalities the moment they're disrupted by a foreigner (or in rare instances like Q*bert's, acting up on their own).
  • Lower-Deck Episode: The short "Corn Dog Guy" follows the story of a random citizen of the stick figure city who sells corn dogs. It revolves around seeing the events of "Wanted" from his perspective, and how the Mercenaries accidentally hit his corn dog stand in pursuit of the Chosen One.

    Tropes M-W 
  • MacGuffin: The Minecraft Game Icon is said to be the most powerful item in all of Minecraft, only located within every desktop that's downloaded the game. Originally pursued by Herobrine, the Big Bad of Animation vs. Minecraft, it then becomes pursued by King Orange in Season 3.
  • Medium Awareness: The stick figures being antagonized in each video are aware that they're inside a computer. Their attempts at foiling the animator involve doing things such as messing with the interface, disrupting the animator's activities, and even destroying the computer. This also applies to video games characters since they are aware of what's beyond the boundaries of their game.
  • Misplaced Vegetation: In "Planteinstein", Blue finds TSC drawing an apple tree in Adobe Flash which gives him the idea of planting a drawn apple seed on his Minecraft garden after eating an apple from that tree. Upon applying Minecraft bone meal on it, it grows into a botanical hybrid of a Minecraft tree and a drawing tree.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: In "Spawn Eggs", Red experiments with a mob spawner with the various spawn eggs leading the spawner to create multiple hybrids of animals and monsters. Unfortunately for the main cast, it causes the spawner to go out of control and multiplies hundreds of critters flooding the entire desktop.
  • Multi-Character Title: The title of the series refers to the titular animator, Alan Becker, and whatever stick figure he fights in the episode (Victim in I and VI, the Chosen One in II and III, the Second Coming in IV and the Dark Lord in V). The Animation vs. [x] episodes, meanwhile, have the whole Stick Gang as the titular animations.
  • New Year Has Come: On Dec 31st 2022, Alan published "Fireworks - An Actual Short" where the main characters are watching a fireworks scene with a Note Block instrumental version of Auld Lang Syne celebrating the end of the year 2022 and the start of 2023.
  • Oddball in the Series:
    • The plot of Animation vs. Super Mario Bros. is a lot simpler with regards to conflict: Stick figure angers video game character on accident, leading to a brawl until everyone decides to be friends; whereas the other "Animation vs. [media name]" videos in the series tend to have higher stakes. The video is also a lot shorter with its runtime being ~5 minutes long, while other standalone adventures had a runtime of over 10 minutes.
    • The entire premise of the Animation vs. Education subseries completely deviates from the entire franchise, with the Second Coming waking up in an unknown dimension with his friends absent, unlike other episodes where it always takes place in Alan's computer and TSC's friends would fight alongside him. Animation vs. Math is the first standalone adventure where the opponent is not from pop-culture, while Animation vs. Physics is the first mainline entry to have No Antagonist. The ending of vs. Physics also includes a Stable Time Loop, and the closest we get to a hint that the Second Coming might ever return home is his future self teleporting to... somewhere, while the one we've been following throughout the episode is fulfilling his role.
  • One-Word Title: A lot of the episodes from the An Actual Short series have a one word title.
  • Order Versus Chaos: In II and 'IIIm Both Sides Have a Point. While the Animator (order) is explicitly villainous, the Chosen One (chaos) is pretty destructive even towards bystanders, and the Animator lets the violent little stick figure live (your mileage may vary whether this was a Fate Worse than Death). In episode two, the Chosen One throws the first punch, and the Animator is simply trying to survive, even if that's exactly what he asked for.
  • Party Scattering: All five of the main cast - The Second Coming, Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red - are always together with one of the members being absent from time to time. But some adventures have all of them being separated from each other.
    • In "The Witch", all of them end up separated thanks to the titular witch; Blue gets tricked by the Witch impersonating TSC while Red, Yellow, and Green are subtly taken away by the Witch impersonating Blue, leaving all of them with their bodies changed into various mobs and blocks. This leaves TSC alone to find his friends with the help of Red's pig in order to reunite together and fight the witch.
    • In "Parkour", the main cast gets unwittingly separated when they participate in Purple’s parkour course, not realizing they would end up trapped. It’s later revealed that Purple is working for King Orange, who plans to capture the main cast in order to steal the Minecraft Game Icon from Alan’s computer. When the main characters realize they cannot leave, they do everything they can to try to escape, leading to a chain of events where the stick figures end up in different worlds; Green and Red’s pig end up in a Nether bastion, TSC and Red end up in a desert, and Yellow and Blue end up in a village. This takes a couple of episodes for them to reunite together.
    • In “The Ultimate Weapon” where they get reunited, they get separated again and just like last time, they end up in the many different worlds thanks to various Nether portals. The Second Coming ends up in the Deep Dark, Red ends up at the Monster School, Yellow and Blue end up in the same village, and Green and Purple end up in the Note Block Universe. It takes a couple of episodes for them to reunite together like before, now with the help of the various allies they recruit from their adventures.
  • Physical God:
  • Pinball Projectile: In the short "Ricochet", both TSC and Red are using their shields to block the arrow of a skeleton archer until they find that the arrow can bounce from both of their shields hitting each other multiple times until it hits the skeleton. This excites both TSC and Red so they decide to play around with the arrow using their shields and shoot the skeleton causing it to blast off faraway passing multiple biomes.
  • Plot Hole: Animator vs. Animation V contradicts some plot points from the previous episodes.
    • Just the very fact the Chosen One never died, which contradicts Animator vs. Animation IV stating the Second Coming is his resurrection.
    • "The Flashback" shows that after the Chosen One and the Dark Lord escaped Alan's computer at the end of Animator vs. Animation III, they started to wreak havoc on the Internet. While never outright stated, it's heavily implied - especially by his reaction towards seeing them again - that Alan thought they were dead until the events of AvA V, which happens seven years after III. Unless he hasn't been paying attention to what's happening on the Internet or the two were doing a really shitty job at wrecking havoc, Alan should have learned that the two stick figures he created were causing chaos on the internet shortly after they escaped his computer.
  • Pop-Cultured Badass:
    • The main characters— The Second Coming, Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red — are simple stick figures, but awesome fighters as most of their adventures and skills stem from the many video games they play, such as Super Mario Bros., League of Legends, Pokemon, and particularly Minecraft. They also enjoy watching other people play video games and YouTube action videos of other stick figures fighting each other.
    • Purple is very knowledgeable and skilled in Minecraft, and so is King Orange, who dedicated months of his life to learning everything there is to know about Minecraft.
  • Power Outage Plot: The entirety of the short "Power Outage" where Blue, Yellow, & Red have to deal with a power outage in their desktop home. They later find that Green has been tampering with the "System" settings in order to create flashing disco lights as part of Green's dance party he has been setting up.
  • Previously on…: Surprisingly very rare in Alan's channel given the timeframe for a new episode to be released and the only episode that has this trope is the episode "Villagers".
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad:
    • The desktop icons qualify as this when they all work together and ally with the Dark Lord to fight the Chosen One. They all have unique designs and some have a wide range of abilities such as flight, laser beams, or extendable arms.
    • The Mercenaries, like the desktop icons, are a group of stick figures with their own style of animation and abilities who oppose the Chosen One. All of them are under the leadership of victim, the first stick figure created by Alan, who runs an organization in a world beyond the boundaries of the internet.
  • Rage Against the Author: The entire premise is built on this. As of Animator vs. Animation IV, this theme was dropped in favor of the now permanent main cast's shenanigans.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Very much justified given how it takes place in a computer where the main cast lives in. A lot of things change when computers and programs are updating rapidly. For instance, some of the earlier videos used to take place in different operating systems such as Windows XP and Windows 7 as well as how Minecraft have added recent updates with recent AVM videos being centered around on those updates.
  • Recursive Canon: Alan Becker's YouTube channel evidently exists in-universe as shown in a few videos.
    • In Animation vs. YouTube, both TSC and Green get distracted by a video where the animator draws up victim instead of grabbing the full-screen button from YouTube.
    • In "The Showdown", both TCO and TDL are battling each other throughout the internet and TCO uses a video as a weapon against TDL. That video is "The Showdown" itself, with the Chosen One using a past moment from the episode to attack the Dark Lord.
    • In "The King", King Orange finds a television streaming the events of Animation vs. Minecraft, which is what leads him to discover that the main cast is in possession of the Game Icon that he was looking for.
  • Reused Character Design: Almost all of the stick figures introduced after IV are based on the fighting stick figures' designs, having small, filled in heads.
  • Rocket Jump: In "TNT Jump", TSC is teaching his friends how to jump over a huge wall using both TNT and a shield to pass through, with TNT used to propel them into the air and the shield used to protect them from death. If they die from falling or slamming into a wall, they respawn to a nearby bed to try again.
  • Running Gag: The Animator's required essay isn't safe from his stick figures' presence, being shoryuken'd in II, destroyed by the Chosen One's battle with Clippy in III, and exploded by TNT in vs. Minecraft.
    • Of note: In vs. Minecraft, he wises up and has a backup copy of the essay saved, but it gets blown up too. He also has a copy in the "STORAGE" folder that remains untouched.
      • Although since the first zombie crawls out of that one to fight the stick figures, it's too safe to assume that the words and letters inside the file would be in one piece...
      • However, the damage done by the game was reversed at the end of the video, so we can assume that the Required Essay is back to normal.
    • This gag was eventually dropped, likely because Alan is too old for a need to write any essays. Its legacy is followed by him being constantly interrupted at work in the Actual Shorts.
  • Screens Are Cameras: From Animator vs. Animation IV onwards, it's shown that anyone inside of the computer can see the real world through the monitor like a window. This has allowed the stick figures to see things such as what the animator is doing and if there are other devices nearby.
  • Serial Escalation: An occurring trope throughout the series.
    • When the Animator goes over what to name his new stick figure in II, he goes through "victim", "killer", "BEAST", and then finally stops on "The Chosen One".
      • Fittingly, in the flash game for Animator vs. Animation that was made after the sequel was released, these names served as Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels for playing as the animator.
    • A common theme in the building competitions where TSC would judge each build, starting from Red - who would have the simplest build - to Green - who would have a complex build (being the architect expert)- while Yellow and Blue would be in-between, resulting in Green being the winner.
    • In "Redstone Academy", The Second Coming and Green are making redstone contraptions in the redstone competition. The Second Coming makes Whack-a-Mole, then sees that Green made DanceDanceRevolution, so he tears his down and makes Pong, Green sees this and tears down his game to make Tetris. When it comes time for Yellow to judge everyone, we see that the Second Coming made Terraria while Green actually made Minecraft.
    • The note block episodes cements the trend of ever-larger scenarios regarding them. "Note Blocks" is merely Green and co. experimenting with note block combinations and keeping the absurdities to a relative mum. "Note Block Battle", while still a friendly affair, kicks it up a notch by having it be a rock duo between himself and the other FSF. Above and beyond is where "Note Block Universe" reaches in terms of scale: a high-stakes chase scene set in a dimension where everyone has an innate capacity for music and whose day-to-day culture centers around melodies, with one of the series' most story-heavy scenes being shown through Purple's song.
    • In "Carrot on a Stick", Red rides a pig chasing a carrot, Green rides a cow chasing wheat, and TSC rides a wolf chasing a bone. What does Yellow ride? He rides Blue chasing nether wart, and it's faster than all the other animals.
    • In "Bottle Flip", All four of the stick figures flip an object; Red flips a glass bottle and it lands, Green comes in flipping a water bucket and it lands, followed by Yellow with a brewing stand and Blue with a cauldron although the cauldron slams Green instead.
    • In "Ultimate Minecart Race", the race, which was supposed to be one that involves minecarts, gradually shifts from trying to get the lead by going faster, to a free-for-all brawl while racing, to an actual race using everything they have in their inventories.
  • Show, Don't Tell: Dialogue in any form is very rare, with the characters doing the vast majority of their communication in purely visual manners. The exceptions are mostly in text:
    • The Animator sends AIM messages to a programmer friend in II.
    • The Animator's Facebook page is open in IV, and he communicates with someone off-screen out loud. At the end, the Second Coming starts speaking in text, whereupon the Animator creates a text box to reciprocate; this carries over to the first AvA Short.
    • In vs. YouTube, YouTube speaks (briefly) with annotation boxes, as well as by playing isolated words from different videos.
    • In vs. Pokémon, the Pokémon NPCs speak in HeartGold text boxes both in and out of the DS.
    • As of "Titan Ravager", the stick figures sometimes communicate with animated drawings above their heads. As shown in "Lush Caves", they can be physically interacted with.
  • Smashing Watermelons: In "Fruit Ninja", Green, Yellow, and TSC are recreating the titular mobile game using batches of fruit (including melons), a Google image of a wooden background, and an Adobe drawn sword. They make a new challenge of having TSC blindfolded while trying to slice each watermelon on a pike.
  • Snowball Fight: In the short "Snowball War", the main characters are divided between TSC & Green vs Red, Blue, & Yellow in a snowball fight. Red has the idea to get close to his opponents and throw his snowballs at them but gets pelted by their snowballs. Blue jumps in to save Red only to get caught in the crossfire leaving Yellow as the only opponent left on his side. When it seemed TSC and Green have the advantage, they are immediately bombarded by a giant snowball. It turns out Yellow had built a catapult to launch that snowball leaving him as the winner.
  • Soft Reboot: Animator vs. Animation IV effectively serves as this, taking place several years after Alan's original PC was destroyed by the Chosen One and the Dark Lord in III. What sets this apart from the previous entries in the series is that the characters introduced here make peace with the Animator and become series mainstays, setting up the series to showcase the stick figures' adventures without having to deal with an antagonistic animator.
  • Standalone Episode: A lot of the standalone adventures all qualify as this as each of them have their own self-contained story of our main cast exploring different aspects and fighting different enemies without needing to understand the entirety of the franchise. The only exception to this is Animation vs. League of Legends as it requires watching Season 1 of the AVM Shorts series for someone to understand who the purple stick figure is.
  • Status Quo Is God: In most entries from "The Rediscovery" onward, any changes made in episodes are completely undone by the start of the next. Arc episodes are always exceptions, the largest example occurring in "The King" where King Orange adopts Purple, the Minecraft Game Icon is finally returned to its original location in the taskbar, Yellow keeps the Command Block Staff and continues using it in Season 4, and the series has recurring non-stick figure characters in terms of the Stick Gang's mob friends, who continue to make brief appearances.
  • Stick Figure Animation: The series as a whole is a web animation about stick figures.
  • Stylistic Suck: The characters from video games normally use their original animations, especially when they're in their home game, unless they do something that's not possible in their game. This is especially noticeable with the Minecraft characters, who can go from detailed body gestures to simply gliding as they walked, and then exaggerated with Herobrine's crappy movement, up to and including "teleporting" by shrinking out of existence.
  • Suddenly Speaking: Downplayed. The stick figures never speak per se apart from the Second Coming briefly speaking in text in AvA IV and AvA V, but they do occasionally make sounds beyond the normal whooshing movements and footsteps:
    • In "The Building Contest", the Second Coming falls asleep while everyone else is building, snoring before the timer goes off.
    • In "The Dolphin Kingdom", Green sobs after everyone escapes from a swarm of drowned, losing hope that they'll be able to return home and see the Second Coming again.
    • In "Cave Spider Roller Coaster", everyone pants heavily, catching their breath, after destroying the Nether portal.
    • In "Titan Ravager", Blue and Yellow's conversation is depicted with drawings above their heads. The same is true with Red and the Second Coming in "Lush Caves", with the added effect of being able to physically interact with the drawings, implying that they're not just for the benefit of the audience.
    • In "Note Block Universe", Green initially tries asking where Purple went with the usual drawings, but isn't understood. He gets it across with a Note Block, but when the Villagers get rid of it, Green quickly learns how to make the noises himself in order to proceed. It's later shown that Purple learned to do the same.
    • In Actual Short "Faces", the cat face that The Second Coming draws on Red allows the latter to make cat noises. The :P face drawn on Blue makes him make deep reverb noises.
  • To Be Continued: Commonly used in cliffhangers with a blank screen and the words "to be continued" typically seen in story arcs such as the AVA Shorts and the AVM Shorts.
  • Training Montage: In the short "Workout", both Red and Green are training themselves to get stronger, complete with the Rocky soundtrack "Gonna Fly Now" as well as the duo wearing headbands and wristbands. Both the stick figures do various workouts: lifting weights, punching trees, running up the stairs, and breaking stone blocks.
  • Umbrellas Are Lightning Rods: In the short "Rainstorm", all of the students of Monster School are leaving school for the day during a rainstorm. Endie, however, isn't able leave due to Endermen being hurt by water. Red brings an umbrella to protect him from the rain and it works, allowing him to meet up with his friends, until a lightning strike destroys the umbrella.
  • Updated Re-release:
    • In 2015, Alan reuploaded both Animator vs. Animation [I] and Animator vs. Animation II in HD in contrast to those videos being released in 2006 and 2007 respectively.
    • In 2019, Alan reuploaded Animator vs. Animation II again now with a live orchestra soundtrack.
    • In 2020, after the AvA series finished, Alan released Animator vs. Animation V, which is really just the 4 episodes edited together plus a new soundtrack.
    • In 2023, Alan released Animation vs. Minecraft Season 3 - In Real Time, which, as the title suggests, is the entirety of season 3 of AVM Shorts showing the entire adventure with no cuts except for the one leading to the very last scene. Brand new animation and soundtracks were added to fill in the gaps.
  • Vague Age: Due to the artstyle of the stick figures as well as the lack of voices, the ages of most of the characters is left ambiguous; the only characters whose ages we know are Purple's parents and King Orange, all three of whom are adults due to having children. Basing off these three, we can assume the Stick Gang and Purple are either teens or into their early adulthood, but we still have no idea how old the Chosen One, the Dark Lord, the Mercenaries and victim are.
  • Versus Title: The series as a whole is called Animator vs. Animation and the standalone adventures are called Animation vs. [media name]. The exceptions of this are the Actual Shorts series (except for "King Orange vs. The Dark Lord"), and Blue's New Superpower.
  • Victim of the Week: The series as a whole originally started off with this formula; a stick figure is drawn by the animator in each of the first four videos just to be toyed with.
    • The first one started with a stick figure literally named "victim" who, after a brief fight with the animator, ends up (seemingly) deleted alongside his clones.
    • The second video had another, stronger stick figure named "The Chosen One", who ends up enslaved and makes a return in III. The third one had the addition of a red stick figure named "The Dark Lord" created to rival TCO, but of course ends up as a another victim due to the Animator being ignorant that he was about to die.
    • The fourth installment had a new batch of stick figures, the Second Coming and the Fighting Stick Figures. When the Animator deletes the latter, TSC is the only one left to resist his wrath, but the two sides come to a truce with the Animator reviving his creation's friends and allowing them free autonomy on his computer, ending the Animator's reign of terror against the stick figures.
  • Villain of the Week: The majority of the series' episodes have a lot of one-shot antagonists on many of his videos, specifically from the AvM Shorts (e.g, The Killer Bunny, the Cave Spider Queen, and the Witch) and the standalone adventures, albeit some of them end up becoming friends.
  • The Voiceless: Everyone, with the exception of Clippy, the Animator, the Second Coming, YouTube, and Ethan. Notably, YouTube communicates using annotation boxes and splicing together voice clips from different videos, making Mad Libs Dialogue. This is Played With for The Second Coming in the Actual Short "Music Lesson" in the sense that he's only able to make "noises" via orange text.
  • Wedding Episode: The short "Piggie Love" has Red's pig fall in love with another pig from the plains biome. The scene then cuts to an outdoor wedding venue where both pigs are getting married complete with a wedding cake and music with the main cast and the villagers attending it. When both the pigs kiss, it soon escalates with them mating and in the process, a baby piglet appears.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Red the Magician

Step right up and witness the awe & wonder of the great Red the Magician! From summoning tons of rabbits to lightning, this stick figure can do anything at the command of blocks... with a little help, of course.

Example of:
Stage Magician

YouTube

Ballista

Note Block Battle

The Chef - AvM ...

Blue vs. The Witch

The Dark Lord's...

The Desktop Icons

The Warden

Purple's Kingdom

Animation vs. A...

ViraBot

Animation vs. M...

The Chosen One ...

The Organization

AvM Shorts "Mot...

King Orange

Purple and Dark...

Crap, Junk and ...

Life Lessons fr...

Animator vs. An...

The Dark Lord v...

Animator vs. An...

Battle Across t...

Alternative Title(s): Alan Becker

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top

Red the Magician

Step right up and witness the awe & wonder of the great Red the Magician! From summoning tons of rabbits to lightning, this stick figure can do anything at the command of blocks... with a little help, of course.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

Example of:

Main / StageMagician

Media sources:

Report

Red the Magician

YouTube

Ballista

Note Block Battle

The Chef - AvM ...

Blue vs. The Witch

The Dark Lord's...

The Desktop Icons

The Warden

Purple's Kingdom

Animation vs. A...

ViraBot

Animation vs. M...

The Chosen One ...

The Organization

AvM Shorts "Mot...

King Orange

Purple and Dark...

Crap, Junk and ...

Life Lessons fr...

Animator vs. An...

The Dark Lord v...

Animator vs. An...

Battle Across t...