August: Oh... Well, when you put it like that, you make it seem like the worst thing ever.
Kevin: You got a C too? Wow. And here I thought you were smart.
C Students is a 2014 animated web series created by AnimatedJames
on YouTube. The story focuses on the three main characters August, Penny, and Kevin, three friends just trying to make their way through high school and all its perils, including, but not limited to: Alpha Bitches, relationships, sex, insane teachers, creepy twins, Italian bullies, swearing, and Chuck Jones cartoon physics.
C Students is based on an 11 minute short called Cancer Crusaders. Cancer Crusaders was intended as the pilot to a series called Seniors. Seniors was about seven main characters, all high school seniors, and were fictitious versions of the voice actors themselves. Being an independent project, however, Seniors went through Development Hell because of many factors, including voice actors taking forever to record their lines, recording their lines with very poor hardware, AnimatedJames not hearing back from the people involved for months at a time, and many more. Because of this, AnimatedJames decided to cancel Seniors, and give it new life in the form of C Students, which is supposed to be easier to manage and create, having fewer people involved.
The series was cancelled in an announcement from AnimatedJames during March of 2015, as he felt that he was ignorant about the subject of friendship. Since then, no remakes have been announced, and only a pilot and some of episode two have been released. Later, on February 2, 2016, AnimatedJames made a new animation, a music video called "Creative Types", which featured the characters of C Students a few years later.
Later the same month, it was announced that the characters who appear in Creative Types would be the focus of a Web Comic.
Later, on October 2017, Sharpness Knight, one of AnimatedJames's fans, has announced that a new animated remake of C Students is in production by his animation studio Sharpness Knight Studios, but unlike the original pilot, the new remake is going to be suitable for children. The remake is in development, so Sharpness Knight, who is the developer for the remake, is looking for animators and voice actors (including the original creator AnimatedJames himself) to help out with the remake. Later the same month, he uploaded two videos for the new C Students remake, which are the sneak peek (with archived footage from the original pilot) and the new intro, to YouTube.
On October 29, 2017, Sharpness Knight Studios released a video of the C Students remake's production update. In that video, the animated C Students web series remake project, which was in development hell, is looking for animators, voice actors, and other people to help Sharpness Knight with the story, animation, video editing, voice acting, music, sound effects, visual effects, and compositing, and is going to be a tribute to the original C Students pilot episode "Pylit". However, on November 22, 2017, he claimed that production for the C Students remake was canceled due to lack of animators and support, as well as being told a family-friendly version of the show would be a bad idea.
On December 9, 2017, after the cancellation of the animated C Students web series remake, Sharpness Knight decided to create a series of animated YouTube short films based on C Students. The name of that series is C Students Shorts. The short film series began with "Kevin's New Outfit", which is the very first short of that series. In that short film, Kevin is choosing an outfit for his first day at Hartlane High School as a senior student. The short took place before the events of the original C Students pilot episode "Pylit".
This series provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: The whole series is based on an aborted series called Seniors.
- Alpha Bitch: Scarlett. She only befriends people who will do whatever she wants, like whatever she likes, and agree with whatever she says.
- Book Dumb:
- In college, Nicole is shown to be taking various music classes, including Music History, Music Theory, Music Literature, Music Politics...what?, and Actual Music. She is failing all but one of these, with her only A in Actual Music.
- In the intro, Kevin is given an F on his paper.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: All of the students who had speaking roles in the original first episode make a return in "Creative Types" except for the twins Dom and Tom.
- Country Matters: Played with. This was played straight, then lampshaded, and then averted in the most glorious way possible.Penny: Why are you so obsessed with that girl? She's a total C-U-N-T.Kevin: *mutters under his breath while counting on his fingers* c...u...n...OH, what is with Americans being allergic to that word? If someone's a cunt, just call them a cunt! *Beat* A-and no, she's not a cunt!
- Creator Cameo: James himself shows up as the person who heckles Kevin during his stand up performance, even though August is already an Expy of James.
- Darker and Edgier: The "Creative Types" video especially with Kevin's suicide attempt, Nicole's mom slapping her and the lack of the Chuck Jones type humor of the pilot.
- Expy: Each of the main characters is an expy of a charcter from AnimatedJames' previous series, "Seniors".
- August is a mix between James and Daniel.
- Kevin is a revamp of Cubix.
- Penny is very similar to Carol.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Drew. Right after calling the twins Fortunate Accomplished Geniuses (FAGs), he has a very homosexual fantasy involving both of them. When he shakes his head, he says in his mind: "You're straight. You're straight. You're Italian, therefore you are straight."
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: An Expy of Timmy Turner appears at one point.
- Meta Fiction: Complete with Fourth Wall jokes, Anti-Humor, and Kevin essentially being a human Looney Tune, this series loves to poke fun at certain tropes, and provides commentary on creative works in general.
- The Musical: The song "Possibility" at the end of the first episode seems to imply that
the series would have had other musical numbers like this. Lampshaded by Dom and Tom after the credits, with a dash of Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
- Noodle Incident: What exactly did happen on the night of Kevin's and Scarlett's first date? We have no idea because Scarlett muted Kevin as he recounted the tale. It definitely had something to do with the Ace Attorney series, that's for sure.
- Only One Name: When Kevin is performing at the stand-up comedy club, his name on the little marquee outside is just "Kevin."
- Relationship Upgrade: In "Creative Types," it is shown that August and Penny are dating.
- Rule 63: Penny wishes Kevin and August were girls, and the two imagine themselves as women. The female counterpart of August then proceeds to pick up the female counterpart of Kevin and throw her out of the thought bubble into Kevin's face.
- Tsundere: Nicole is this for Penny. When they first meet, Nicole is visibly smitten with her. She then proceeds to act indifferent towards her.
