I need DAAAAAH!
Paige Foster is a young woman who’s created a fantasy world with the help of a magic pencil she was given as a child. She’s excited to show all her friends at school what she’s made, but her world is constantly under threats from her evil sister Pillow, an obnoxious wizard, and a mysterious masked man known as Mist. Together she and her friends must defeat these evils and save both her world and the real world from their plots to destroy art.
Did we mention there’s a beatboxing puppy?
Created by the content aggregator Calobi Productions (who formerly used to make animated rap battle videos), this self-made indie animation film was released to very little fanfare. It only gained traction in mid-2023 following the creator slandering The Amazing Digital Circus while promoting his own film that had significantly less views than it. Uploads of the beatboxing puppy scene quickly became a Memetic Mutation on Twitter and brought more eyes to this film for better or for worse.
Trope-listing puppy!
- Aborted Arc: You could make another movie with the amount of dropped plots in this film.
- Calobi is captured by Mist, but he escapes his clutches offscreen.
- Pillow turns herself into a drawing because she doesn’t respect art, implied to be the doings of the magic pencil. This never happens to anybody else in the film as everyone else enters Paige’s world by falling asleep, and it’s revealed The Wizard was always a drawing.
- Speaking of said magic pencil, it never shows up being wielded by Paige nor do the villains try to steal it.
- The romantic teases between Paige and Hunter and Ally and Mickey go absolutely nowhere.
- The Narrator, and later, The First Drawing talks about Paige's Classmates slowly turning into drawings by staying in the drawing world. This never comes into play in the story outside of these mentions.
- A Degree in Useless: As seen by the world this film takes place in, only art degrees, apparently. This mindset is strongly argued against by the movie’s pro-art stance.
- Advertised Extra: The main poster for the film depicts Paige, Pillow, The Announcer, an unnamed blue monster, and Calobi. Only Paige and Calobi are main characters or do anything to progress the plot. The beatboxing puppy is mentioned in the description for the movie and was given his own music video. He only appears in the film for about 10 minutes.
- Affectionate Nickname: Puzzle uses “Loo-Loo” for Calobi.
- All-CGI Cartoon: Animated as such, with an ironic twist that the film discusses how 2D animation is often disrespected.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Did Paige (or the monster she drew) kill Pillow? Given we never see her again in the story after the flashback, it’s a strong possibility.
- During a flashback, Paige brings up how she thinks divorce is bad out of the blue and follows it up by saying that her dad refuses to accept her. Did her parents separate because her dad was such an anti-art advocate?
- Did Mist kill himself, or was him vanishing out of existence meant to be a visual metaphor for him quitting his job to find himself?
- Did Paige cure her disability with the magic pencil, or was she given the ability to walk again because she wished to make her drawings come to life instead of wishing for something selfish?
- Animated Musical: And they’re all acapella songs, too!
- And That's Terrible:
- The Wizard's angry rant about the Beatboxing Puppy being "made up by a psychopath."
- Pillow tells Paige that human beings are naturally selfish because they ask for water cups and fill them with soda at fast food restaurants. The Announcer agrees, but says he prefers to fill them with lemonade.
- Art Attacker: Paige, The Wizard, and Mist. It’s implied that Paige’s human friends are capable of doing this, but we never actually see them do it.
- Art Initiates Life: Paige is able to do this because she was given a magic pencil. She uses it to show her friends a puppy she drew that can also beatbox.
- Artistic License – Art: For a movie talking about how amazing and great making art is, it’s grasp of it is a bit shaky. For starters art is a medium but it’s flattened into being a genre, with animation, concept art, and sketch work all being treated as the exact same.
- Art Shift: When Mickey is told about Pillow’s villainous schemes to steal Paige’s art, the scene suddenly shifts to 2D animation.
- Author Appeal: Acapella music. Every single song in the movie is sung in acapella, even the Beatboxing Puppy’s song. Also, art in general, as the characters constantly talk about how great art is.
- Author Tract: The film will stop dead in its tracks for the characters to stand around and tell the audience they should care about art.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: The Wizard verbally and physically assaults a puppy just because he’s angry it can talk (and beatbox).
- Big Sister Bully: Pillow insults and mocks Paige and tries to steal her art out of jealousy.
- Calling Your Attacks: “Beatboxing puppy!” and “Wrist Waters on my neck!” from the heroes, and “Art Style!” from the villain Mist.
- Character Shilling: Calobi only exists to talk about how Paige is the most wonderful selfless person that’s ever been and to defend her from any outside harm.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- It’s implied literally everyone’s parents have all but disowned the main cast of humans because they all like drawing and seek art degrees.
- The poor Beatboxing Puppy gets his head stomped on and insulted because the Wizard thinks talking dogs are stupid and unnatural.
- Mist ruins Paige’s fantasy world because he’s angry she isn’t using her powers to take over the world, that she won’t give him her art, and that he was ruthlessly insulted by someone for teaching art. He also stabs The Wizard to death for hating puppies and stealing Paige's art.
- Pillow programs Paige’s art into an AI generator because she’s bitter she isn’t good at drawing.
- Easily Forgiven: Mist decides out of nowhere that Paige is a Worthy Opponent. Up until that moment he’d been threatening to kill her and all her loved ones, destroy her world, steal her art, and gaslighted her into thinking that she was in a coma and everything that had happened was All a Dream. Everyone accepts this without any argument and they all return to the real world.
- Evil Is Petty: All of the villains turned to their evil ways because they feel slighted by incredibly minor things, whether it be not having talent or simply being insulted.
- Fade to Black: Done constantly for no rhyme or reason, sometimes in the middle of dialogue or a song.
- Flat Character: The good guys are good guys that like talking about how great it is to be good people. The bad guys are bad and love boasting about being bad. Aside from Mickey drinking beer and having a short temper, that’s all there is to their characters.
- Forced Meme: Paige saying “Moisty!” as a Shout-Out to Mortal Kombat II's "Toasty!" It’s even shamed in-universe, with Calobi telling her to never say it again because it makes people uncomfortable.
- Fratbro: Mickey and Hunter. The first chugs beer on school grounds in celebration upon seeing the Beatboxing Puppy and the latter says he’s “here for a good time, not a long time!” These are the few bits of characterization that they get.
- Good Flaws, Bad Flaws: Pillow is shown with a lit cigarette in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other, and she’s a villain. Mickey throws back beer whenever he wants to celebrate and he’s a hero, even if he drinks it on school grounds.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The word “fluff” is substituted for a Precision F-Strike. They only slip up using the word “hell” thrice, from Mickey, Calobi, and a Nigerian-accented marshmallow that follows Puzzle around.
- Improbable Infant Survival: The First Drawing takes the Beatboxing Puppy and The Announcer with him despite Calobi’s worries that the puppy will be injured. The First Drawing assures him the puppy will be okay because of Plot Armor, and sure enough the puppy is the only one that survives.
- Informed Attribute:
- In the title for the Youtube video, the film is stated to be about a princess. It isn’t, unless you count a throwaway line saying that Paige sometimes pretends she’s a princess and Calobi complimenting her by saying she is one.
- The Beatboxing Puppy’s song is jazz scatting and doesn’t actually feature beatboxing until the last thirty seconds.
- Mickey, Ally, and Hunter are all stated to be great artists, but we never actually see them drawing and they sit out of the climactic battle at the end.
- Informed Flaw: All of the villains insist Paige is a whiny brat obsessed with kid’s cartoons and her childhood that needs to learn to grow up. The only proof of this that they give is that she likes to draw cartoons. That’s it. The wizard also insists that Paige is a psychopath because he hates the beatboxing puppy so much.
- Calobi's speech to the group implies that Mickey is addicted to alcohol, but he is never shown being excessively drunk or held back by his addiction at all.
- Informed Species: The Announcer appears to be a stubby-footed, winged Cartoon Creature, but he very bluntly states he’s a rock apropos of nothing during Paige and Pillow’s battle.
- It's All About Me: Mist.
- Magical Barefooter: Mist, an all-powerful magician, goes barefoot as a part of his outfit.
- Meaningful Name: An artist called Paige Foster.
- No Name Given: The mute blue monster that helps Paige defeat Pillow. Odder still given that he’s given a spot on the poster and appears in the first 5 minutes of the film. A blue alien girl, a muscular man with an afro, and a ninja-wizard also do not have any lines nor are given names, but they’re seen dancing during one of the music videos.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The First Drawing suggests to Calobi that Mist is "really a good guy deep down". While Mist does kill him and The Announcer, he's proven right at the end.
- Obviously Evil: Pillow, The Wizard, and Mist.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: After revealing he was one of Paige's drawings all along, Mist stomps on The Wizard's head and brutally stabs him to death, mirroring how The Wizard insulted the Beatboxing Puppy and tried to kill it by crushing its head.
- Random Events Plot: And how.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Calobi gives one to the wizard, telling him his art will always suck because he'll never put in the effort to care about it.
- Pillow gives one to her sister about how she should just give up and stop caring about her artistic integrity.
- The human characters discuss a time where a bully barged into their art class and screamed at the teacher that his job was worthless and he should be ashamed of himself for daring to care about art.
- Redemption Equals Death: Potentially Mist. See Ambiguous Situation.
- Rousing Speech: Parodied. Puzzle tells them a story about an avocado that wanted to be brave. He gets bored halfway through telling the story and then instead asks them if they’ve ever put ice cubes on their shoes.
- Calobi gives one to the humans to encourage them to use Paige's inspiration to make new drawings, as well as calling all of Paige's old ones together for the Final Battle. Considering there are no new drawings for this battle, and only The First Drawing and the Announcer show up to fight Mist, it's possible it wasn't very effective.
- Shout-Out:
- Paige's drawing of a friendly blue monster resembles Sully from Monsters Inc. He's shown interacting with a kid that resembles Haku from Spirited Away.
- In his attempts to encourage everyone to fight Mist, Puzzle starts rambling about an avocado that lives in a pineapple under the sea.
- “Wrist Waters on my neck!” and "Have you ever put ice cubes on your shoes?" are lines from one of Calobi Productions’ old animated rap battles.
- Smug Snake: Mist is an egotistical Omnicidal Maniac who constantly insults everyone else because he thinks artists should be treated like gods. Pillow is likewise a self-absorbed diva who thinks she’s too good to learn how to draw on her own, and uses AI generators and tracing paper.
- Take That!: People who trace art, steal others art to pass off as their own, or use neural network art generators are all a bunch of talentless hacks that deserve to be scolded and beaten up. There’s also a subtle jab in one of the songs at people who use art tablets instead of traditional mediums such as paper, brushes, and pencils.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Paige Foster was a paraplegic due to an accident when she was a child. It’s never explained how she became able to walk again, but it can be assumed the magic pencil she was given did something to help.
- Unexplained Accent: Deliberately averted with Paige, as she goes out of her way to explain that she lost her British accent when moved to another country (which makes you wonder why they even casted her child voice with a British voice actor to begin with).
- Played straight with Albert the marshmallow, who for some reason has a Nigerian accent.
- Vague Age: How old are the humans, exactly? Paige is explicitly referred to as a woman in narration and in the description for the movie, but Ally’s concern over Mickey drinking on school grounds could also be construed as him being underage, even if he does insist that they're seniors.
- Verbal Tic: Puzzle has a weird one where he randomly starts yelling in the middle of sentences.
- Vocal Dissonance:
- Calobi’s character model is clearly a child but he speaks with his normal adult voice.
- Puzzle also uses a character model that looks like a child and also sounds like an adult, with the addition of a Flula Borg impression.
- The beatboxing puppy is voiced by an adult that occasionally uses Baby Talk.
- You’d expect The First Drawing to sound like an old wizened mentor, but he instead talks like an average guy.
- Wham Line:
- Pillow revealing she’s been feeding Paige’s art into an AI generator.
- The Reveal that Paige drew The Wizard.
- Wham Shot: The powered up Calobi returning to fight Mist and his army of stick figures.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Paige’s sister’s name is Pillow? Is her name meant to symbolize how lazy she is?
