Web Animation / CliffSide

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CliffSide is an animated pilot created by a pre-Murder Drones Liam Vickers. The story revolves about a boy named Waylon who strives to be a notorious outlaw. He is joined by his companion Jo, and befriends a spider girl named Cordie. Together they defend the ghost town of Cliffside from a myriad of supernatural entities.

The web animation can be found here at Liam Vickers' YouTube Channel.

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Tropes

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The art is mostly 2D, but some elements of the animation, such as the guns and some of the background props, are rendered in 3D CGI.
• All Webbed Up: During Cordie's attack on the bank, a bunch of people end up wrapped up in her webs from head to toe like mummies.
• Alternate History: The show takes place in the year 1865, with numerous deviations from history (most obviously, the monsters).
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Played for Laughs. The way Cordie uses her web in midair in order to stop her's and Waylon's fall after being dropped by a pterodactyl would have only succeeded in breaking their ankles. It's even acknowledged by Waylon as "questionable physics".
  • There's also the fact that Cordie can hold and operate a pistol, four of them in fact, with her pincers alone without any mechanical assistance.
• A-Team Firing: Waylon manages to miss every single shot during the intro. Jo, on the other hand...
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: At the last bits of the pilot, it's revealed through words from Cordie herself that she has a short attention span and tends to get lost to it for hours on end.
  Cordie: "I once looked at something and only lost focus for THREE! HOURS!"
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason behind Cordie looking up to Waylon so much is because he stood up for her against Yannis.
• Blatant Lies: Waylon tries to take credit for killing the monsters during the intro... even though it was Jo who killed them.
  Waylon: Nice! I'm a better shot than I thought.
• Brutal Honesty: There's a reason Waylon calls his partner "Honest Jo".
  Waylon: (While doing his voiceover) That's Honest Jo. My partner in crime. She's never told a lie. (Misses his shot aimed at a non moving target)
  Jo: You're bad at this.
• Bullet Catch: Cordie catches a bullet fired at her with her claw.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Waylon is often the target of many misfortunes that transpires in the pilot.
  • Second place goes to Background Street Crosser who often finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Color Wash:
  • During the day most the scenery is a shade of brown.
  • During the night most of the scenery is a shade of blue and grey.
  • During one of Waylon's self-narrations, everything is a monochrome tint of light green.
• Computer-Generated Images: The pilot was digitally animated using Toon Boom with heavy use of tweening and some frame-by-frame animated bits along with some 3D rendered props added in here and there.
• Credits Gag: In the credits, Death is credited to have been played as himself.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Waylon is often on the receiving end of these.
  • During the intro he gets mauled by two monsters.
  • In his standoff with Death Itself he gets beaten up rather badly before convincing it to become the town's sheriff.
• Cute Little Fangs: Cordie has these when her mouth is closed
• Cute Monster Girl: Cordie is a spider girl with pincers for hands, and who tries to appear scary, but comes off more as adorable. Waylon does teach her how to use a gun though, and she becomes very efficient with them.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jo's a straight example of this through and through with an emphasis on "Deadpan".
• The Death of Death: Death Itself rides on the back of Yannis the pterodactyl during her attempt to kill Waylon and Cordie, only for Cordie to use her web to send them plummeting to the ground and their demise. Later revealed to be subverted when Cordie mentions that they actually can't kill Death.
• Death Takes a Holiday: Or rather Death Itself takes a job that making sure less people die so it doesn't have to do so much work.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Many of Waylon's made up stories consist of him shooting people for petty reasons.
  Waylon: I once shot a sheriff just because I was grumpy from shooting sheriffs all day.
• Eldritch Abomination: Death Itself, which appears as a worm-like creature with many sharp teeth, can have multiple arms (which are often rendered in 3D CGI, which makes it look more alien); seems to distort reality when it's annoyed; and, being Death, is completely unkillable. Oh, and its voice sounds like a swarm of flies.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: The monsters get to eat the humans they capture. However, Yannis decides that Cordie is too useless for that and demands that she hand over Waylon. Even he thinks that's too much.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Waylon's first scene shows off his self-centeredness, and dishonesty.
  • Jo is very quick to mock Waylon's lack of skill, and quickly kills a bunch of monsters, without changing her stoic attitude at all.
  • Cordie first introduces herself by menacingly approaching Waylon, and about to eat a crow who found its way into her web... Before the crow hits her in four of her eyes, and she's left awkwardly trying to be scary to Waylon.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Waylon called the background character that appeared twice in the pilot as "Background Street Crosser". Even in the credits he is credited as "Background Street Crosser". His real name was never revealed.
• Fan of Underdog: Cordie is the only character we're introduced to that genuinely looks up to Waylon.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The newspaper near the end. It briefly talks about Death Itself becoming the new sheriff before mentioning how the pilot feels rushed due to a time constraint. The paper's tagline is also that it's "The Definitely Not Cursed Weekly Newspaper", along with an ominous warning on the top right from a "Winston Gerrard", who says he's trapped in the Cliffside newspaper company by horrific monsters that can read and are apparently among the populace.
  • When Cordie pokes Waylon in the eye before their standoff with Death, her pupils turn into skulls for a split second.
• Genki Girl: Cordie's pretty upbeat and cheerful for a creepy spider lady.
• Ghost Town: Cliffside has a population of 21 people currently living in it. With the town being surrounded and occasionally being attacked by monsters, it's a wonder people would even dare live here, let alone survive for long.
• Gone Horribly Right: When Waylon decides to train Cordie in the fine art of being a gunslinger, he starts having second thoughts when she shoots an airborne bean can to pieces with four revolvers, while sporting a Slasher Smile. It then shows him watching in horror as she cheerfully robs a bank in full spider-monster mode.
• Glowing Eyes:
  • The Wendigo's large eyes glow a yellow tinted white in addition to his glowing mouth.
  • Cordie's eyes glow in the dark whenever she's feeling intense emotions.
• The Grim Reaper: Death Itself. You can't kill death, so he comes to cause trouble for the heroes until Waylon makes him the sheriff of the town.
• Guns Akimbo: When Cordie masters firearm training, we see her quadruple wielding revolvers. One on each pincer. She's very proficient at it too, as we see during the training montage that all of the bullets she fired manages to hit a can midair (which she launched with her web prior).
• The Gunslinger: Most of the human characters from the pilot are gunslingers of varying levels of competency, with Jo ranking pretty high on the list and Waylon and Jo's posses (though we never get to see them in action as they were taken out by Cordie before they could act) being the least proficient among them.
  • Cordie became a gunslinger herself after Waylon thought her how to shoot. She quickly became very proficient at it despite her pincers for hands. So proficient that she can handle four pistols at the same time with ease and catch a bullet in flight with her pincers like a kung-fu master catches a fly with his chopsticks.
• "Help! Help! Trapped in Title Factory!": The newspaper at the end has a section from someone claiming to be trapped in the CliffSide newspaper company by monsters.
• Hidden Depths: It's suggested that Waylon does have some knowledge of how to use a gun, having trained Cordie how to use hers, and is implied to have had something to do with the Sheriff's death at the end of the pilot.
• Ignored Aesop: Waylon refuses to learn a lesson from the whole ordeal. Prompted by Jo, he admits to Cordie that he made everything up, but then quickly brushes past it. Facing off against Death Itself, he delivers a Spoof Aesop about how you can manipulate people by giving them validation, then manages to salvage the situation by appealing to his self-interest.
  Jo: [sighs] He didn't learn a thing.
• Laughing Mad: Two instances of this. The first one is in the scene where we meet Cordie for the first time, and the second one where she giggles in glee as she robs a bank in full monster mode and chokes an accountant with her pincer.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Yannis tries to splatter Waylon and Cordie after already attempting to bully Cordie out of her catch, but when she drops them Cordie attaches a web to her which slams her to the ground, killing her.
• Leitmotif:
  • The Wendigo's theme titled "Wendigos Attack" which played during the prologue sequence.
  • Yannis's aptly named character theme "Yannis's Theme".
• Living Shadow: The Wendigo's body is made out of a writhing and wavering mass of shadow that forms the silhouette of a stereotypical depiction of a wendigo with a glowing mouth and eyes.
• Lovecraft Lite: All sorts of monstrosities cause mayhem in the town, but they're just as vulnerable to bullets and gravity as anyone else. Except for Death Itself, because you can't kill Death.
• Meaningful Look: At the end, as Jo and Cordie walk away, talking about how whoever shot the previous sheriff was never caught, Waylon gets a mischievous look, implying that he had something to do with it.
• Medium Awareness:
  • After Jo reminds Waylon that the town is surrounded by monsters, he claims:
    Waylon: I shot like 50 in the intro sequence!
  • After Cordie's Training Montage leads to her terrorizing and robbing a bank:
    Waylon: Whoa. Montages are dangerous.
• Metaphorgotten: Cordie doesn't seem familiar with the expression "put a lid on it".
  Cordie: They were all like: "Meh, meh, meh!" And you were all like: "Take a lid, and put it on... that!".
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Although officially recognized as a spider person within the show and on official source material, Cordie seems to be more of a mishmash of various arachnids — not just spiders, but scorpions as well. She sports four sets of pincers for hands, and has what seemed to be a prehensile stinger inside her mouth.
• Mook Horror Show: Cordie easily and creepily dispatches several guards at a bank after learning how to be a gunslinging outlaw.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Cordie has four pincer-tipped arms and uses them for shooting four revolvers. Death is a subversion, since he can grow multiple arms, but only uses one for attacking.
• Nightmare Face:
  • Big glowing dilated eyes that twist and morph; and a large, drooling, toothy grin that literally reaches from ear to ear. Cordie can be quite horrifying to look at when she needs to be.
  • Death Itself has a pretty horrifying face itself. Its toothy mouth resembles that of a cloak's hood. In its center is a dark empty abyss devoid of any facial features with buzzing flies flying in and out of it. Dialogue implies that he uses those buzzing flies to communicate with other people.
• Oh, Crap!: Waylon's reaction when Cordie tells him that they didn't actually kill Death Itself.
  Waylon: You should have seen us! It was so awesome! We killed a giant pterodactyl! And Death Itself!
  Cordie: Well, not Death Itself. I mean... you can't kill Death.
  Waylon: Oh, right! Well, obviously.
  Cordie: It's kind of his whole thing.
  Waylon: But yeah, I uh... we uh... [awkward pause] Wait, what!?
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Jo suddenly gets a southern accent when questioning Waylon for being an accomplice in a bank robbery.
  Jo: What in tarnation is going on!?
  Waylon: Oh, man. She's gone southern.
• Pet the Dog: Waylon has tendencies towards selfishness and egotism, but he does perform a genuine act of kindness at one point: when Yannis threatens Cordie and calls her useless, Waylon stands up for her by throwing a rock at Yannis's head and declaring that Cordie would have eaten him just fine if Yannis herself hadn't shown up. Cordie is so touched by this gesture that not only does she no longer wish to eat him, she develops a crush on him.
• Pilot: This web animation is a pilot for a series, if this is ever picked up, created by Liam Vickers for his college thesis.
• The Place: The pilot is titled after its main setting, the town of CliffSide.
• Psychological Projection: Waylon outright admits that when he stood up for Cordie against Yannis he was probably just projecting his own personal issues about being treated as useless.
• Punny Name: "Cordie" as in "a cord of spider web".
• Self-Applied Nickname: Waylon often calls himself Two-Bit Jerry.
• Self-Duplication: The Wendigo has the power to split himself up into several wendigos.
• The Seven Western Plots: Weird West take on the outlaw story, with outlaw wannabe "Two-Bit Jerry" Waylon, Honest Jo, and spider-girl Cordie meeting and fighting monsters like a Wendigo and Death Itself (who becomes the sheriff at the end after Waylon points out that law and order = less death = less work).
• Ship Tease: Cordie seems to feel something more than admiration for Waylon. For starters, she frequently stares at him with hearts on her eyes ever since he stood up to Yannis. Also, before their standoff with Death, Cordie gets excited at Waylon when he is holding her by the shoulder, and she pokes him in the eye in what could be described as a failed attempt at a weird spider kiss. Waylon, on the other hand, seems uncomfortable with this.
• The Sheriff: Death Itself became the sheriff of Cliffside by the end of the pilot through Waylon. He accepted the position as it would ease up his grim reaping job with less people dying.
• Showdown at High Noon:
  • A clock tower ticks to noon just as Waylon faces off against Death Itself.
  • Parodied in the newspaper at the end, which mentions that Death Itself is proposing dispensing with the cliché of keeping the town clock tower at high noon all day because "it's confusing and nobody knows when to do anything."
• Silly Walk: Background Street Crosser is always seen doing the cowboy walk whenever he appears on screen.
• Slasher Smile: When Cordie smiles, her face takes on the visage of a hungry predator eager to devour her prey, even when she's just smiling because she's happy or excited.
• Spider Limbs: Cordie has four clawed arms, and during the bank robbery she shows that she also has four spider legs that are usually hidden under her dress.
• Spider People: Cordie has a lot of arachnid features, such as her long spider legs which she keeps tucked in beneath her skirt, multiple eyes that look like a singular eye and even a chelicerae-like mouthpart hidden inside her mouth. She also has other arachnid features that are not of spiders such as her two pairs of pincers.
• Spoof Aesop: The moral of the episode, as summed up by Waylon: if you give someone validation, you can manipulate them into doing what you want.
  Waylon: Who's a good Death? Who's a good little Death? You earned that star, didn't you? Please don't kill me.
• The Stoic: Jo always speaks in a monotone voice... until she sees Waylon with Cordie.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: When Jo sees Waylon at the bank robbery, her eyes go wide and the music comes to a sudden stop.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Lampshaded by Jo when Waylon claims not to have cried when shooting those 50 monsters during the intro sequence.
  Jo: Nothing suspicious about mentioning that specifically.
• Training Montage: Waylon ends up teaching Cordie how to shoot a gun after she saves him from Yannis. However, Cordie takes the idea of being an outlaw too seriously and robs a bank.
  Waylon: Whoa. Montages are dangerous.
• The Unintelligible: Death Itself only speaks in horrific buzzes. Yannis, however, understands it just fine and Cordie also knows that "language" (although she's quite rusty at it).
• Weird West: It starts with a gunslingin' outlaw and his pardner fighting a Wendigo in a prairie town, and goes from there.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Jo interrupts Waylon's voiceover during the intro to tell him that her dad needs him. That subject is never touched upon for the rest of the episode.
• Wingding Eyes: Cordie's pupils frequently change shape, such as turning into hearts whenever she gushes about Waylon, turning into glowing yellow slits when she's feeling particularly bloodthirsty, and splitting into four, and turning into skull-and-crossbones.
• The Wild West: The setting of the cartoon.
• Throat Light: The inside of the Wendigo's mouth also glows similarly to his eyes.
• Wendigo: A Living Shadow variant of it appears during the pilot's prologue.

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