OneyPlays Animated - The Hosts I Hate the Most (Fan Film + BTS)
Here it is, my very first proper OneyPlays Animated! This is an adaptation of "Fartulons", the 48th episode of Chris, Ding Dong and Julian's playthrough of Kingdom Hearts. A big thanks goes to Gameghoul for illustrating the title card as well. This project was a year long labor of love, so I hope you all enjoy it! There are also a few little easter eggs in here, so keep an eye out! ;)
This is the very first independently made cartoon I've made (and actually finished) in Blender. It probably would have been finished much sooner were it not for the fact that I was also working on MG at the same time. I got the idea to make this cartoon because I am a big fan of OneyPlays, and one of my favorite things about Chris' content (other than his juvenile yet highly effective sense of humor) is the vast variety of animated adaptations of his gaming exploits. It's so fun seeing the different ways artists and animators depict the cartoon avatars, and how they create their own interpretations of the jokes, hypotheticals, and stories Chris and his friends tell. Since there was a relatively scarce amount of 3D animated "OneyPlays Animateds" in particular at the time, I realized that this silly genre of animation was right up my alley. This was the drive that inspired me to make "OneyPlays Animated - The Manganomicon", but since that project unfortunately ended up failing spectacularly, I was very quick to move on and make this cartoon, "OneyPlays Animated - The Hosts I Hate the Most".
This cartoon was adapted from one of my favorite OneyPlays bits of all time, from the 48th episode of their Kingdom Hearts series. Throughout the bit, the three mourn over Pant's apparent death, and reminisce about three other previous hosts they have had bad experiences with. One of the big differences between this cartoon and its failed predecessor aside from the plot was the workflow of its creation. "OneyPlays Animated - The Manganomicon" was animated entirely on the fly, with no outline or written plan, just the audio to build upon and improvise with. "OneyPlays Animated - The Hosts I Hate the Most", while it still uses the audio of an OneyPlays episode as a direct basis for its plot, differs in the fact that it was entirely board-driven, and I made a full animatic that I used as a guide and reference for shot composition, character animation, plot direction and pacing. The tone and style of this cartoon is heavily inspired by the works of Tex Avery and Bob Camp, complete with the usage of royalty free production music as well as a style of character animation that exploits camera angles to imitate 2D animation. Though the story told by the gag remains mostly intact from source material to cartoon, Some edits and changes were made to create a narrative that works better in animation form. For instance, the opening segment is actually from the earlier 44th episode, "Pant", shortened significantly with it ending when Pant dies and going right to the title card and opening credits. The unorthodox method that Pant's body was disposed of are implied solely by the placement of his "grave" in subsequent scenes. I also thought it would be a clever idea to adapt it into a heavily flashback-driven storyline, with the flashback sequences having a visual style that differs from the rest of the cartoon. The "present" scenes are rendered in Eevee in a semi-photorealistic style, whereas the "flashback" scenes are rendered in Cycles, with a dreary, dreamlike visual style reminiscent of an oil or watercolor painting. The two evil doppelgangers, Anti-Chris and Dark Ding, are also given voices in this cartoon, with Anti-Chris being portrayed by a clip of Chris doing a Dumb Donald impression, and Dark Ding being voiced by me. The biggest change from bit to cartoon though would have to be the addition of an entirely new ending scene in which a character called "Count Crapula" shows up and asks to be a new host, causing Chris, Ding Dong and Julian to have a mental breakdown.
As you might imagine, this cartoon also has its fair share of cut content and scrapped ideas. Instead of Count Crapula, I initially planned for the cartoon to end with a third evil doppelganger, Count Cruelian (basically Julian as an evil vampire). I ended up doing Count Crapula instead because I felt that "Count Cruelian" would be going too far into fanfiction territory. There was also another cut character called "BlowJobber" who was originally going to appear by rising up from the bottom of the frame and placing his mouth over Anti-Chris's nubby penis. However, I later realized that would have been too explicit for YouTube regardless of censorship, so I was very quick to scrap Blowjobber.
The main cartoon.
Behind the scenes.
The original animatic.
Chris O'Neill facial rig demo. His facial rig has a large number of stretch bones, allowing for a tremendous range of expression.
Ding Dong facial rig demo. Throughout the course of the cartoon, the facial animations of Ding Dong were done in such a manner that they relied heavily on the camera angles to emulate a cartoony pseudo-2D style. Kinda like Hotel Transylvania, I guess.
One of Ding Dong's end credits dances. It was made by importing the "swing" dance animation from Mixamo and making his rig copy the movements, adding elements of squash and stretch to his movements by hand.
The original Mixamo motion data for the dance, with an imported auto-rigged mesh for visual clarity. The actual Ding Dong's armature copies the movements of this doppelganger using bone constraints.
One of the bats that constantly swarm around Count Crapula. This model was created and rigged within just a little over an hour.
The bat swarm was created using boid particles that follow an empty object around. This is how they were able to go from swarming CC to the the three boys.
The compositor node layout, sampling settings and advanced settings used for the flashback sequences. Unsurprisingly very complex.
"Blowjobber" a character who never made the cut. I originally planned for him to appear when Anti-Chis is flapping his nutsack, rising from the ground and placing his mouth over Anti-Chris' groin. I deemed it too explicit for YouTube and scrapped him.
Count Crapula, an entirely new character designed soley for this cartoon. In the animatic, he has glasses and a cape.
The title card artwork. This was made by Gameghoul, which he adapted from a 3D render I did.
The original 3D title card.
A test of mesh to volume smoke effects as a faster alternative to mantaflow smoke. This is how I created the plume of sawdust when Smibnor smashes down the door.
Smibnor gore effects. I made a skull and a brain to pull this off, as well as a combination of cloth simulations and explosion modifiers. The mantaflow blood however was replaced by a green screen blood splatter in the final scene.
Chris and Julian both have hidden, fully 3D modeled skeletons inside them so that I can pull off certain cool bony effects if needed. You see many pieces of this skeleton when Smibnor squashed Julian with his fist.
A comparison between the two rendering styles throughout the cartoon. The rendering style on the right was taught to me by my friend Magic Mensch, but I built upon his idea very heavily.
Character turarounds of Chris, Julian, Ding Dong, and Pant.
A breakdown render of the house, the setting of the entire cartoon.
A test render of an early form of the "cancer" effects. The tumors were particle instanced spheres with data transfer modifiers. This was scrapped in favor of displacement map tumors.