Web Animation / Our Drawings

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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 amateur animator 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 bragging his work was on par with Disney or DreamWorks Animation while slandering The Amazing Digital Circus. Elsewhere, various scenes of the film were subject to Memetic Mutation.

You can watch the film on YouTube here.

Trope-listing puppy!

• 90% of Your Brain: Subverted, sort of. Paige claims that we don't only use 10% of our brains, but that we only understand 10% of it, which is only slightly more true.
• Aborted Arc:
  • Calobi is captured by Mist, but later 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. The closest to an acknowledgement of this is when it’s mentioned that Paige and her classmates are slowly becoming drawings by staying in the Drawing World for too long, and even that is put aside.
  • Speaking of said magic pencil, it never shows up being wielded by Paige nor do the villains try to steal it. The closest the film gets to exploring this is when the Announcer mentions about Paige and Pillow trying to get the pencil first, and even then they never do get said pencil at all.
  • The romantic teases between Paige and Hunter and Ally and Mickey are seemingly unresolved.
  • 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: The world this film takes place in believes art degrees won't get you a good job. 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, but only appears in the film for about 10 minutes.
• All-CGI Cartoon: Animated as such, yet 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?
• And You Were There: The Beatboxing Puppy shows up at the beginning of the film in Paige's narration, seemingly as her pet. However, as Paige is still in a wheelchair, this is most likely before she began bringing her drawings to life, implying she based the Beatboxing Puppy off said pet.
• 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. Though it’s downplayed in the Wizard’s case, as his attempts don’t work due to his horrid drawing skills, but only does so when he traces. It’s implied that Paige’s human friends are also capable of doing this, but we never actually see them put it in action.
• Art Shift: When Mickey is told about Pillow’s villainous schemes to steal Paige’s art, the scene suddenly shifts to 2D animation.
• Astronomic Zoom: The opening shot of the film is a rather pretty zoom in through space towards the Earth. Strangely, the Earth is surrounded by clouds and art bubbles, with The Announcer orbiting as well.
• 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.
• Badass Teacher: Mist is an elderly art teacher who figured out how to enter Paige's drawing world, and in the process gained both powerful magic and great combat ability.
• Batman Cold Open: The narrator shows Paige's battle with The Wizard as one of her previous adventures.
• Black Sheep: Paige claims to be hated by her family, most likely for being an artist, as opposed to her more successful sister Pillow.
• Calling Your Attacks: “Beatboxing puppy!” and “Wrist Waters on my neck!” from the heroes, and “Art Style!” from the villain Mist.
• Career-Ending Injury: In one flashback, the narrator claims Paige sought a career in sports as a child that ended with her leg injury. While recovering, she discovered art, which became her new passion.
• Creator Cross-References: “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.
• Dimensional Traveler: Mist ultimately leaves to other worlds to test students from across the universe.
• Disproportionate Retribution: It’s implied the main cast of humans were all but disowned by their parents because they all like drawing and seek art degrees. This treatment of artists is so bad it drives Mist to try to destroy the world.
• Domain Holder: Paige's drawing world, as it all stems from her ideas and art, is said to be under her domain.
• Energy Absorption: During his rampage through the art world, Mist absorbed the energy of multiple drawings, killing them in the process.
• 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.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Both Pillow and the Wizard have rather brutal demises, with the former being beaten to death by a monster Paige drew, and the latter being stepped on and stabbed by Mist off-screen.
• Flat Character: The good guys all like talking about how great it is to be good people. The bad guys all love boasting about being bad. There are some exceptions, such as Mickey drinking beer and having a short temper, Puzzle being a rather idiotic Cloudcuckoolander, and Mist’s goal to get powerful in order to make a society that treats artists like gods.
• Flying Seafood Special: A recurring bit of footage shows Paige flying on an orca through mountains and a cyberpunk city. In the final battle, Mist gains his own whale.
• 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.
• Foreshadowing: At the very beginning of the movie, Paige's art teacher is seen sleeping on the ground in the school hallways. The other students assume he's exhausted from working, but as we see later, entering the drawing world requires laying down and sleeping. Naturally, he turns out to be Mist, the only other human in the drawing world besides Paige's friends.
• Glacial Apocalypse: Among Mist's many evil influences on the drawing world, Calobi explains that his mere presence is causing the planet to freeze over, which will extend to Earth.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: With Paige as the Smart and Pillow as the Beautiful. Pillow desires to be an artist, but refuses to listen or appreciate her sister's training and technique.
• 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.
• Good-Times Montage: One montage on Paige and her friends' journey seems to be meant as one of these, although all it shows is Mickey and Hunter playing rock-paper-scissors and Paige laughing.
• 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.
• Head Crushing: In one of their previous battles, The Wizard attempted to kill the Beatboxing Puppy by placing his boot on the dog's head and crushing it.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Calobi and The First Drawing acknowledge that they have no idea what Mist's intentions are, or even who he is.
• 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.
  • 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.
• In Their Own Image: Mist intends to erase the planet and make a new one that respects artists, and gives up his humanity in the process.
• It's All About Me: Mist has a rather massive ego and only cares about himself despite his view on wanting artists to be treated like gods.
• Karmic Transformation: For stealing her sister's art out of greed, Pillow ended up turning herself into a fictional drawing.
• Killed Off for Real: Pillow, the Announcer, the First Drawing, and the Wizard are the only characters to die in the film, the last three character’s fates courtesy of Mist. It’s implied that this also happened to Mist presumably via Redemption Equals Death.
• Magical Incantation: Before Calobi makes the selection between a lifetime of Money and an orb of water, he is instructed to recite the phrase "Wrist Waters On My Neck" ten times. When Calobi gets his Super Mode, he recites the line shortly before performing a devastating shockwave attack.
• Make a Wish: Paige gains her powers upon the magical fulfillment of her wish, although what that wish is is never specified.
• Malicious Misnaming: Mist repeatedly calls Paige and her friends 'students', to remind them of his strength and remind them how they're below him in the real world too, as students in his classroom.
• Master of All: Paige is allegedly masterful at every type of art, including backgrounds, character designs, painting, and animation. Noticeably, every one of the skills she claims to have 'mastered' correspond to a skill her friends possess as well.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Interestingly, although we know Paige got her powers from a wish, the exact details of this wish are never specified. We get a number of potential candidates from her narration:
  • To heal her legs, which were paralyzed in an accident.
  • For a supernatural pencil which can let her bring her drawings to life.
  • The ability to go inside her own drawings.
  • To use 100% of her brain.
• No Name Given: The mute blue monster that helps Paige defeat Pillow. 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 the Back to the Drawing Board musical number.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: As a child, Paige had a British accent. She claims to have lost it when she grew up and moved countries, but where she was born is unclear.
• Obviously Evil: Pillow, The Wizard, and Mist. Their mannerisms and their appearances (mostly in the case of Mist) make it clear they aren’t protagonists.
• Outside-Context Problem: Part of the reason Mist is so dangerous is that he's a real person who's entered the art world, like Paige and her friends (As opposed to Pillow, who lost her humanity when she entered said world), but is a far more skilled adult instead of a teenager.
• Posthumous Character: Pillow is implied to be dead in the present, defeated by Paige and her creations, but flashbacks repeatedly highlight how her treatment of Paige affected her.
• "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 Affliction: Calobi claims that before Paige's career-ending injury, she was a much more prideful person who bragged frequently to others. Said injury and her time confined to a chair made her a more quiet and humble person.
• Redemption Equals Death: Potentially Mist. See Ambiguous Situation.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: In the film’s climax, the more comedic characters such as the Wizard, Announcer, and Puzzle get killed off or begin taking the situation much more seriously once Mist confronts the protagonists.
• 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.
  • Two to VerbalAse during the Back to the Drawing Board musical number, one referencing Verbal's "Beatboxer from Outer Space" moniker and the other to the Darkseid vs. Thanos beatbox battle, specifically Thanos' "let me show you how to scratch it" lyric.
• Swallowed Whole: Mist is finally defeated by Paige's orca swallowing him whole. Although he uses an art technique to reverse time and escape it, he gives up willingly immediately after.
• 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.
• Thank the Maker: Calobi and the rest of the drawings (Those who used to be human and Wizard aside) see Paige as their princess.
• 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.
• Villain Respect: Mist concludes the final battle by willingly laying down his sword, admitting to Paige that she is his best student and has impressed him with her strength.
• We Can Rule Together: A part of Mist seems to respect Paige's skill, as in the finale he offers her a chance to join him, putting their drawing together and creating a world where both of them will be kings.
• Wham Line:
  • “The reason I did this was to show the outside world your drawings. I’m a secret intern for a powerful corporation that collects data utilizing artificial intelligence.”
  • “I’ve had a bone to pick with you for a long time. Ever since you were drawn into this universe by Paige Foster herself, I always questioned why she drew such a despicable person.”
• 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.