Our Drawings - TV Tropes
- ️Sun May 12 2024
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.
You can watch the film on YouTube here.
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 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Calling Your Attacks: “Beatboxing puppy!” and “Wrist Waters on my neck!” from the heroes, and “Art Style!” from the villain Mist.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- It's All About Me: Mist.
- 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.
- 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.
- Obviously Evil: Pillow, The Wizard, and Mist.
- 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.
- 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.
- “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.
- 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. Ironically, Calobi himself has faced backlash from the art community for allegations of tracing and art theft. 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.
- 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.
- 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?