Animator vs. Animation IV, later retitled Animator vs. Animation 4, is the fourth episode of the Animator vs. Animation Series, also being the final episode of Animator vs. Animation Season 1. The short animated film started as a Kickstarter project, first launched on July 10th, 2013. The project successfully reached its funding goal by August 9th, 2014 and was released on October 2nd on the same year.

The plot follows noogai3 as he tries to stop his newly created stick figure from destroying his computer and his social life.

Synopsis

The struggle between a stick figure and its creator, a computer animator. In this fourth installment, the animator is finally shown in real life interacting with his computer monitor. The stick figure, resisting his tormentor, attacks his social life by hacking his Facebook account, traveling onto his iPhone via USB cord, and drawing animations of his own to dismantle the animation interface.

Plot

Three years after the events of Animator vs. Animation 3, noogai3 (known as Alan Becker in real life) is at his new computer animating an orange stick figure running in Adobe Flash, with Google Chrome opened on the left side of the screen with 2 tabs, showing Facebook and a "Stick Figures Fight" website. While Alan is animating the orange stick figure, who is similar in appearance to TCO and TDL, a Facebook chat popps out, revealing Darren Schwartz questioning the events caused by those very same characters. Alan had told Darren that due to The Chosen One and The Dark Lord destroying his computer, resulting in a blue screen of death, he had no choice but to get a new computer. Now, Darren asks if Alan thinks a similar accident will happen again. Alan responded calmly, saying it had been 3 years up to that point and nothing happened. Their conversation had to cut off short as his wife calls him to come over.

Unknown to Alan, the orange stick figure slowly lowers his left leg, and then the rest of his body. He looks around, and sneaks his way behind the Facebook window. He peeks from behind and slowly attempts to go in, before hearing a creak noise from the door. The orange stick figure is startled and quickly returns back to his initial position before Alan could notice. Alan quickly opens his chat, telling Darren he has to go get the laundry and promises he'll talk to him again later.

As Alan leaves the scene, the orange stick figure comically falls to the side of the window and instantly looks around. He giggles, knowing Alan will be gone for a while. He then leaps into the bouncy, trampoline-like chat bar. He looks up ahead, noticing a tab called "Stick Figure Fight" and jumps up to open it. He clicks on it, and when he lands on the bottom of the page, he brushes off his arms and looks at his surroundings. A blue stick figure came through a door in front of the orange one and posed as though for a fight. The orange stick figure looks frightened and covers his face until he hears the sounds of fighting but feels nothing. At that point he uncovers his face and sees that a green stick figure had come from behind him. The green and blue stick figures were attacking each other. Orange sits down and watches as a yellow and red stick figure come in and they all fight for a little bit. The orange one started rocking himself back and forth while sitting down, and he quickly decides he wants in on the action. He scrolls the page to the side a bit, allowing him to gain enough momentum to break through the wall of the four stick figures' home, and upon doing so, the fighting ceases immediately.

The Fighting Stick Figures approach the orange one, who thinks they still want to fight and looks ready to do so, but the green one shakes his hand instead, much to the orange stick figure's disappointment. They look curious about what's outside, but are slightly afraid to go out, shoving each other so that they eventually all fall in a heap. The orange one came over and demonstrates for them that going out is completely safe. The Fighting Stick Figures clap and come outside too.

They all climb up the side of the window and jump into Facebook and seem to throw a party. Green opens the Facebook Stickers, and throws two of the not-so-happy stickers into the color setting in Adobe Flash which makes them happy. The orange stick figure sets the color setting to shift through a bunch of hues, and they all have fun, until Alan comes back though and sees them. Alan drops his laundry basket on the ground, and the orange stick figure realizes that Alan is here. He tries to direct the Fighting Stick Figures to run away, but it is too late. Alan has seen the stick figures' sentience, and will now end them. Alan opens up Windows Task Manager and ends Red. Now all of them are panicking and the orange stick figure tries to stop Alan. Alan pays no attention at all the the orange stick figure and ends Blue in the meantime. The orange stick figure races to Yellow but Alan ends Yellow before he can reach him. Then, the orange stick figure races over and hugs Green, but Alan ends Green too. Orange falls to the ground. He had lost his only friends less than two minutes after meeting them. Alan then ends all of the Facebook Stickers.

Alan searches for the orange stick figure's process in the Task Manager. When he finds what he believes is the correct process, the name of the process reads "TheSecondComing.exe" (TSC for short) and the task description reads "The Chosen One's Return." Alan definitely does not want The Chosen One returning, so he attempts to end TSC's process, but as TSC stands up, engulfed in rage, a message pops up, saying that TheSecondComing.exe is not responding. Alan is given three options. To wait for the program to respond, to close the program, or to check for a solution and close the program. Alan chooses to close the program. However, TSC starts visually glitching out, and another pop-up appears, this one saying that TheSecondComing.exe could not be closed because it was too resistant, and that TSC had sent a message. The message reads, "You ended my friends. Now I will end you." TSC starts glitching out more and is visually replaced by TCO for a few frames, establishing the connection between the two.

TSC walks to Alan's Facebook page and likes a comment by Marina Sydney that says: "I give up on life. I'm not even gonna try any more." Marina Sydney responded to the action that seemed to be Alan by replying with, "Wow insensitive, I might just unfriend you for that". Alan chases TSC with his cursor, but TSC escapes further down the Facebook page. Alan unlikes the comment and replies with, "that wasnt me!!!" TSC continues to comment hurtful or hateful things through Alan's account, before Alan finally caught him. The problem was, TSC escaped quickly, this time going to Alan's iPhone. Alan found TSC hiding in the Snapchat logo, before he escaped to Notes, writing, "catch me if u can... u monster" before escaping Notes and almost calling 911 and then jumping through different apps until he reached the home screen again, where he jumped into Dropbox, going back to Alan's computer.

At this point, the computer sends a message: ""TheSecondComing.exe" was added to your Dropbox folder." Alan notices this message and goes to the desktop, where TSC jumps out of the Dropbox folder, punches the mouse cursor, and opens Flash. After TSC jumps at Alan's cursor a few times, Alan makes a rectangle that TSC crashes into, giving him the opportunity to fight back. He grabs TSC by the foot and swings him around, throwing him at the toolbar. However, this was a crucial mistake, since TSC takes the lasso tool and ties the mouse cursor to the top of the window with it. Now, Alan is unable to do anything against TSC, who throws together a bunch of tools to make a small plasma gun. He shoots at the cursor a few times, never landing a hit, until he pulls on the other end of the rope than the end the cursor is on, and the cursor gets trapped in exactly one spot. Then, TSC fires the plasma gun, and Alan's cursor is gone. He tries to move his mouse, but it isn't there so nothing happens. TSC draws a stick figure, before redrawing him as a strong man. Then Alan uses his keyboard to go to mouse settings and bring his mouse cursor back, this time bigger than before.

Alan closes mouse settings and sees that TSC had not only created a strong man, but had now also created a woodpecker, an alligator, a large person, and wings for himself. Alan selected all of the drawings and had his finger over the "delete" button when something caught his attention. Alan had tried and failed at drawing strong men, birds, and horses, and what was TSC doing? He had drawn a strong man and a bird, and now he was drawing a horse. Alan thought that maybe TSC and his creations weren't so bad. That was until the big guy started punching Alan's mouse cursor. Then, he ultimately decided to delete the drawings. He took TSC, however, and put him in a box with thick edges. Then, TSC did something that completely changed his relationship with stick figures. He spoke. "STOP!!" was the word he spoke. He did it not with sound, but with text. Out loud, Alan said, "It… talks?" and Alan and TSC had a conversation. The conversation is as follows:

Alan: "you talk?"

TSC: "DON'T DELETE ME PLEASE"

Alan: "I'm not gonna delete you. You need to calm down."

TSC: "you need to die"

TSC then proceeds to uncontrollably punch the box he is trapped in, in an attempt to escape.

Alan: "Hey stick figure. You're a really good animator."

TSC stops trying to escape.

TSC: "what?"

Alan: "If you help me animate, I'll let you free, as long as you don't wreck my computer."

TSC: "no"

Alan: "Why not??"

TSC: "you ended my friends"

Alan: "Oh."

Alan puts Facebook and Flash next to each other so TSC could see as he switched into the Stick Figures Fight tab, clicked refresh, and the Fighting Stick Figures appeared playing cards, until Red sees TSC. They all wave to him, and he turns to Alan's cursor and says, "when do we start?"

Five months later, we see Alan at his computer again, except this time, we see him animating with TSC. He's animating a lot better this time. We see way better pictures around the computer as well, even one that has writing that says "taught by" followed by a picture of TSC. Once they finish the frame Alan types "good?" And TSC nods and says "next frame please". When they finish this frame of the animation, and animation of a winged horse, TSC says, "let's watch it!" The stick figure hops on the play button and the short animation plays on loop. Alan types, "high five dude." before switching to the hand tool and they both high five. Then he types "break time!" as he saves the animation. TSC switches to the Fighting Stick Figures tab. There he knocks on a newly installed door and Green let him in. everyone poses to fight, with TSC in the middle, and Green waves his hand three times before they all start fighting. Everyone comes after TSC, but he wins the match. The Fighting Stick Figures all clap for TSC, and he jumps for joy.

Characters

Protagonists

• Color Gang (debut)

  • The Second Coming (debut)

    • Red (debut)

    • Blue (debut)

    • Yellow (debut)

    • Green (debut)

Antagonists

• noogai3

Other characters

• The Chosen One (cameo)

• The Second Coming's Drawings (debut)

• Facebook Emoji Group (debut)

• The Dark Lord (indirectly mentioned)

• iTunes

• VLC Media Player (cameo)

• Snapchat (cameo)

• Darren Schwartz (debut)

• Kaori Becker (debut/only appearance; voice only)

Trivia

• Contrary to the video, Alan used a Wacom Graphire 4 to animate the video, instead of the Wacom Intuos 4, which at time of recording, was his sister's.

  • Her drawing tablet was handed over to Alan years after, before making the switch to the Huion KAMVAS GT-221 Pro.

• Unlike the previous installments, The Second Coming and the Fighting Stick Figures remained as the primary cast for Animator vs. Animation Season 2 and its spin-off series going forward.

• This is the first installment in the Animator vs. Animation series not to depict Windows XP as ALANSPC's operating system.

  • Additionally, this is also the first installment to depict Alan's new computer after the events of Animator vs. Animation 3.

• Curiously, when his friends are deleted, The Second Coming begins glitching in rage and for a few instances, The Chosen One is seen in his place with his signature fireballs, befitting of The Second Coming being the spiritual successor of The Chosen One, despite him having secretly survived along with The Dark Lord.

• This is the third installment to show Alan using Adobe Flash as a plot device.

  • Additionally, this is also the first installment to show him using Google Chrome and an Apple device, both of which are related to plot.

• sticksfight.com was a real functioning website by Alan Becker which serves as an Easter egg, similar to StickSlavery.com. It showed an animated fight scene, and is not a real fighting game.

  • As Adobe's Flash support came to an end after December 31st, 2020 and blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player by January 12th, 2021, the website's animation is now unable to play, as the page requires Flash Player version 23.0.0 or higher to load properly. This applies to all Flash-required websites and games.

• As of February 2023, it is currently the fifth most viewed video in Alan Becker's YouTube channel after Cave Spider Roller Coaster, Animation vs. Minecraft, Animation vs. Minecraft Shorts Season 1, and Note Blocks.

  • It is the only one that is not related to Minecraft in any way.

• It is the last DeviantArt post that Alan Becker published.

• There is a Toy Story reference. When Alan comes back into his room, The Second Coming rushes back into his position just like the toys in Toy Story.

• This is the second Animator vs. Animation episode where the stick figure created does not battle any programs on ALANSPC, as they were all inanimate. The first was the original Animator vs. Animation, where victim is never depicted escaping the Flash window.

• This is the first piece of Animator vs. Animation media to have a Kickstarter, followed by Animation VERSUS.

Errors

• When Green runs to Blue, his body is not hidden by the house's border.

  • This error is fixed in the full Season 1 release and the sticksfight.com website.

  • This similar thing happened in Ragdoll - An Actual Short.

Original episode - Character errors: Green's body isn't cut off when he runs to Blue.

• The first date shown on Alan's computer is "10/2/14", but after the time skip which is supposedly five months later, the date shown is "11/11/2013".

  • This error is fixed in the full Season 1 release, with the new date being "3/2/15".

• When Alan pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL, it opens the Task Manager. While this is true in Windows XP, in Windows 7 pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL instead opens Windows Security Options.

References

1. ↑ Animator vs. Animation IV - Kickstarter Video!! (Youtube. July 10th, 2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwofhyizvnA

2. ↑ Animator vs. Animation IV (original) (YouTube. October 2nd, 2014). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VufDd-QL1c0

3. ↑ Adobe Flash Player End Of Life (Adobe. January 13th, 2021). https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html

4. ↑ Alan Becker (YouTube. Archived on February 12th, 2023 from the original).