June 4, 2004 – present
Pencilmation is an American animated comedy web series on YouTube created by Ross Bollinger. The series follows the endless struggle between creator and creation as pencil-drawn stick figures and doodles come to life and grapple against the torment of their animator's pencil and his arsenal of other drawing implements. The cartoon can be recognized by its trademark ruled paper backdrop, traditional frame-by-frame animation technique, inclusion of pencils and other drawing material, energetic music, classic cartoonish sound effects, simplistic character designs, and a mix of slapstick, situational comedy, meta, and doodle-based humor.
As of December 2021, Pencilmation is the 260th most subscribed channel, the 225th most viewed channel, the 104th most subscribed channel from the US, the 15th most subscribed channel in the Film category, and the largest (most subscribed and most viewed) 2D Animation-focused original creator channel on all of YouTube.
History
At age 16, after being inspired from watching the Daffy Duck cartoon Duck Amuck, Bollinger created the first Pencilmation cartoon in Macromedia Flash and uploaded it to Newgrounds.com. Bollinger worked alone and was responsible for every aspect of creating the cartoon, including writing, drawing, animating, sound designing, composing, and voice acting, a trend that would more or less continue for the first few dozen Pencilmation episodes.
2004–2008: Beginnings
On June 4, 2004, Bollinger uploaded the very first Pencilmation cartoon onto Newgrounds. It was received with high praise and would end up being awarded a Daily Feature from the site. One year later, on October 31, 2005, Bollinger would upload the second installment, Pencilmation #2. This too was well received and ended up winning a Frontpaged award along with other accolades. Between 2004 and 2006, Bollinger would upload onto Newgrounds these first two episodes of Pencilmation, two installments of the short-lived sister series Infinity Snail which takes place in the same Pencilmation universe, two installments of the short-lived dialogue-based Generic Brand Cartoons, and a one-off titled A Sad Swim. His work was introduced to a nationwide audience when it was used on The CW series Online Nation.
2009–2011: Early YouTube era
After a 3-year hiatus, Bollinger returned to his Pencilmation series, uploading all previous episodes onto his new YouTube channel and producing a total of ten new episodes during 2009. In April 2010, Pencilmation #10, Hook, Line and Stinker, won 1st Place in Animation at the 31st College Television Awards hosted by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation.
2011–2012: Hank Hanky period
After the release of Pencilmation #19, Bollinger branched out to other projects. A four-part sister series titled Mythtory of the World was created. Also during this time, Hank Hanky, a figure who had been featured in a number of Pencilmation episodes and came to overshadow the original Pencilmation lead figure, was highly emphasized. The recognizable style of pencils drawing dialogue-absent doodles coming to life on a ruled paper background was dropped in favor of more traditional methods and having Hank speak. A few segments dubbed "The Hank Hanky Show" were produced, where viewers (mostly children) called a toll-free number to leave voice messages for Hank to answer. During this time, Bollinger drastically changed the layout of his official Pencilmation site and that of the Pencilmation Facebook page, pretending he was Hank taking over the program.
2012–2014: Return to form
At the start of Pencilmation's Season 2 in mid-2012, Pencilmation #20 was produced. Following these new episodes, Hank Hanky and all non-Pencilmation material was soon phased out, with few exceptions down the road.
2014–2017: Early collaborative period
For the first 36 episodes of Pencilmation, barring music and occasional animation assistance, Bollinger did all of the work solely by himself. From Pencilmation #37 onward, a trend began that saw Bollinger delegating more and more responsibilities to other creatives, whether it be with the writing, animation, sound designing, composing, or voice acting. Bollinger would stay on as director and executive producer, and then eventually just executive producer and occasional writer.
2017–2018: Early production team period
By this period, Pencilmation had become a well-oiled machine, each intricate process handled by several hands, the animation style becoming much more extravagant and sophisticated. Several new episodes were being produced every week, a process that once took Bollinger several weeks per episode by himself. A regular cast of recurring characters had been established.
2018–present: Rise in popularity
In 2019, Pencilmation was featured in YouTube's annual YouTube Rewind, being acknowledged as the third most viewed creator channel of the year with 2.8 billion views. Between 2018 and 2020, Pencilmation's subscriber count exploded from a little more than 1 million to over 18 million, the channel views count from tens of millions to over 9 billion. This was largely in part due to YouTube's internal algorithm promoting videos on its YouTube Kids platform, as well as considerable exposure from being included as a part of the 2019 YouTube Rewind video recap. By the end of 2020, Bollinger and company had produced the 500th episode of Pencilmation.
Today, Pencilmation is still helmed by Bollinger and employs a global, remote team of hundreds of artists, writers, and production staff.