Antoons

Anton Severtnik (born: ), better known online as Antoons, is an Estonian YouTuber known for his series Deathbed and YouTube Animations. He also creates history videos based on animation. who had lived in the United Kingdom for many years.
==Content==
Antoons covers animations and the history of animation from several countries. He was mainly known for his "Character Deathbed" series of animations. He is also a children's book illustratorhttps://antoonscape.com/2017/06/08/the-new-book-i-illustrated-is-out-now/https://antoonscape.com/2016/01/23/my-illustrations-in-explorations-of-commander-josh-in-tahiti/.
===Deathbed===
The Deathbed series are a series of animated parodies featuring various popular cartoon characters on their theoretical last day. The firsthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTBS_aTLEbE&ab_channel=Antoons deathbed video, "Sonic's Deathbed (Feat. Mario)" was uploaded on January 18th, 2017 and has since accumulated over 60+ million views.
Servetnik was inspired to make the short "after feeling heartbroken about the games that came out about him at the time." It gave him the most attention he had ever received for any of his videos. This motivated him to create sequels and spinoffs that were variants of the initial video. He claims he kept making parodies in this fashion because he was inspired by a webcomic strip called "Loss" by Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Deathbed videos are made to symbolize the state of the selected cartoon character's franchise. A character dying means that their franchise is supposedly, in Antoon's opinion, being milked for cash by its owners by creating poorly-made and soulless media that hurts said character's reputation in the eyes of the public. This, for one reason or another, manifests physically in the character as a fatal illness.
===YouTube Animations===
Antoons' series, YouTube Animations, is about YouTube animators getting together at the YouTube animation awards and competing over who will win the title of Best YouTube animatorhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKv2wDdkvAU&ab_channel=Antoons. 
===History videos===
Anton takes a closer look at the origins of animations from countries. He has also made videos about the history of animation typeshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYHKlsi02dk&ab_channel=Antoons. 
==Childhood==
When Anton was three years old, his father "kidnapped"https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/25/my-earliest-drawings/ him from Estonia by stowing him away to West Ukraine without telling anyone. During that time, they moved from place to place until settling in a village called Sadky, where his dad married a new woman.
Sometime in between, little Anton spilled very hot soup on himself, giving him a moderately sized burn scar on his right shoulder that he still bears to this day. Two years after the alleged kidnapping, his mother found his whereabouts with the help of the police. Immediately rushing him into her car, he was unable to take anything with him, including his childhood artwork from the time. His mother forbid him from seeing his father, and he was unable to see him for eighteen years.
Servetnik started drawing when he was around 2-3 years old. He studied and copied by hand characters from popular franchises such as Disney, Hanna Barbara, Warner Bros., and Moominvalley.https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/26/exploration-26/ This hobby continued vigorously until his early teens when a growing addiction to video games consumed more and more of his time.
In the fifth grade he became obsessed with the Pokemon and Digimon franchises, collecting their cards, watching their TV series', playing their games, and collecting their merchandise. Completely fixated on these, he lost interest in all other cartoons for the time being.https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/27/exploration-90/
===Adolescence===
Middle school proved to be an extremely hectic time in Servetnik's life. His grades were constantly getting worse and worse, eliciting a fear that he would be sent to a special-ed class. His classmates had lost interest in cartoons and therefore he had nobody to share his passion with, hence why what little free time he had was gradually consumed entirely by video games, stopping all drawing in its tracks. For him, they were a quick and easy escape from reality of which he badly needed, as suicidal thoughts commonly plagued his mind from the age of thirteen. "Middle school life and events at home" warped him into a lonely, temperamental cynic.https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/27/exploration-91/
As he entered high school, his creativity was at its lowest point in his life. Anton had no friends for three years straight, rendering him stiff, anxious, and very awkward. Free time in these years consisted entirely of gaming, as it was his only refuge from "all the disgust and ugliness" he dealt with at school. He dubs this period "the true Dark Age" of his lifehttps://antoonscape.com/2015/07/30/exploration-93/https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/30/exploration-94/. 
Servetnik started animating at around age 16-17 when he took a high school course in animation. As the last year of high school was coming to a close, he saw a glimmer of hope, leading him back into drawing. This is also when he created his flagship cartoon character, Mr. Sneaks when he got bored in English class and subsequently doodled him up.
Anton has also been to university in Germany, and temporarily resided in the UK for his children's book illustration career.
He has a sister, Julia, and she also inspired him to become an artist, as she would encourage him, and a lot of his drawings were of her. However, he also mentions that she was emotionally abusive to him, and would threaten suicide to guilt trip him at times.
==Criticisms and controversies==
===Tracing===
In early fall of 2020, Anton was heavily criticizedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQJD5ux7oQs&ab_channel=DaftPina by DaftPina for tracing others' cartoon artwork without permission from the original artists (as opposed to copying the selected cartoon by hand) in his animated parodies. His detractors reasoned that tracing is immoral because it is lazy, theft, and leads to art degradation. Servetnik responded by stating that he believes tracing is a common practice for creating cartoon parodies on YouTube, as well as useful for capturing the essence of the source material.
He also argued that his traced work is transformative and does not degrade his creative skill due to the fact that, only one or a few frames of an animation are traced, and the rest of said animation is original. Antoons would respond to ithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsNT6mukE8E&ab_channel=Antoons. During the drama, Antoons reported two vidoes about him, which only fueled the controversy even more. However he had only flagged down two videos, one by Prison Mate Luke and one by IzzzyZZZ the reason for this was due to the latter constantly violating their agreement which finally lead him to take action and strike her first video on him down. Partially for breaching their truce and due to her using 15 seconds of footage of Spongebob's Deathbed from his Deathbed series.
And the former, where Antoons commented and found that he already started spreading misinformation about him such as drawing CP when he drew and animated PuppyChan's OC's period attack for his game, Pill Fighter and incorrectly stating that he was born and currently lives in Ukraine. Antoons suggests and warns Luke to either correct his mistake and make a new video or he will take action and take his video down for defamation. After some time, Luke has not responded (claiming that Antoons doesn't deserve a response from him), having failed to take down or make a follow up video, Antoons kept good on his word and reported his video for defamation.
In his follow up video "Antoons Drama Part 2", Antoons soon admitted that striking down their videos wasn't the best idea and that he simply could've ignored it considering he had never been in these type of situations before and waited until it simply died down.
=== Political cartoons ===
Due to the more wild nature of his political cartoon illustrations and comic strips, Servetnik has faced scrutiny since he started making them on June 8, 2020. His political artwork debuted with an illustration of his white-colored character dubbed "Mr. Freaks" scamming donors for money by "painting himself in petrol oil to pretend to be a Black Lives Matter Member."
It was made to poke fun at how, in Anton's opinion, "people are all too willing to jump on a bandwagon and help out without knowing all the details." The tweet garnered way more attention than he expected, encouraging him to make more illustrations with controversial and provocative themes. He denies any instances of transphobia, homophobia, racism, or any other form of legitimate discrimination appearing in his works, claiming that the views he expresses in his comics and online are separate from those he holds to be true in his personal life.
This claim was brought up again when Anton, in a podcast with Censored Anon, said that blackface wasn't racist and in fact, part of European culture.
=== Feud with Puppychan ===
Antoons found himself in a public online argument on Twitter with then-17-year-old user back known as @pawpawchan48 or Puppychan and is now known as @pupkittyfan1 or Pupzilla. It started on September 12, 2020, when they quote-retweeted his reply to another Twitter user asking him "why am I weird", in which he responded,"1) you are trans 2) you are autistic 3) you go by made-up pronouns/non-binary 4) you can't spell and talk like a 5 year old."In defense of this Twitter user, Pupzilla made the quote-retweet that went:"trans and autistic ppl actually exist, non binary and using other pronouns exist as well, and for the spelling thing, some autistic ppl have typing quirks since its easier for them to communicate.
please educate yourself before spreading hate thank you--puppychan"Anton then posted a screenshot of their quote-retweet alongside a webcomic they made, which depicts a transgender female maned wolf named Tammy revealing her new appearance to her grandfather, with the caption stating, "This artist is educating me while living in a fantasy world."Subsequently, Pupzilla made another quote-retweet, this time disparaging the views he portrays in his own comics. They replied to this tweet noting that the reason their response had overtones of anger was due to the fact that they were on their period. This perplexed Antoons, because he had assumed that they were assigned male at birth due to the fact that Tammy, the main character of her webcomic, was also assigned male at birth. So, thinking they were lying about being on their period, he asked, "but @pawpawchan48, were you not born biologically male? 🤔" This, in turn, ignited an inflammatory response from Pupzilla's followers. They spammed, threatened, and mocked Anton for weeks on end. Shortly after, many YouTube videos were created on the matter by the YouTube Commentary Community, all criticizing Servetnik heavily for questioning the sex of a minor as well as expressing discriminatory views.
On September 26, Antoons released a trailer for his upcoming 2D fighter game, Pillfighter. It featured Pupzilla's original cartoon dog character that they used as an avatar to represent themselves online battling with Anton's most well-known character, Mr. Freaks. This also sparked a wave of outrage by the same previous crowd because in the animated duel, he depicted their avatar lifting up their dress, exposing themselves, and using their period blood as a projectile weapon. This was done without Pupzilla's knowledge or permission and when they found what he had made, they reported that they felt "horrible and humiliated". Shortly after, they contacted Anton, asking him to delete the video and take responsibility for the harassment their followers caused him.
The harassment caused Pupzilla to claim she attempted suicide. Antoons claimed that puppychan was doing it for attention. He also tried to justify his actions due to the fact that Pupzilla themselves was accused of grooming.
===Sending porn to a minor===
Just Stop made a video talking about Antoonshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK5g3PT2QTo&ab_channel=JustStop. He reacted by sending and drawing him getting spankedhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpnjCw9WMAEL02B?format=jpg&name=mediumhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpnjGxWXcAAPOvX?format=jpg&name=medium. He has also drawn HarleyTBS getting spankedhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyE6OMqWUAE2Mto?format=png&name=small, but denies that it is child porn on the basis that 1) it is fictional 2) spanking is not inherently erotic, and it is more of a punishment thing. 
Antoons would debunk this as his true intentions was to show that the countless hate art that he would receive from his detractors from artists such as SqrlyJack are to really prove a point on how many of the hate/fan art made by his detractors are not to be taken seriously. Just Stop tried to justify this however, by stating that he technically never asked for it and while what he did was not directly creepy nor predatory, showing an explicit image to him knowing he was 16 at the time was highly illegal and reported his Discord server as a result as this violated Discord community guidelines.
In the year of 2022, Antoons would soon release a follow up video from his first drama, "Antoons Drama Part 2" where he would expose the blatant hypocrisy of Just Stop's statements, one of the example is when in the beginning of 2020 one of his former associates Pkrussl would deliberately flash his followers whom majority were minors, including Just Stop who was still 15 at the time and how his actions also violated the community guidelines on Twitter as the same applied on Discord and has called him out for not taking action of reporting it to the point he could've had his account suspended or at the very least, have the photo be removed knowing well that he and other minors were in Parker's presence. 
As well as browsing through his first Twitter account which contains a series of unfiltered explicit imagery done by both his fans and haters to collect screenshots while trying to gather evidence during Anton's drama with PuppyChan and later Izzyzzz and Prison Mate Luke, along with pointing out Just Stop's sudden knowledge on shows such as "Interspecies Reviewers" and "Prison School" both anime that contain a lot of sexual content in parts stated from his video "How Funimation Became the Most Hated Dub Studio."
===Butch Hartman commission===
On April 1, 2021, Anton commissioned a $200 drawing from Butch Hartmanhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ex0JzD_XEAYEXBC.jpg. It was a drawing of his character, Mr. Freaks, setting the transgender pride flag on fire. However, savvy Twitter users noticed that the flag's colors were drawn in - meaning that Antoons had just commissioned an image with a blank flag and colored it in himself. More analysishttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ex1IYtXXIAEqLwn.jpg revealed that it was indeed Anton's own drawing, and this was corroborated by him posting the original drawing on his YouTube community tabhttps://yt3.ggpht.com/p7A0hFEYFSDRswI4kTGFaGM-5fn5wBEUyzNldj3yRhT4iJ4RubWNQiZ0tOuibW8JdbfqZ5GbrhWJQA=s1600-nd. Anton was immediately criticized because while Butch himself was known for shady practices in the past, Anton doing this was still defaming Butch's image. On Twitter, people such as LS Mark, Saltydkdan, and Saberspark saw this. People such as spete called Anton out on videos.
LS Mark however, suspected the commission to be fake either it being traced or edited by Anton. This would later be confirmed to be true as Anton would release a clip showing the real illustration as it actually featured one of his characters holding up a burning white flag as it was soon revealed to be intended to be nothing more than a April Fool's joke during between the end of March and the beginning of April.
===Response===
In 2021, Anton responded to all the backlash with a video called Antoons Drama Remastered, where he goes over the drama with the commentary community, featuring people who have made videos on him, such as Just Stop, DaftPina, HarleyTBS, JUST A ROBOT, and izzzyzzz. The video was met with mixed reception.  
===HarleyTBS===
Anton was seen talking with HarleyTBS early April 2022, arguing with them regarding the morality and legality of drawn cp seemingly in favor of drawing it as well as HarleyTBS' own grooming.  Anton in his opinion claiming that Harley was not groomed. Harley released a video about their conversations and in response Anton is adding HarleyTBS and his groomer to his game 'Pill Fighter."  Antoons further stating HarleyTBS could one day date his groomer. Anton later revealed to JustARobot that he had recorded his call and text chats with HarleyTBS. JustARobot is seen in the screenshots worrying for Antons and his credibility. It was revealed through this Anton returned to Twitter despite being banned from the site years prior.      
==Subscriber milestones==
*1 million subscribers: February 7, 2021
==Trivia==
*He has an older sister.
*His height is 6'3" (190.5 cm).
*He used to be an art teacher. Its rumored that they fired him after they found out what he was doing, though Servetnik has clarified on Tumblr that he was never fired
*He is 25% ethnically Jewish.https://ant0on.tumblr.com/post/645190775910580224/embed
*His favorite Pokemon is Roserade.
*He has a cat named Trisha.
*He can speak English, Estonian, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Japanese, and French.
*His old Twitter handles were ant0on1000 and AntsonsBigBoi, which have since then been suspended.
*Anton found out about the controversy of CreepShow Art, and joking asking his community if they remember her calling him a transphobe and a backstabberhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx1_56IStnQIq8wf4CDhN3g/community?lb=Ugx58DpJjaQG1o6p4pN4AaABCQ
*Anton replied to a fan that his favorite developer is now Scott Cawthon. He said this after found out about that recent controversy that he supported Donald Trumphttps://ant0on.tumblr.com/post/654220559321841664/so-scott-cawthon-five-nights-at-freddys-creator
*He stated on Tumblr that he hates everyone equally after someone asked if he had any issues with any minority.https://ant0on.tumblr.com/post/653587213128482816/do-you-actually-have-any-issues-with-minorities
*He does not like Quinn Curiohttps://ant0on.tumblr.com/post/653587276317835264/thoughts-on-quinn-curio
==Gallery==
==References==
Category:Educational YouTubers
Category:Animation YouTubers
Category:Art YouTubers
Category:Book-narrating YouTubers
Category:Estonian YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2014
Category:One million subscribers