RIKOchet

RIKOchet (born: ) is a Russian YouTuber, animator, and artist. Initially going by Hatkek, he made various animation memes and shitposts, mainly for the ENA series by Joel G, but eventually made 2 original series. In August 2023, shortly after announcing the development of his webcomic, he changed his username from Hatkek to RIKOchet on all of his active accounts. He currently has 10.2k subscribers. He also has a second channel, hatkek's junkyard, which currently has 86 subscribers and is inactive.
== The Early Days ==
Although RIKOchet created his YouTube account in 2015, it wasn't until 6 years later that he uploaded his first video. As the title suggests, the video in question, My OC Vibing To Ievan Polkka | Meme, is a rough animation depicting one of his OCs dancing to Levan Polkka.
A month later, he uploaded his first ENA animation meme, TRYPOPHOBIA | Meme | ENA (warning: flash). However, it was his following ENA animation meme that went viral within the ENA fandom. Thanks to ENA's status as a Tumblr sexywomanhttps://sexypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ena, Everybody Loves Me | Meme | ENA took the ENA fandom by storm and got over 1 million views in a few months, a huge feat for a small channel. The channel itself grew rapidly during this time, gaining thousands of subscribers despite its small quantity of content.https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/hatkek./monthly
Over the next few months, RIKOchet uploaded a few more videos and posted art to his Twitter page and YouTube community tab. Among these posts were more ENA fan-content and a few drawings and videos introducing his ENA-inspired OC, EVA.
== EVA ==
EVA made her first appearance in a community post from mid-2021. RIKOchet's fans instantly took a liking to her and it wasn't long before the first video featuring her (now unlisted) was released. Said video, simply titled EVA, ran for about 30 seconds and contained a looping gif of EVA on a blank background accompanied by a Graham Kartna song, mimicking a concept video of ENA.
Not long after, RIKOchet released a now-unlisted teaser for a full-length EVA video called Weather Report. Then, in May of 2022, he released another teaser, this one being for a pilot episode of the EVA: Chronicles series. Said pilot was released just 2 days later and was received very positively. 8 days later, RIKOchet posted a post-credits scene for the pilot that he did not have time to include in the original video.
In July of 2022, the teaser for the next episode of Chronicles, Bullet Path, was released. However, this episode was not released until April of 2023. Despite the long wait, reception was once again overwhelmingly-positive.
On the first anniversary of the Chronicles Pilot, RIKOchet announced that development of the next EVA episode has officially begun.https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkxl8wMLvzXODEZlJbJMMhIa0WzizeFzfYy A teaser for this episode was released at the end of May.
== New Series ==
Just one week after Bullet Path was released, RIKOchet released the first episode of his new series, which is currently unnamed. This series currently has 4 episodes, all of which continue the surrealism seen in EVA. (However, with much shorter run-time and lack of dialogue, this series is even more abstract than EVA.) The first 3 episodes are just over half a minute long whereas the most recent is almost 90 seconds long. The protagonist, also unnamed, was first shown in a community post in the summer of 2022, and her character design has changed profoundly since then.
== Special Forces Sharks ==
In summer of 2023, RIKOchet announced a "cyberpunk style" webcomic on Tumblr called Special Forces Sharks, or SFS for short. He also revealed the three main characters, a trio of cyborg women, and disclaimed that he was still developing the world, and thus, "the comic will not appear soon".
== Other Accounts ==
=== VK ===
Of all of his accounts, this is where RIKOchet is most active. He posts art on VK regularly, not just of the characters shown on his channel, but also his numerous OCs who are humanoid versions of various tanks and can shapeshift into said tanks.
=== Twitter ===
RIKOchet first created his Twitter account shortly after the release of his Everybody Loves Me meme. He announced its creation in a community post. He posted artwork to this account regularly until the end of February 2022, when Twitter was banned in Russia, after which he began posting all of his ENA and EVA artwork to his YouTube community tab instead of just EVA concept art as he did before.
In the summer of 2023, he left Twitter altogether, instead migrating to Tumblr, as many have done since Elon Musk's purchase and rebranding of Twitter. Thus, the name Hatkek still remains on his abandoned account.
=== Boosty ===
Up until May of 2023, RIKOchet used Boosty solely for financial transactions. However, he now posts concept art to Boosty as well, his reasoning being that he "[doesn't] like that Boosty is empty".https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtcHc0m_3XxewbCZ9cCCBXQ/community?lb=UgkxxCsSi_Zvw97fqWpUzAiX-AnMExa15ggi
=== Tumblr ===
RIKOchet created his Tumblr account in May of 2023 in hopes of decluttering his community tab.https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxQIHBCwItT8xAUVuua_4wcNnYKaZerIqlhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtcHc0m_3XxewbCZ9cCCBXQ/community?lb=Ugkx0z2_jhQzHJpkLOnaP_sjSJ2_VXVMa9yZ During the next few months, he only made a few Tumblr posts, which were also posted to Boosty. Then, in the summer of 2023, he became active on Tumblr, explaining in one of his posts that he had left Twitter entirely in favor of Tumblr and would post on Tumblr as he once had on Twitter. Shortly after, he announced his upcoming webcomic, Special Forces Sharks in another Tumblr post.
== The End ==
On Valentine's Day 2024, after several months without uploads, RIKOchet announced on Boosty that he would be abandoning his channel and starting from scratch on a new channel, where he would be trying new forms of content, albeit still related to art. With this announcement came the cancellation of the EVA series until further notice.
== Trivia ==
* EVA was first created on May 18th, 2021.https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxINBW2J76vLrwagL2T8wv5V4MXX2R_9op
* Despite having less than 10k subscribers, RIKOchet's channel has received over 2 million views, most of which came from one video.
== References ==
Category:Animation YouTubers
Category:Russian YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2015