Pencilmation

Pencilmation is an flash animated series created by American animator Ross Bollinger (captainmcross). The series is the adventures of Bollinger's doodles, and are usually humorous.
A handful of pre-2010 episodes were made into an official Collection. Later episodes have largely remained on YouTube, though several shorts were still published on Newgrounds. In 2017, an official Pencilmation NG page was created, uploading shorts until 2018.
==History==
Pencilmation #1 was uploaded to Newgrounds on June 4, 2004, where it won the Daily Feature award and Weekly 2nd Place award. It was well accepted, but it did receive some criticism for being "a random flash with drawings of an unnamed character". 
Originally, the short was not meant to be a pilot, and it took a while for the premise to catch on as an actual show, and Pencilmation #2 (The Pen is Mightier) was not released until October 31, 2005. However, with the release of Pencilmation #3(Mc Hammered)on May 13, 2009, Ross took on turning Pencilmation into a full-fledged series.
Hank Hanky, a character introduced in Pencilmation #6(Turtles in Time) in 2009, as well as other episodes, would later receive his own spinoff series in 2012. Originally Ross said he wanted to make a 15 minute episode of Hank being very serious and entertaining and well generated quality of animation to end the series and claims he wants it to go out "with a bang" to not be easily forgotten.﻿
As of May 2023, 726 episodes have been created, a large quantity of which were created between 2017 and 2020.
==Newer changes==
The show would undergo several changes over time. Ross handed work to different people, who would write, direct, storyboard, and animate several episodes, (for example: Joshua "Zeurel" Palmer animated several shorts), while Ross served as the producer.
The appeal of the show is now focused towards newer audiences, most notably on YouTube, and thus in order to both maximise ad revenue and YouTube algorithm exposure, past episodes are reused to extend the runtime of videos to about half an hour each. By 2017, many episodes would also prominently feature a consistent cast of characters in various roles, such as Pencilmate (blue) and Pencilmiss (pink).
Many people, including older fans, argue that these changes helped contribute to the series' decline in quality. 
==Reception==
In terms of trophy count, Pencilmation is a large success on Newgrounds. Combined with the Hank Hanky shorts and other works, Bollinger himself would win 102 awards, including 5 Weekly User's Choice awards and well over 30 Daily Features. The standalone Pencilmation account has won an additional 87 awards, including 31 Daily Features and 2 WUC's.
Despite the series' high trophy count, Pencilmation would generally get less views on Newgrounds. Only 8 episodes, mostly from pre-2010, have more than 200K views as of Feb 2024. By contrast, the Pencilmation YouTube channel would grow to 20 million subscribers and accumulate 11 billion views as of Feb 2024, making it the most viewed and most subscribed animation channel on the platform. 
==Links==
*Ross's Newgrounds (pre-2017 Pencilmations)
*Official Pencilmation Newgrounds (2017-2018 Pencilmations)
*Pencilmation on YouTube
*Facebook
===See also===
*Wikipedia article
Category:Flash series
Category:Flash cartoons
Category:Comedy Movies
Category:Everyone
Category:2004