Direct & Dominate

Direct & Dominate: Absolute Units is a 3D animated web series created by Benjamin Tay, a former animator at Lemon Sky Studios who has also worked on the Remastered Collection. The series is based on the setting of the original Command & Conquer, starring cartoonized and petite or rotund versions of the game's units. The story of Direct & Dominate centers around the Global Defense Initiative trying to take out Nod forces around X-16 Y-42.
Inspiration for the design of the characters in the series came from a discussion with Nyerguds regarding the scaling issues of unit sprites and how this resulted in substantially wider looking sprites compared to the way the graphics were originally displayed on CRT monitors in 1995.
Early renders of the series characters were showcased on the r/commandandconquer subreddit in early 2019, with the first episode released on May 28, 2020. The characters are voiced by various members of the C&C community.
The Absolute Units series is also based on Direct & Dominate: Munitions Dawn, a comic flash game originally published on NewgroundsDirect and Dominate by NightShadowTWO on August 24, 2012. Munitions Dawn has since been reuploaded onto the official YouTube channel as a series of interactive videos.
==Characters==
===Global Defense Initiative===
* Pathfinder (voiced by Benjamin Tay): A jubilant tasked with scouting the area around X-16 Y-42. He along with Packer find a Nod named Paycheck, but the harvester manages to escape while the two GDI vehicles get distracted in their conversation about tumbleweeds. He later pretends to defect to Zoldo Outpost in order to capture Paycheck.
* Packer (voiced by Benjamin Tay): A humorless who accompanies Pathfinder in finding the Nod harvester and base around X-16 Y-42. He packs many things, including a whole computer.
* Highlander (voiced by Steven Provence): A Scottish and team leader of the Strategic Hit And Run Division (SHARD). He orders Pathfinder and Packer to keep searching for the harvester they encountered. In Episode 4, he takes part in assaulting Nod's Icarus Outpost with Highground and Highroller.
* Warthog (voiced by Hugh Tamlin): An aircraft and flight leader who aids Highlander in taking out the guarding Icarus Outpost.
* Uncle Beige (voiced by Nikolas Lloyd): An antiquated medium tank who is a veteran of the Second World War.
* Skyeye (voiced by Matt Armstrong): An who hates being bullied by SAM sites. Unlike the Orca in Tiberian Dawn, he can waddle on the ground with his missile pods.
* Proton (voiced by AreoAnts): A brawny , appreciator of good architecture. During GDI's assault on the Viktor Heavy Industries' Tiberium research facility, Proton single-handedly eliminates the entirety of the Nod guards within and defeats a stealth tank in close combat before capturing the facility for GDI. He is a joke towards how engineers in Tiberian Dawn are somehow able to capture entire enemy structures despite the personnel stationed inside.
* Oengus (voiced by Haris Tanković): A mechman whose constant innuendo tends to make everyone around him extremely uncomfortable.
* Highground (voiced by Matt Armstrong): A Medium Tank with a sniper scope, capable of taking out enemies at long range.
* Apex (voiced by Tarkie): A who participates in the assault on the Nod Tiberium research facility.
* Spice (voiced by Kiddo): A Humvee with a chef cap, who is the resident cook. She speaks in a bizarre broken Engish, but Pathfinder seems to understand her just fine, and can communicate with her by speaking the same way. When asked to bake a cake for Paycheck, she is seen in urban camo pattern.
* Breadbo (voiced by Scorched Earth): An APC who is also a toaster, and who works together with Spice.
* General Supplies (voiced by Haris Tanković): A Medium Tank quartermaster who sounds like a drill instructor.
* Caboosen (voiced by Haris Tanković): A supply train who speaks with a German accent.
* Exodus (voiced by Haris Tanković): a .
* Amplitude: A Rocket Launcher who seems prone to firing rockets when he sneezes.
===Brotherhood of Nod===
* Paycheck (voiced by Benjamin Tay, later Steven Provence): A Nod Harvester encountered by Pathfinder and Packer. He is a simple farmer tending to his Tiberium crops in Zoldo Outpost. In Episode 3, he is tricked by Pathfinder into believing he knows where to get more Tiberium. He typically gets lost and goes the wrong way, which is a joke towards the Tiberian Dawn harvester's poor pathfinding and AI.
* Boomer (voiced by GordonWeedman): A lonely posted far outside of Viktor's base. When Pathfinder and Packer run into Boomer, the two hide and made the turret believe he is hearing voices in his head. He has some rather interesting experiences with massage oil and barrel fungus.
* Noddy Boi (voiced by Steven Provence): A guarding Viktor's base. He places Pathfinder and Packer under arrest after catching them encroaching near the Nod base. He later leads the two into the base after Pathfinder replies they were in fact "defecting".
* Hanseldorf (voiced by PlokiteWolf): A grunt initially stationed at Zoldo Outpost who handles all processing related to GDI defection and absconsion affairs.
* Chorizo (voiced by Matt Armstrong): A reckless originally stationed at Zoldo Outpost. Pathfinder meets him while he was talking to his friend Kielbasa about how he destroyed a GDI humvee. At the Tiberium research facility, he comes up with a stealthy tank tactic for the Stealth Tank Initiative (STI), in which he just hides under a dug out hole to ambush the enemy. He fails to account that a tank can simply roll over him.
* Grunt #23 & #32 (voiced by Nivan Moodley): Two grunts stationed at Zoldo Outpost. They barely realize Paycheck's absence.
* Bulldog (voiced by Hugh Tamlin): A foreign volunteer light tank who just needs a can of Hineyken to start off his day. He dons a huge pair of red aviators.
* Jack Skelly (voiced by Hugh Tamlin): A creepy minigunner with fangs. In Episode 6, he at first believes Pathfinder and Packer to be defectors, and leads them to the underground Nod archives. He then finds out the two were in fact stealing the secrets to Tiberium refinement, and chases the duo along with two light tanks.
* Nightshadow (voiced by Benjamin Tay): A sneaky and a sponsoree of NodVPN. He completes his missions in a quick and clandestine manner so that he is not late for Zumba class.
* Arty Andouille (voiced by Gnio): An unit with a French accent. He is destroyed by Highground.
* Tronk (voiced by Vladibear): A supply truck.
* The Slingshot Broders (voiced by AreoAnts): A pair of s who raids the supply train, Caboosen.
* Nomad: A gigantic unit that appears to be a mobile .
===Other characters===
* Kirovy (voiced by Vladibear_94): A who appears out of a time rift, lays waste to a Nod base, and vanishes.
* Flight Partners (voiced by Fur marzian): A pair of aliens investigating the GDI base, and being perplexed by the talking vehicles.
==Videos==
==Trivia==
* The Stealth Tank's name, "Nightshadow" is a direct reference to "NightShadow02", the old nickname under which Benjamin Tay published his C&C fan art around the community, and on DeviantArt.
* The space ship that is occasionally seen in the series, and which is seen flying away in the "False Pathfinder" short, is a reference to the strange-looking tile in Tiberian Dawn that was often mistaken for a UFO. The model for the UFO used in the series was originally made for a joke mini-mod for C&C: Remastered that turns the in-game tile into an actual crashed UFO.
==References==
==External links==
* 
* Official website
* r/directanddominate subreddit
* Direct & Dominate Discord
* Benjamin Tay's Patreon
* Direct & Dominate: Munitions Dawn on Newgrounds
* Benjamin Tay's older Command & Conquer comics on DeviantArt
Category:Fan content