Christmas Special

"The Quest to Save Santa (Christmas Special) (4K)", colloquially referred to as "Christmas Special", is one of Mac Guy3135's Side Quests in The Adventure Series. It is the sole festive Adventure Video and the sole fully animated production. It came into existence following the delay of the Halloween Special, which remains unreleased to this day. While the adventure lacks a specific timeline date, its placement within the narrative aligns with events that transpired following "The Adventure to Destroy the Lion's Heart Stone", as it uses the Second PC Guy Castle, built after this adventure. The quest was uploaded to YouTube on Christmas Day itself.

## Plot

The quest begins on Christmas Eve within the Second PC Guy Castle. The Santa from MAC C descends through the chimney, surrounding PC Guy3531's Christmas tree with numerous gifts. Afterward, the Santa exits the room, making way for PC Guy3531 and his family to enter. The family initially becomes embroiled in an argument, which is swiftly quelled by PC Guy's Wife to allow for the opening of presents. The Christmas celebrations commences with PC Guy3531 receiving a Christmas PC as his gift. Following suit, PC Guy's Daughter unwraps a set of PC Guy Hard Drive weights to help with her muscle training. Subsequently, PC Guy's Baby unwraps a PC Guy 700 GPU, superior to PC Guy's Daughter's PC Guy 600 GPU. PC Guy's Wife unveils a PC Guy Pink PC, while PC Guy's Son discovers a set of defective RAM sticks within his gift.

The narrative shifts to the castle's rooftops, where the MAC C Santa gets trapped in a lowering net, leading to his capture and removal. The storyline transitions to Christmas C, the planet where Mac Guy3135 and the Christmas Creatures are celebrating Christmas. Their festivities come to an abrupt halt upon receiving word of the MAC C Santa's abduction. Mac Guy3135 recognises the urgency of rescuing the Santa, as the delivery of much needed presents to his fellow Mac Guys in the Mac Guy Forest is at stake.

Journeying to the Christmas Cottage on Christmas C, they seek advice from a mystical snowman who possesses knowledge of the whereabouts of Santas across different planets. After consulting his records, the snowman discloses that the Santa of MAC C has fallen victim to a kidnapping orchestrated by Scrooge PC Guy. Access to Scrooge PC Guy's underground lair is available through a straightforward route, located approximately 512 meters from the gap in the Border Fence, concealed by a distinctive rock with two prominent bumps. With gratitude, Mac Guy3135 leaves the mystical snowman and travels through a portal to MAC C.

Once they reach the lair, a plan takes shape. The reindeer Christmas Creature enters and blocks the air vent, disrupting Scrooge PC Guy's access to fresh air, causing him to lose consciousness. In this moment, the protagonists retrieve the key and use it to unlock the cage containing the MAC C Santa. A hasty escape ensues as they rush back to Christmas C. Their journey concludes at the home of the MAC C Santa, who extends his gratitude by presenting Mac Guy3135 with a new MacBook, thereby finishing the adventure successfully.

## Cast

* **Santa of MAC C**: The Father Christmas figure responsible for spreading joy on the planet MAC C.
* **Mac Guy3135**: The resourceful secondary protagonist of The Adventure Series, who embarks on a quest to rescue Santa.
* **PC Guy3531**: The primary antagonist of The Adventure Series, who opens presents in the adventure.
* **PC Guy's Wife**: The large wife of PC Guy3531.
* **PC Guy's Son**: PC Guy3531's slender and sometimes unpopular son.
* **PC Guy's Daughter**: A remarkably muscular female PC Guy capable of lifting 400kg.
* **PC Guy's Baby**: PC Guy3531's chaotic and youngest son.
* **Christmas Creatures**: A group of festive characters, including Santa, a Snowman, and a Reindeer toy, resembling The Creatures seen in other adventures.
* **Mystical Snowman**: A snowman with an extensive record of every planet's Santa, providing valuable information to Mac Guy3135 and the Christmas Creatures.
* **Scrooge PC Guy**: Although unseen, this mysterious character serves as the primary antagonist of the quest, responsible for Santa's kidnapping.

## Production

"Christmas Special" stands out in The Adventure Series Universe as a unique adventure due to its full animation. Mac Guy3135 digitally drew every element of this adventure using Keynote, from the backgrounds to the characters and props. This marked a departure from the series' traditional approach, where real life photographs are usually utilised.

The adventure is distinct due to its 4K resolution. Unlike previous adventures that faced limitations due to the low-resolution camera of Mac Guy3135's iPod Touch 6G, this adventure used vector drawings and could be created at any resolution. It offered a significant change in visual quality, making it the highest resolution adventure until "The Adventure to Annihilate the PC and Linux Guy Empires for Good" would later benefit from iPhone X images and a newer Keynote version allowed for up to 8K 60fps exports.

The adventure's production value was notably high. The digital animation and high resolution visuals added to its overall quality. However, despite everything being drawn, it was not the hardest to make, as animating characters within realistic images is a labor intensive process due to requiring tasks such as taking, editing, color grading, and masking background images. While "Christmas Special" showcased the potential of animation, the series' iconic style featuring drawn characters set against realistic backgrounds was kept for future productions.

Character voices were done using text to speech. Daniel UK provided the voice for Mac Guy3135 and all the PC Guys and Santa's character, was voiced using the Ralph voice, who also voices Grandpa Mac Guy. For the Christmas Creatures, a default iMovie subtitle style was employed, with text colour coded to indicate the speaking character. However, this method had its drawbacks, including an annoying visual effect and the use of a default font, as the PC Guy Font had not yet been created. To avoid potential confusion in scenes with multiple PC Guys conversing, a visual indicator was used to highlight the speaking character.

The adventure's soundtrack was exclusively composed by Kevin MacLeod, with the adventure featuring a selection of his royalty free Christmas tracks. To ensure the characters' dialogue remained audible during the text to speech narration, audio ducking techniques were applied in post production.

The entire editing process for "Christmas Special" was carried out digitally. It was completed in just a few days, as the adventure did not require traditional filming. Many assets were repurposed from Mac Guy3135's earlier projects. The final version of the adventure was exported in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second in h.264 format and was uploaded to YouTube on Christmas Day in 2016.

## Reception

"Christmas Special" received minimal attention and left little impact in terms of reviews or comments. One comment left by a viewer humorously remarked, "Your holiday is a fool, these videos are so random lol." Despite being viewed 123 times, the adventure garnered only three likes as of October 7, 2023.

## Trivia

* "Christmas Special" held the distinction of being the highest resolution adventure until (4) surpassed it.
* It remains the only adventure in the series to be entirely digital, with no live action elements whatsoever.
* The adventure introduced the Second PC Guy Castle, a significant location in later adventures.
* A minor inconsistency in the adventure shows PC Guy3531, a Baron PC Guy, residing in one of the six corner towers which are canonically inhabited by Earls.
* Invasion of the PC Guys is the only other adventure to employ the brightened speaking character method to tell who is speaking. This was easier to achieve than mouth movements however looked out of place.
* Notably, the drawing for the Christmas Cottage location were created in 2013, making it likely the oldest digital asset used in The Adventure Series. Interestingly, this location was drawn using Pages software instead of Keynote.
* Several images, including those of Santa, the mystical snowman, and many Christmas trees, were reused standalone drawings by Mac Guy3135.
* The house featured at the end of the adventure was also repurposed, originally traced from a geography project.
* While the adventure never explicitly mentions the planet where the adventure begins and ends, it is likely not Earth, as there is no reference to the Falkirk Portal or Mac Guy's Mansion despite both a house and a portal being seen.
* At one point in the adventure, three snowmen appear on screen simultaneously.
* The snowman's voice utilises the Westminster chimes, due to being voiced by the "Bell Tower" text to speech voice.
* It had the longest total production time of any adventure, as most background images are drawn months to years in advance.

## Link

The Quest to Save Santa (Christmas Special) (4K)