Blugrays

**The Blugrays** was Natty23's main series from August 2017 to mid 2019. It's about a group of blobans who are in a special kind of college; a college that combines classes and an apartment with many perks, such as an Educational Success Area, a Leisure Area, gym, a food pantry, etc. The college is called the Blugrays, although the building is called the Blugray Cove. The Blugrays got its name after Celwoge Lorenz and Dilphan Lorenz, a married couple who manage the college and began it with someone else, although that someone else is currently a mystery.

The first season has already passed with a set of comics and shorts, plus two short mixes. The second season had a set of shorts and comics and a short mix, although it was eventually cancelled while it was still going on.

## Notes & trivia

* The name of this series was based off of the school colors of the College of Staten Island, blue and gray. In addition, all of the main characters use the primary, secondary, and auxiliary colors of the College. However, there was a chance that the characters were originally going to have different colors and how big the cast would be was determined by the amount of the main and/or secondary characters.
* While the name of the series was always planned to be a mixture of the words blue and gray as they’re the main colors of the College of Staten Island, Natty23 made this series based off of the College from the start before he was even sure that he was going there. However, at the time, the chance of him going there was 90% according to his father. He and Natty23 decided that CSI was the best college for him three days later, then they became unsure again shortly after, and finally they settled on him going to that college once again a little while after.
* This series' development began on March 25, 2017, eight days after the fifth anniversary of Webdings, another series made by Natty23.
* Originally, there were going to be separate characters for the traits of being encouraging and having an interest in history along with a good memory. The former was given to the Celwoge while the other was given to Stede, although Stede eventually received the interest in history trait as well.
* The series also originally lacked Tarsa, who has some nursing skills, along with Lexal, who is interested in legal studies. There was also only one character that had an interest in one of the art subjects, then it changed to two, but then one of them was replaced by Lexal while the other (Tobaul) stayed.
* This is the second series that was planned to be mostly comics and partially animated. The first was the iMac Finders, which had been on a hiatus for a really long time (for over three years in fact).
* This series is basically what seasons 9 to 12 of The Squishables, an old and cancelled series by Natty23, would’ve been for the most part. The only differences are that comics were never planned at the time and the Blugrays name probably would’ve never been mentioned. In fact, some of the people who work on the Blugrays concurred that this series was like a successor to that series in a way back in January of 2018.
* Speaking of comics, at one point, the series would’ve been nothing but comics, mainly to save time and because Natty23 was running out of TTS voices to use, especially for the males. However, Natty23 found new male voices from CereProc, and just the right amount too. Well, almost. He had to give Keachet a Nuance voice since he accidentally gave him a child’s voice originally. In the meantime, he had no problem at all finding female voices since there a lot of them from Oddcast that he had yet to use at the time.
* Way before the Blugrays part of a series like this came into plan, there were a few beta characters at first, but since those got lost (or at least became inaccessible) due to the flash drive that they were on physically breaking, thus trapping some (or most) of the files that were on there, Natty23 decided to create new ones. Furthermore, he eventually remembered that those characters (or at least most or some of them) were based off of another college (Kingsborough Community College) anyway, so he didn’t care so much about them anymore, or at least not for now. Two of them were almost guaranteed to be in a series like this though, and they were twins (who were blue and green) named Selesta (who was female) and Weensmit (who was male), and their names were based off of the word Semester. Only one of them were to exist, but because either Natty23 accidentally got two good names from that word or he wanted two characters to be twins, they were created. They appeared as a sneak peek of a series similar to this on Natty23’s website almost a year before anything related to Blugrays came about (around the time Season 8 of The Squishables almost began).
* Out of the four adult characters, two or three of them had a different color originally, but they got the colors that they have now since it matches them the most. Celwoge was one of the two first four characters (or is the only one) to not have her color changed.
* Interestingly, all of the main male characters (sans Keachet) have CereProc voices while the main female characters have Oddcast voices, although originally two of the males were going to have new voices, Nathan and Rishi, but since they weren’t and aren’t easy to access, two more CereProc voices replaced them instead, although Nathan became accessible and provided the voice of Keachet when he accidentally received a child’s voice courtesy of Natty23 not checking all of the male CereProc voices before recording lines for the first episode.
* Either Tacner or Oslonda was the last character to be designed of the series other than Lexal, who joined the cast late in development (not counting subsequent design changes, like some made to Tobaul (twice in fact) and Dutny).
* The series used to have a character that just simply encouraged others, but since they were the dullest character, they were taken away fairly early in the show’s development.
* The show’s intro music was originally going to be the credits music as well, but since the longer versions of it weren’t so great, Natty23 decided to generate another Jukedeck song and make that the credits music instead. There also can’t be any other versions of them since they were deleted when Jukedeck did one or more things that caused them to be deleted.
* Like most of Natty23’s recent animations, the pencil tool is used rather than the brush tool that way he won’t have to struggle so much with getting decent-looking lines, although the palms of most of the characters’ hands are still done with the brush tool of course.
	+ Speaking of hands, they were eventually updated to look more realistic during Season 1 of the Blugrays, although they've seldom been redrawn since. However, an even more realistic hand design was agreed upon in the Open Source Objects server when some of the people there disliked the hands, which resulted in this hand design being used beginning with the OSO intro and OSO episodes 2+. This hand design will make its way to the Blugrays series in its third season.
* Also speaking of haven't been redrawn, Celwoge Lorenz is probably the only main character that hasn't been redrawn since she had made her appearances due to her slightly complex character design.
* The rooms of most of the Blugrays are based off of the Dolphin Cove, the student housing of the College of Staten Island. The only two rooms that aren’t are the exterior of Celwoge’s office and the inside of it.
* The room where all of the Blugrays usually talked to one another had different plans for what they were going to do: stand up, sit on chairs, sit at a table, or sit on chairs that were arranged like they were in a lecture hall. In the end, they stood up in there. The Conference Area was also originally *not* the reference of that room. In fact, Natty23 even completed one side of the old room before he changed his mind.
* The series marks the first appearance of Natty23’s old mouth style since 2008 or 2009 (even before the first season of The Squishables), although it was enhanced to match the current lip sync style of Natty23.
* Until April 27, 2017, the series was going to use black outlines, but since Natty23’s other series that used color outlines, The RJL Show, was cancelled (at the time anyway, then it went from being cancelled to being on a hiatus), partially due to a hard drive failure and the recent files of it dying or being trapped in it), he decided to make the outlines of everything in this series colored and let another future series of his have black outlines since that was more nostalgic to him than the Blugrays.
* Google Drive, PicWindow, PostImage, and ImgPile were formerly used for hosting the comics, but since Google Drive’s links to images became nonexistent after a short amount of time, PicWindow went offline shortly after the release of Superbloban, on September 3, 2017, which is when Natty23 found out about its offline status, PostImage eventually displayed the first four comics (minus the third) in a lower image quality for some reason and Natty23 didn't realize this until he was posting the fifth comic (Circle Road) on the Blugrays website, and ImgPile's server went down sometime after Tacner's Training released (temporarily, as it returned by October 21, 2018, at the latest, but it didn't matter to Natty23), he switched to Lensdump.
* While MIDIs are still used in this series, they don't show up as often as they did in The Squishables or some of the other content Natty23 made due to music from Jukedeck being the Blugrays' main music source. In fact, MIDIs have only shown up in four animations so far: Lounch, Water in Progress, Literal Haiku, and Baseball Dream Chaser (six if you count the first two short mixes).
	+ As of Baseball Dream Chaser however, due to Jukedeck shutting down its Make service, MIDIs will probably show up more often for future Blugrays animations for the time being.
* The comics and shorts never had previous and next buttons until April 13, 2018, at 10:52 p.m.
* The website started complying with ADA WCAG Level "AA" more seriously on May 12, 2018, six days before Museum of Current Art was released. Once that comic was released, it was the first to comply more with that level too. All the other comics complied with the level too once all of them needed to be reuploaded due to ImgPile's server going down.
* Between July 6, 2018 (or later) and July 11, 2018, the website was temporarily down since the creator was trying to save money for something else. It also went down a few times (longer times possibly) in 2019 for the same or similar reason. One time it did go back online the day Baseball Dream Chaser returned though.
* Although the release of the second short mix would've warranted a playlist for Blugrays short mixes being made, it wasn't actually made until shortly before the release of the third short mix.