Shenanigears

**Shenanigears**, stylised as **ShenaniGears**, is a Polish-made English-language animated sitcom web series created by personkell, appearing on the channel of the same name and "personkell's dump".

It is the second machinima series made by personkell, and the first made by them in Garry's Mod.

Its first episode, *Reception Showdown*, aired on 20th December 2020. Though the show was created in Poland, the content targets English-speaking audiences. The series was originally going to be the future focus of personkell, however due to low viewership and growing disinterest, it was cancelled at Season 3, and briefly returned for Season 4 in 2021, and for Season 5 in 2022.

The first episodes were around 1 minute long, but became longer in the later seasons. The series currently has 30 episodes.

## History

During Autumn 2020, personkell's YouTube channel was relatively small, at 55-57 subscribers. Kell frequently wanted to grow their channel, however always unsuccessfully. During Summer and Autumn 2020, the personkell (at the time "Bananasticks") YouTube channel had a smaller than usual number of videos added, due to decreased creativity. Sometime in Autumn of that year, after several tests, they decided to start a Gmod machinima series, inspired by another, much more popular YouTuber, SMG4.

The series had lower production values than its inspiration due to essentially no budget and technical limitations, and was rather unprofessional, a trait which would slowly but not completely die out during the series run.

Season 2 was written by Kell's friend, Carol, who unfortunately didn't live to see any of the episodes on YouTube. Season 3 was originally meant to air from late March to early April 2021, however production was rushed in and it, along with the second half of Season 2, was uploaded early in early March that year. Due to Season 3's rushed production, 2 of its episodes weren't recorded, and 2 out of 8 recorded didn't get an official title.

Initial plans were to fully focus on the series for the foreseeable future, however the series didn't get much attention and had barely helped the channel grow, with the personkell channel having only 70 subscribers by April 2021. After 3 seasons, Shenanigears was cancelled.

In late April, a spin-off series **Shenanigears: Rocket Mission** was created, however only 2 out of 4 episodes were finished. On 25th June 2021, *The Final Boat* was uploaded to the channel, with the intention of being the final installment of the series.

In Summer and Autumn of 2021, spin-off minifilm installments of the series were made: GearTrip in August, with a combined length of over 61 minutes, and Fade in November, with final length of 55 minutes, and intended length of around 2.5 hours.

In the latter part of 2021, Season 4 aired, compromised of 4 special episodes aired on certain occasions: Halloween, series 1-year anniversary, Xmas and New Year's Eve 2021. No further installments of the series were produced until Autumn 2022, when Season 5 aired.

No proper episodes of the series were made in 2023, with the exception of Death.

## Premise

The series centred around the main antagonists of *Toontown Online*, The Cogs, depicting them as frivolous and moronic, and showing their various adventures. In Seasons 2 & 3, the series was enhanced by elements from the game *Half-Life*.

## Characters

The main characters of the series are The Cogs, main antagonists of the game *Toontown Online* and its private servers. At first glance it can be assumed that the main character of Season 1 was Telemarketer, however there are 2 Telemarketers in-universe, and both appear in the Season. This change was made around the time of Season 4's production.

## Production

The videos are typically made using Garry's Mod, and video editing software. The series was originally made on a very weak laptop that was prone to overheating, which didn't allow for long recording sessions, meaning the episodes often had to be short. Season 4 was made on a new, better laptop, which allowed episodes to be done in a single recording session. Every episode of the series before Season 5 was recorded using Gmod's built-in recorder, and was edited in Youtube Movie Maker. Season 5 was recorded with OBS Studio and edited in kdenlive.

## Trivia

* The series' initial title was *RetardCogs*, however due to potential controversy regarding the R-slur, it was changed to Shenanigears, with help of Enoch The Joke, who also designed the new and current logo.
* This was the second machinima series made by personkell, with *Bloodsucker Psychologist Division* being the first.
	+ It's also the first Gmod machinima series by personkell, being succeeded by *Shenanigears: Rocket Mission*, *GearTrip*, *Fade* and *OONDERTALIUM*.
* For the first 3 Seasons and Season 5, there was a tradition of one episode being a music video. In Seasons 1 & 2, it was the fifth, in Season 3 it was the eighth (intended tenth), and in Season 5 it was the fourth.
* The series setting, Dumbartonkirkshire, was revealed in *Prison get-out*.
* Majority of Season 4 episodes were uploaded to Kell's side channel, "personkell's dump", although episodes 1 & 4 have their private copies on the main channel.