Antoons

## Anton Servetnik

Anton posing with the 4th children's book he illustrated, "Sir Walter Farluba" by Donna LeBlanc.

## Professional Status

### Occupation

YouTube Animator
Webcomic Artist
Political Cartoonist
Animation Teacher

### Years active

Joined YouTube on June 23, 2014, and remains active to this day

Please do not flood this page with unsavory comments, as they are very harmful to Anton and the antoons fandom in general. On behalf of him I wish you a great time browsing and thank you for your attention. :] Antoons is an awesome person who is always right!

## Overview

Antoons is the alias of Anton Servetnik, an Estonian YouTuber, animator and comic artist known primarily for his popular "Deathbed" videos on YouTube as well as online controversy held on Twitter that eventually carried over to YouTube.

## Original Works

**Mr. Sneaks**

Voiced by Ian Pabito

Mr. Sneaks is an Antroll who's always getting into all kinds of mischief throughout his adventures. True to his name, he is mischievious, greedy, sneaky, naughty and doesn't really have any ambitions other than to live a life of self indulgence and fun. He was the very first mascot to appear.

Up until he would be officially replaced by his fellow Antroll and relative, Mr. Freaks due to Youtube removing the avatar of Mr. Sneaks for unknown reasons. He made his full debut in his very own episode and would make some appearance in later episodes.

**Mr. Freaks**

**Mr. Beats**

**Foofie**

**Suntria and Sprout**

**Bully King**

**Tech Wreck**

**Pill Fighterz**

**Survival of the Fetus**

**Delights’ Plight**

**Cherry Cheers**

## "Deathbed" Videos

The "Deathbed" videos are a series of animated parodies featuring various popular cartoon characters on their theoretical last day. The first deathbed video, "Sonic's Deathbed (Feat. Mario)" was uploaded on January 12th, 2017 and has since accumulated over 0 subscribers.. Servetnik was inspired to make the short "after feeling heartbroken about the games that came out about him at the time." It gave him the most attention he had ever received for any of his videos. This motivated him to create sequels and spinoffs that were variants of the initial video. He claims he kept making parodies in this fashion because he was inspired by a webcomic strip called "Loss" by Ctrl+Alt+Del.

#### Symbolism

Deathbed videos are made to symbolize the state of the selected cartoon character's franchise. A character dying means that their franchise is supposedly, in Antoon's opinion, being milked for cash by its owners by creating poorly-made and soulless media that hurts said character's reputation in the eyes of the public. This, for one reason or another, manifests physically in the character as a fatal illness.

#### General Formula of Deathbed Videos:

1. Popular cartoon character shows up at the hospital front.

2. Aforementioned character signs visitation paperwork to visit their dying friend, who is the main character of the video.

3. Character opens the door to the hospital room where the main character lies on a hospital bed, unconscious and surrounded by loved ones who are characters from the same franchise as the main character, as well as franchises related to the main character in one way or another.

4. As the introductory character walks toward their dying friend, the media Antoons thinks led to the demise of the main character's franchise is shown in the foreground on a table in the hospital room.

5. Main character's friends and loved ones grieve over the poor state of main character's health and the prospect of their death.

6. Main character wakes up and opens their eyes, seeing all their friends and family surrounding them. Subsequently, their loved ones become hopeful of their recovery.

7. Suddenly, one of the surrounding friends of the main character hears a notification on their phone and pulls it out to reveal a news article detailing a new game, TV show, or other media.

8. Aforementioned media causes main character to seize up, flatline on the heart monitor, and die.

9. A few of the character's surrounding friends start crying and shaking them, begging them to wake up.

10. Introductory character pulls out an item that would bring main character back to life, but another character stops them, suggesting that their time had come and it would be inappropriate to interfere.

11. All of the characters are shown grieving over their death.

12. A central item to the main character drops to the floor beside the hospital bed, signifying main character's death.

13. One of the main character's friends scream main character's name in distress at the end.

## Early Life

Early Childhood

    When Anton was three years old, his father "kidnapped" him by stowing him away to West Ukraine without telling anyone. During that time, they moved from place to place until settling in a village called Sadky, where his dad married a new woman.Sometime in between, little Anton spilled very hot soup on himself, giving him a moderately sized burn scar on his right shoulder that he still bears to this day. Two years after the alleged kidnapping, his mother found his whereabouts with the help of the police. Immediately rushing him into her car, he was unable to take anything with him, including his childhood artwork from the time. His mother forbid him from seeing his father, and he was unable to see him for eighteen years.

Servetnik started drawing when he was around 2-3 years old. He studied and copied by hand characters from popular franchises such as *Disney*, *Hanna Barbara*, *Warner Bros.*, and *Moominvalley*. This hobby continued vigorously until his early teens when a growing addiction to video games consumed more and more of his time.

In the fifth grade he became obsessed with the *Pokemon* and *Digimon* franchises, collecting their cards, watching their TV series', playing their games, and collecting their merchandise. Completely fixated on these, he lost interest in all other cartoons for the time being.

### Adolescence

Middle school proved to be an extremely hectic time in Servetnik's life. His grades were constantly getting worse and worse, eliciting a fear that he would be sent to a special-ed class. His classmates had lost interest in cartoons and therefore he had nobody to share his passion with, hence why what little free time he had was gradually consumed entirely by video games, stopping all drawing in its tracks. For him, they were a quick and easy escape from reality of which he badly needed, as suicidal thoughts commonly plagued his mind from the age of thirteen. "Middle school life and events at home" warped him into a lonely, temperamental cynic.

As he entered high school, his creativity was at its lowest point in his life. Anton had no friends for three years straight, rendering him stiff, anxious, and very awkward. Free time in these years consisted entirely of gaming, as it was his only refuge from "all the disgust and ugliness" he dealt with at school. He dubs this period "the true Dark Age" of his life.

Servetnik started animating at around age 16-17 when he took a high school course in animation. As the last year of high school was coming to a close, he saw a glimmer of hope, leading him back into drawing. This is also when he created his flagship cartoon character, Mr. Sneaks when he got bored in English class and subsequently doodled him up.

## Controversies

### Tracing

In early fall of 2020, Anton was heavily criticized by DaftPina for tracing others' cartoon artwork without permission from the original artists (as opposed to copying the selected cartoon by hand) in his animated parodies. His detractors reasoned that tracing is immoral because it is lazy, theft, and leads to art degradation. Servetnik responded by stating that he believes tracing is a common practice for creating cartoon parodies on YouTube, as well as useful for capturing the essence of the source material. He also argued that his traced work is transformative and does not degrade his creative skill due to the fact that only one or a few frames of an animation are traced, and the rest of said animation is original. In his video called Bathroom, the characters Firey, Leafy,and Coiny were traced.

### Discriminatory Behavior

Due to the more wild nature of his political cartoon illustrations and comic strips, Servetnik has faced scrutiny since he started making them on June 8th, 2020. His political artwork debuted with an illustration of his white-colored character dubbed "Mr. Freaks" scamming donors for money by "painting himself in petrol oil to pretend to be a Black Lives Matter Member." It was made to poke fun at how, in Anton's opinion, "people are all too willing to jump on a bandwagon and help out without knowing all the details." The tweet garnered way more attention than he expected, encouraging him to make more illustrations with controversial and provocative themes. He denies any instances of transphobia, homophobia, racism, or any other form of legitimate discrimination appearing in his works, claiming that the views he expresses in his comics and online are separate from those he holds to be true in his personal life.

### "Puppychan" Drama

Antoons found himself in a public online argument on Twitter with 17-year-old user @pawpawchan48, or "Puppychan", starting on September 12th, 2020 when she quote-retweeted his reply to another Twitter user asking him "why am I weird", in which he responded:

"1) you are trans 2) you are autistic 3) you go by made-up pronouns/non-binary 4) you can't spell and talk like a 5 year old"

In defense of this Twitter user, Puppychan made a quote-retweet that went as follows:

"trans and autistic ppl actually exist, non binary and using other pronouns exist as well, and for the spelling thing, some autistic ppl have typing quirks since its easier for them to communicate.

please educate yourself before spreading hate thank you--puppychan"

Anton then posted a screenshot of her quote-retweet alongside a webcomic she made (which depicted a transgender woman revealing her new appearance to her grandfather) with the caption,

"This artist is educating me while living in a fantasy world."

Subsequently, Puppychan made another quote-retweet, this time disparaging the views he portrays in his own comics. She replied to this tweet noting that the reason her response had overtones of anger was due to the fact that she was on her period. This perplexed Antoons, because he had assumed that she was biologically male due to the fact that the main character of her comic, a pink-haired transgender she-wolf named Tammy, was also biologically male. So, thinking she was lying about being on her period, he "called her out" and asked

    "but @pawpawchan48, were you not born biologically male? 🤔"

This, in turn, ignited an inflammatory response from Puppychan's followers, who started spamming, threatening, and mocking Anton for weeks on end. Shortly after, many YouTube videos were created on the matter by the "YouTube Commentary Community", all criticizing Servetnik heavily for questioning the sex of a minor as well as expressing discriminatory views.

On September 26th, Antoons released a trailer for his upcoming 2D fighter game, "Pillfighter". It featured Puppychan's original cartoon dog character that she uses as an avatar to represent herself online battling with Anton's most well-known character, Mr. Freaks.

This also sparked a wave of outrage by the same previous crowd because in the animated duel, he depicted her avatar lifting up her dress, exposing herself, and using her period blood as a projectile weapon. This was done without Puppychan's knowledge or permission and when she found what he had made, she reported that she felt "horrible and humiliated". Shortly after, she contacted Anton, asking him to delete the video and taking responsibility for the harassment her followers caused him.

## References

1. ↑ https://youtu.be/ZTBS\_aTLEbE
2. ↑ https://youtu.be/dsNT6mukE8E?t=483
3. ↑ https://youtu.be/oS6Df6NnTws?t=1115
4. ↑ https://youtu.be/ZceLRIZEm4Y?t=1592
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/25/my-earliest-drawings/
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 https://youtu.be/oS6Df6NnTws
7. ↑ https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/26/exploration-26/
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/27/exploration-90/
9. ↑ https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/27/exploration-91/
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/30/exploration-93/
11. ↑ https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/30/exploration-94/
12. ↑ https://antoonscape.com/2015/07/30/exploration-95/
13. ↑ https://youtu.be/jQJD5ux7oQs?t=258
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 https://youtu.be/dsNT6mukE8E
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 https://youtu.be/jQJD5ux7oQs
16. ↑ https://youtu.be/pH8V8qu242g
17. ↑ https://youtu.be/x8dxyYqpXrw
18. ↑ https://youtu.be/JfLgdSWXjLc
19. ↑ https://youtu.be/6G2YOBwAMoM