The Turbulent Production of TAWOTA

Hey, remember when I announced TAWOTA back in 2020? Good times. Crazy how it went from a funny little cartoon about a bunch of characters on the autism spectrum to a surreal existential horror where poor Leon is trapped in an unstable reality that is not his own, forced to cater to the whims of his capricious creator and his apathetic watchers. Though, with benefit of hindsight, perhaps it was always going to turn out the way it did just from the first episode alone:

Since I announced the series on a Valentine's Day, it only seems rather fitting that I share the tale of its behind-the-scenes mayhem and the context behind how the first season ended on a colossal mind-fuck.

Fun fact: This isn't even the first iteration of TAWOTA. It's a reboot of a series I made in 2013 with barely any resources to use. So let’s start this tale of errors and unfortunate events with when I conceived the sodding idea around the same time The Amazing World of Gumball first aired on Cartoon Network. And yes, along with SpongeBob, TAWOG is a partial inspiration for TAWOTA. During my time in secondary school, I drew up many doodles of what the characters of TAWOTA would be like and what zany adventures they’d get up to. Of course, as I got older, so too changed the characters. Obviously, their appearances remained the same (more or less) and some elements of their roles and personalities remained intact but what was seen in the original TAWOTA series was certainly different from the early concepts I’ve drawn up. For instance, the original Imaginee was a kleptomaniac instead of a killer and therefore more harmless in his villainous exploits. Hence why Leon said to TDLDN “and you consider making a homicidal version of Imaginee a correction?”.

Speaking of the original TAWOTA series, due to a lack of a laptop (and a lack of wifi) when I started out, I had to take pictures of the drawings using the stop-motion feature on my 3DS camera and then record the 3DS on my tablet. And when I somehow managed to cobble together an episode, I then uploaded it onto YouTube whenever I visited the local library. It wasn’t until about the…seventh episode? I can’t remember and I’ve made a decent effort not to remember but there was this episode where Brian becomes the Grim Reaper and I used Pencil2D, Paint, and Wondershare Filmora to make that episode because, at that point in time, I finally received a laptop. Though, it was only around the time I finished the original iteration of TAWOTA that I got Wi-Fi.

You see, I went into the original version of TAWOTA thinking it would be a hit, even though I got jack-shit for resources. Some may call it optimism but, in hindsight, a better description for my belief in that iteration’s success would be delusions of grandeur (which I still have on a regular basis BTW). So when it didn’t become a success, I deleted my original (though technically second since I was locked out of my first) YouTube channel, hid away under a new channel and tried to move on from TAWOTA. But, because I was still a teen (I started the original TAWOTA in 2013 and ended it in 2017), my attempts at starting something new were sidetracked by school and the realization I can use Source FilmMaker to act out my masturbatory mind-control/possession fantasies.

Oh, yeah, I should mention at this point in time I was doing A-Levels, which are optional BTW. But I figured it would get me closer to having a career in the animation industry (especially since I already passed all my GCSEs) and I flipped a coin to decide whether I should continue doing A-Levels or just drop out. And you know what? Despite me completing the full two years of A-Levels, they meant FUCK ALL in the grand scheme of things! Which is ironic because the coin came up on the side that said I should continue A-Levels and one would assume my time doing A-Levels would have meant something. Well, unless a few lessons in humility and not half-arsing anything counts. Anyway, not only did I not pass my A-Levels (though one of them was close to a C) but there was this girl in my IT class that was very attractive and, while sociable, was usually quiet. While I have talked to her and made her laugh a few times, I never made a move on her due to a crippling fear of forming romantic attachments and because I knew nothing about her.

Now that I covered the original iteration of TAWOTA, we can finally talk about the iteration we’re all familiar with.

It was in 2018 that my mum and I were thinking of making a business selling our art. And because I know TAWOTA has monetary potential and it was a good idea that had the misfortune of poor execution, I figured I might try again. Or at least that was the plan were it not for an out-of-control masturbation addiction and the fact that I needed a new animation package because, in my humble opinion, Pencil2D was a pile of dog crap! Oh, and my PC was a potato.

That was four years ago, give or take. And while I did receive a new laptop on my 19th birthday, it took me nearly more than a year to find out about Blender 2.8 and that was only through chance. So it was in 2019 (which, coincidentally, was also the same year I joined FiMFiction) that I finally got around to writing up the scripts for the show. The plan was simple. Make some promotional shorts to promote the show then work on the actual episodes for season 1, with the first four of which being reimaginings of the first four episodes of the original TAWOTA. What could possibly go wrong?

Not many people auditioned for the casting call, the guy I had in mind as the voice for Imaginee snubbed me (though that one’s a blessing in disguise since Grant did a way better job than that other guy ever could), the animation process being more exhausting than I thought, Grant taking forever to send me his lines (though that one is also a blessing in disguise since it gave me time to find out how to make a more successful YouTube channel), Brian’s a pain in the arse to animate because of his sodding buck teeth, the original VA for Mona backed out at the last minute, and I made the faux pas of working on other projects alongside TAWOTA, which resulted in me being burnt out like fuck!

I would say it was worth it, and it was to an extent since the episodes were hilarious, but they weren’t getting as many views and likes when compared to videos I crapped out in two days. I kid you not, for the longest time, the video that had the highest viewcount on my channel was one where the Soldier from TF2 shot a Rabbid up Merasmus’ arse!

And before that was a video where SpongeBob was possessed by Petelguese Romanee Conti (DESU!). So I’m left wondering to myself why should I even bother putting in the effort when I can rake in thousands of views in record time by making short SFM animations involving Shantae.

So, by the time I got to work on Babysitting for Auties, I was like “fuck it, let’s go completely nuts”. As my mum once said to me, being an artist is the only career where it’s perfectly normal to go absolutely mad (I’m paraphrasing slightly but you get the idea). And Halloween was coming up so I had an excuse to spook the living bejesus out of my audience, or rather the few people that actually watched TAWOTA. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t get that many views but you know what? I didn’t care. I enjoyed working on that episode. And because I thought it would be ridiculous to spend more than two years on one sodding season, I decided to end the first season of TAWOTA with the fittingly-titled ‘What The Hell?’:

Because Mona's VA was unavailable at the time (or, more accurately, didn't respond to my email requesting her lines for this episode), I had to use 15.ai and then killed her off. And then I threw in a bunch of G5 and Shantae stuff in the hope of boosting the viewcount for this one, which it did albeit slower than the actual Shantae SFM shorts I was uploading on my YouTube channel at the time.

And that, kids, is how a funny cartoon about a bunch of guys on the autism spectrum suddenly turned into a cosmic horror story about a guy who was forced into a foreign world by his malevolent creator and made to be his, for lack of better words, performing monkey.

Want more answers? Wait until season 2.

P.S: Another reason for TAWOTA going down the route it did is because of the existence of Chris-chan and the revelation that some autistic people are the laughing stock/punching bags of the Internet. This, along with the other problems I mentioned, resulted in my heart no longer being in it. But despite all these problems, I am looking forward to working on season 2.

It will be a doozy.