Web Animation / Animated Inanimate Battle

It's a party in the Blank White-and-Yellow Void!

Animated Inanimate Battle is a web cartoon series created by Robert Johnston on his YouTube channel, GatlingGroink57, inspired by another web cartoon called Battle for Dream Island. It's one of those standard object shows... Except it's hosted by a demigod.

It was created in 2017 when the creator drew up 60 assets and eventually decided to make a show about it, and initially premiered on April 15th, 2018 with its self-titled Pilot, before being removed from YouTube for almost two years. The pilot returned on April 1st, 2020, and eventually got its first proper episode on May 20th, 2020 with the release of "An Ice Beginning." The entire show is animated in Microsoft Powerpoint and uses Paint.NET for character and prop design.

The plot follows a group of sixty living objects who live in the Blank Slate, a yellow-and-white gradient void with virtually nothing inside aside from them and a couple of other non-living objects. This uneventful life is interrupted by the entrance of Oodle the Doodle, a Semi-Divine inter-dimensional triangle guy looking for fun. He came into the Slate through a portal and ended up in a state of comatose. After the objects wake him up, they show him all the fun things to do in the Blank Slate (which, justifiably, is pretty dull). Oodle is less than impressed by this and begins to leave for a new dimension. However, he is convinced to stay by one of the objects (Leek) and decides to make his own fun by hosting a game show with said objects as contestants where the winner receives anything they want.

Episodes of Animated Inanimate Battle can be found here.

Not to be confused with the Inanimate Insanity video series known as Inanimate Battle.

This cartoon contains the following tropes:

• Adaptational Personality Change: Every contestant on the show is loosely based on what they were prior to AIB's existence, and we aren't talking about In-Universe. The changes to each character's personality from their home show/camp to AIB essentiually rangers from minor personality tweaks to outright Flanderization. In Apex where Raisin comes from, he was treated as being Younger Than He Looks, with people thinking he's old when he really isn't. In Animated Inanimate Battle, he really is an old man.
• A Dog Named "Dog": As you'd come to expect barring Oodle and Tivo.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Taken a step farther with some characters by adding an unnecessary "-y" to the end of their already self-explanatory names^note Farty, Flaggy, Flimy, Glassy, Showery. Oh, and Oodle and Tivo's names fall into this as well; Oodle's name comes from a rhyme, "oodles of doodles", while Tivo is just a play on the word "TV".
• Always Identical Twins: Orange and Yellow Food Dye, apart from their colors.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Also as you'd come to expect.
• Anthropomorphic Food: Plenty of examples to go around. ^note Apricot, Bacon, Chocolate Chip, Chip Bag, Coconut, Creamy, Ketchup, Leek, Nacho, Orange Food Dye, Pear, Raisin, Roe, Salami, Teabag, Yellow Food Dye
• Anthropomorphic Typography: One number (Nine) and two mathematical symbols (Alef and Nabla, coincidentally both cousins)
• Anyone Can Die: Except Oodle, who makes death cheap because of his ability to revive people.
• April Fools' Day: A joke episode called "The Phantom Menace" was released for such a day in 2022.
• Armless Biped: A common staple for object shows and Animated Inanimate Battle is no slouch in this department.^note  Apricot, Bacon, Brain, Brick, Candle, Creamy, Envelope, Flaggy, Filmy, Glassy, Glove, Hailstone, Hanger, Package, Popsicle Stick, Recycling Bin, Roe, Safe, Sock, Telescope, Toothpick, Yarn And don't think it doesn't include legless (Nabla) and limbless^note Antimatter, Bouncy Ball, Farty, Showery, Tea Bag variants too.
• Art Shift: Characters' imagine spots and the Doodleverse are drawn more simplistically from the main art style, with only colored outlines and white background.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: This show has this trope in spades. A good chunk of the characters have personalities that reflect the objects they just so happen to be (eg: Nabla being a math symbol The Smart Girl, Pitchfork being...well...a pitchfork and having a harsh, hot-tempered personality, Tivo being (a drawing of) a smart TV with questionable sentience, Raisin being a dried-up grape and being the resident elder of the group, and so on).
• Audience Participation: Prior to "Fartists," people were able to vote via a poll as to who leaves the show. Although it was changed to where the contestants themselves get to vote on who goes, the audience is still able to participate, now voting for which contestant gets to receive a prize.
• Big "NO!": Popsicle Stick lets out one for at least 10 seconds when she ends up not being on the same team as Jelly. Doubles as an Overly Long Scream.
• Black Bead Eyes: All the characters have these with a few exceptions (See Monochromatic Eyes).
• Blank Yellow and White Void: The Blank Slate, where the show is set.

• Cast Herd: The contestants had to be split into 6 teams of 10 for the purpose of allowing the viewers to keep track of the huge cast and to cover much of their characterization as effectively as possible. That being said, there are still teams which have more screentime than others.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Every single cast member has unique character designs, including shading, and quirks which gives them their own individual personality.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: All the teams have a color to represent them:
  • Red - Team 1
  • Orange - Team 2
  • Yellow - Team 3
  • Green - Team 4
  • Blue - Team 5
  • Purple/Violet - Team 6
• Continuity: With each episode, Oodle adds a new location or item to the Blank Slate, such as the ocean in "An Ice Beginning", the mountain (Team 2 Mountain) in "Smarter & Boulder", and the claw machines from "Get a Grip".
• Death Is Cheap: Oodle has the ability to revive dead people via an imaginary line box.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Pear hums the show's theme song while climbing up the mountain in "Smarter and Boulder."
• Drama Queen: Or Drama King, as the case might be, and that would be Filmy.
• Dysfunction Junction: What happens if an impatient intellectual, a cute psychopath, an all-brawn with no brains, a couple of valley girls, a competitive but Lovable Jock, an old man, an endearingly dorky guy, an Emo Teen and an overly reliant person are all together on the same team? You'll get Team 6, and they're this trope big time. If they are not at each other’s throats, they would be arguing about who deserves to be the leader or how to execute challenges. These petty conflicts prevent them from doing challenges effectively or even at all but luckily there is some hope as Nacho and Showery at least manage to stop the team from becoming a total lost cause.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Pilot has this all over with the objects being limbless and faceless, everyone talking in text, and some of the characters' assets being very unpolished and/or different from the ones used in later episodes. "An Ice Beginning" starts out with the same weirdness, but it changes when Oodle causes everyone to become Suddenly Voiced.
• Eject the Loser: To say the least, eliminated contestants are transported into a dimension Oodle created known as the Doodleverse.
• Ensemble Cast: This show has a staggering cast of 62 main characters, comprised of two staff members and 60 contestants (The second-largest object show cast only beaten out by BFB).
• Episode Title Card: This show has this for its episodes (aside from the Pilot), but they're only shown for a brief amount of time.
• Fingerless Hands: Excluding the limbless and armless ones, the characters have no digits. Their hands are instead ball-shaped and for Oodle, square-shaped.

• Fun with Acronyms: "An Ice Beginning", the title of the first episode of the show, has the same acronym as the show itself: AIB.
• Geographic Flexibility: Little by little, the Blank Slate gains new locations thanks to Oodle's ability to create things from nothing.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Before Oodle came along, the objects lived rather dull lives and had an even duller sense of fun. To name a few, weekly recycling collections, rock-paper-scissors (which was weird since they didn't have limbs at that point), and stacking themselves high until they fall down. However, when you live in a world devoid of almost nothing, you have to make the best of it.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: The show's opening consists of an upbeat chiptune with no vocals.
• Invisible Anatomy: All sixty contestants had this in the pilot, save for Nine's tongue. Even after Oodle gave the characters Sudden Anatomy in "An Ice Beginning," one would notice later in the episode that Bouncy Ball (a limbless contestant) is holding poker cards, but it doesn't seem to be in her mouth.
• Larynx Dissonance: Some of the female contestants have this due to having male voice actors.
• The Lancer: Coconut and Telescope to Album and Salami's leaders. See below for more details.
• The Leader: Although Oodle never established team captains, the actions and words of certain contestants lead to an unspoken agreement within their respective teams that they should be the leader (Well, except Team 6). Leadership styles and group dynamics may vary as listed.
  • Team 1 - Album's charisma and go-getter attitude mesh incredibly well with her teammates because of her role as The Heart. Her empowering motivational speeches are key in uniting them into an extremely dedicated and competent team which is why Album is highly respected and praised as their leader.
    • Originally Coconut wanted to lead, going far as to assert dominance over his teammates in "An Ice Beginning", though he soon realized nobody would ever listen to a hard case like him. Thus by the next episode, he willingly passed the torch down to Album and steps down as her trusty Lancer, providing the much-needed brawn and brains.
  • Team 2 - Can always looks out for the group's best interests by being open to suggestions and is quick to criticize Oodle's glaring oversights which hinders Team 2's performance. How she organizes team meetings in addition to using her smarts to bring out her teammates' abilities tells us about Can's emphasis on strengthening bonds and letting others shine in challenges. To summarize, she is a clever, Reasonable Authority Figure who doesn't mind cheering on from the sidelines when her team gets more focus.
  • Team 3 - Salami immediately took charge once his team had solidified and, with his former military background, imposes tactics involving the exchange of battle plans with Telescope, his second-in-command.
  • Team 4 - Nabla is one of, if not, the most intelligent characters on the entire show, so it would make sense...except she has to put up with her cousin, Alef, who currently has most of the team under his influence. Thankfully, Nabla has an ally in Glue, and they would eventually overthrow Alef over. Nabla's tatics involve complex and logical plans she often writes up on her chalkboard.
  • Team 5 - Domino seems to be the most likely candidate for this role due to being levelheaded.
    • Pitchfork was originally the leader of the team due to her headstrong personality, but eventually, her bossiness towards her team came back to bite her in the leg in the third episode.
  • As for Team 6, they're very undecisive. Since the team's formation, they've argued and bickered about who should be captain. So much so, that Package made a (rather unfair) wheel on who gets to be captain for each challenge.
• Living Polyhedron: Oodle, a demigod triangle being, definitely is one
• Monochromatic Eyes: Chocolate Chip, Domino, Filmy, Tivo and Telescope stand out by having pure white-colored eyes in comparison with the rest of the cast's black ones. Oodle, on the other hand, is the only one with green eyes.
• Mythology Gag: Done in the opening, where there is a brief scene of Brain and Bouncy Ball playing poker a la the series' Pilot, complete with their old assets.
• Ninja Prop: In "An Ice Beginning" Coconut exploits this trope to Team 1's advantage by having Album^note Who still spoke in subtitles due to Oodle forgetting to give her a voice talk about metal bands and using the large wall of text that formed above her to hit Team 6's ice platform.
• No Fourth Wall: As a staple for any object show, everyone is aware that they're in a cartoon. However, this show takes it further due to characters using things as a Ninja Prop (eg. Album's subtitles in "An Ice Beginning") and even a Running Gag of Oodle popping out of things during cutscenes.
• Noodle Incident: The reason why Bone is shunned by the rest of the characters in the Blank Slate is currently unknown. Not even Bone himself knows, judging by his conversation with Oodle in "An Ice Beginning".
  Bone: Oh, it's nothing Oodle. It's just that no one here likes me.
  Oodle: ...Why?!
  [Bone briefly looks at his teammates backing away from him]
  Beat
  Bone: I don't know!
• Out of Focus: Due to the show's gargantuan cast (second only to BFB), it's inevitable for some characters to get less screentime than others. A prime example would be the majority of Team 3 who didn't have any significant characterization until episode 3.

• Pilot: It has one, and it isn't called "The Pilot" for nothing!^note It was called "Starting From Scratch" when it first came out.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: There are quite a few of pink-colored female characters^note Blanket, Creamy, Glassy and plenty of blue-colored males^note Alef, Chalk, Glove, Mitten, Showery, Telescope, Tivo (if you were to count him as a male) in the cast. There are also inversions.^note Brain, Salami, and Whoopee Cushion for pink boys and Can, Hailstone, Recycling Bin, and Safe for blue girls
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Oodle almost pulls this after seeing the "fun" things the objects do in "The Pilot" but Leek convinces him otherwise, ultimately starting the show.
• Shout-Out: Enough to fill its own page.
• Small Role, Big Impact: As of current, Leek's biggest role was in the pilot episode, and while he has minor roles in later episodes, it was because of his heartwarming speech that caused Oodle to stay and start the show.
• Stock Object Colors: Applies to Bone and Coconut by them being milk-white and brown in color respectively. Also with Jelly and Raisin having purple color schemes since both are grape-based objects.
• Stock Sound Effects: Used to the fullest extent for all the episodes, whether it's animal sounds or Background Music, but makes this cartoon all the more charming.
• Sudden Anatomy: When Oodle causes everyone to become Suddenly Voiced in "An Ice Beginning," all of the contestants received faces and most received limbs. Some were happier with the change than others.
• Suddenly Voiced: Tired of the caption speech, Oodle decided to invoke this trope with his demi-god powers in "An Ice Beginning". Let's just say everyone had mixed feelings about this whole permanent fiasco.
• Toilet Humor: Farty, the fart odor cloud. Leek's trouble taking a leak to the point of having to go to the bathroom almost all the time. And there are the jokes with Whoopie Cushion.
• Unexplained Accent: When everyone was Suddenly Voiced in "An Ice Beginning", Bacon and Domino gain heavy southern and stereotypical British accents respectively on account of Oodle's impression of the two. Bacon, however, embraces his voice and became the cast's Cowboy while Domino was bothered by his before getting used to it.
• Vanity Plate: Tacked at the end of The Stinger for each episode includes one for GatlingGroink57, Robert's channel. As an additional Running Gag, a random line would be pulled from the episode's script when the plate shows up.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Raisin, due to being eliminated first into the series and sent to the Doodleverse.

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Tumbleweed: "Pardon."