Pixelcraftian is a YouTube animator primarily focusing on video game-related animation. The channel has shifted through a number of different animation styles, starting off with Mine-imator, a Minecraft-based animation software, before moving on to drawn Flash animation and finally settling on 8-bit sprite animation.
As the years have gone on the channel has started to build its own continuity; the early Mine-imator animations appear to be left out entirely, while the drawn animations and sprite animations share a multiverse of sorts. In that sense, the channel can mostly be split into four sub-series:
- Waddle Dee Delight (WDD) follows Kirby, Waddle Dee, OCs Kabe and Kebe, and
Kirb on various adventures in Dreamland. With a heavy focus on the Kirby franchise, this was the channel's flagship series for a time before ultimately being discontinued, being dropped alongside the drawn animation style in favor of more sprite-based animation. - Stupidly Overrated Object Show (SOOS) places several members of the WDD cast in a game show where they're tasked with completing various tasks as teams, with the losing team getting one member Voted Off the Island. The series ended up outlasting WDD before being quickly wrapped up in favor of a higher quality sequel.
- Mario Mayhem shifts the focus onto the Super Mario Bros. franchise, primarily Super Mario Bros., and uses 8-bit sprite animation. The series currently makes up most of the channel's video lineup and includes several story arcs within, with the stories typically bringing attention to a wider multiverse of different worlds, with the WDD world being a part of it in some ways. Besides the story arcs, many of the more lighthearted videos tend to involve Mario constantly losing lives in a comically unfair manner.
- Super Mario Super Challenge (SMSC) is the aforementioned standalone sequel to SOOS, though this time much of the cast consists of Mario Mayhem characters (with some WDD characters still present). Like SOOS, the series involves its contestants going through challenges, with losing teams having one member voted out by the viewers. SMSC tends to have a greater focus on interactions between contestants compared to SOOS, with focus switching between different groups of characters every few episodes.
The channel can be found here
, while the official website can be found here.
(And yes, Pixelcraftian is also notable for his comments being found on a multitude of different videos.)
Pixelcraftian's videos contain examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The Pixelcraftian site listed above contains a lot of supplementary material that isn't delved into in the videos themselves.
- April Fools' Day: The channel has had a few April Fools specials:
- 2020's Mario's Random Calamity is a Bizarro Episode featuring a whole bunch of strange things happening in Mario's dream.
- Super Mario Awesome Quest is a mini-series filled with Stylistic Suck with two parts that released during April Fools' Day of 2021 and 2022. 2022 also had Mario's Epic 1-2 Calamity release back-to-back with the second episode of Super Mario Awesome Quest as a more standard Mario Mayhem video with Stylistic Suck in full swing.
- 2023 has Mario VS Bowser's Lair Hockey, based on the obscure flash game Bowser's Lair Hockey made to promote Mario Party 7.
- 2024 has Mario's Random Calamity, which is a more weird Calamity compared to previous episodes.
- 2020's Mario's Random Calamity is a
- The Bad Guy Wins: The Beyond the Bounds story arc is given an alternate bad ending where Codename destroys the multiverse.
- Breather Episode: Episodes directly following the end of story arcs are usually simpler episodes. Averted in the case of Super Mario & The Green Thunder, which is immediately followed up by Mario VS MX, an episode directly connected to the next story arc.
- Death Is Cheap: Death doesn't tend to last in most cases. In Mario Mayhem, everyone works on a life system, where death means you lose a life but otherwise respawn right back where you were, and at worst you get a Game Over that sends you back to where you started. Characters are able to collect 1-Ups to increase their life count.
- There are certain scenarios where a Game Over does mean permanent death, however - in the Mushroom Kingdom, every once in a while a "red moon" rises, and characters who lose all their lives are Killed Off for Real. Some worlds, like the Multiverse Hub, allow respawning via lives, but Game Overs are permanent.
- Dialogue between Crewmate and the Impostor in Dig Your Own Diamonds implies the Among Us dimension doesn't have a life system at all, meaning that anyone's first death sticks.
- Innocent Bystander: Mario's P-Switch Calamity has a Shy Guy sitting in a corner who gets roped into the various effects caused by the P-Switch that Mario continues to hit throughout the video. In one case, the only thing it does is make him specifically disappear.
- Lighter and Softer: Adapted characters who were violent enough to cause blood and gore tend to be toned down, with MX being the standout example.
- Our Clones Are Different: "Darksi Clones" are evil clones of their originals that have a one-in-a-million chance of spawning via Double Cherry, with Cherry and Mr. L being Mario and Luigi's Darksi Clones respectively. They look similar to their original counterparts with different color schemes but tend to have different attributes or powers, and while they can respawn via 1-Ups, they're eliminated entirely if they lose all their lives until they're spawned back in through that same one-in-a-million chance.
- Platform Hell: A lot of the areas Mario has to go through in his adventures are filled with abrupt death traps.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A common reaction from characters established to be playing a game when an unfavorable situation arises is to just log out.
- The Smurfette Principle: The main casts tend to have one girl - Kebe for Waddle Dee Delight, Toadette for Mario Mayhem, and Mora for the Across the Marioverse story arc.
