Animation Short - Are You A Fascist?
It’s like the list grows and gets bigger everyday 🧐
Artist Commentary
In recent times I tend to stay away from politically charged shorts. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion about politics, but more that I get the feeling that people have been exhausted by politics. On top of that, the quality of discussion of political topics should be more nuanced but now, it’s the opposite. It’s all shallow, and many of the criticisms levied in the public square lack weight. If everyone is a fascist then no one is! Let’s not forget that our words should have weight to them, and not everything we don’t like, makes someone Hitler.
I don’t intend to make politically themed shorts a regular in my rotation, but this talking point has been so silly that I thought it would be fun to spoof on it. In fact, I really enjoyed making this short. Especially since I had a previous short, “Flexing Fascist” in the same vein.
Lastly, the line “straight black men are the white people of black people” is a real line taken from the website “The Root”. You can read it here. Many other lines are riffing on the demonization of what were once common sense principles 10+ years ago.
Art does imitate life!
The Production
I had a blast making this short. In fact, I probably had too much fun 😅. I hope it doesn’t cause me too many problems! The short was made back around the end of December 2025. This was a larger production than the previous ‘Character Moments’ short, and showed me a few of the flaws in the current V6 puppets. This was also the first short to use the secondary character puppet (SC_N) since my last long form short (which has not premiered yet). It functioned surprisingly well! I was scared because the last time I used the secondary puppet, it broke in the middle of production and made completing the short a nightmare. This time it was smooth as butter. I was pleasantly surprised. There are some key points of improvement for this puppet to make in the V7 update, but honestly, it’s a huge improvement.
My favorite part about making this short was the return of ‘Kitler’. In ‘Flexing Fascist’, I spent a lot of time making the German military outfit, but it wasn’t on screen for a long time in that short. It's not on screen for a long time in this short either, but I think the time it’s on is more impactful. I also took it a bit further for this short by race swapping the character. I thought the sudden surprise change would be funny (this wasn’t in the initial script, I added it towards the end of the production).
Unfortunately, in the vertical rendition of the short, there were some secondary jokes that went missing relating to the news ticker. I spent a lot of time on that joke, but it somehow got cropped out at the end! Lastly, I did enlist the aid of AI to write a fake news story in the ticker. I would have written it myself, but I figured it wouldn’t be on screen for too long, and the audience most likely wouldn’t pay attention to it.
Tools
🖥 Hardware
iPad Pro (2018)
Apple Pencil
Desktop PC/ M1 Macbook Pro
Wacom Cintiq 13hd
MXL 770
Tourbox Elite
⚙️ Software
Procreate
Adobe Premiere
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator
Toonboom Harmony Premium
11 Labs
-KS