Spread

The following month, on June 14th, 2001, Cicierega released “The Japanese Pokerap.” Occasionally cited as the first Animutation. On Newgrounds, the video received more than 132,000 views in 17 years. On April 27th, 2012, YouTuber Ashkdies posted the video to YouTube. The post received more than 10,000 views in six years (Animutation Archive reupload shown below, left).

Later that year, on November 26th, 2001, Animutation artist Veloso released “Irrational Exuberance.” The video was reuploaded to YouTube on January 20th, 2010, where it received more than 150,000 views in nearly nine years (4K repload shown below, right).

Precursor

Cutout Animation

Animutation shares many of the traits of “Cutout Animation,” found in the work of seminal British sketch comedy group Monty Python, or the American animated series South Park (Python example below, left). The first recorded use of cutout animation was produced by Argentinian animator Quirino Cristiani in the early 1900s (example below, right).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdhyrPq3Jxc

Hatten är din (the hat is yours!)

Even though “The Japanese Pokerap” is established as the ever first Animutation, several fans of the Animutation genre of flash animation believe that the 2000 video *”Hatten är din”:/memes/hatten-ar-din-the-hat-is-yours can be considered as the first Animutation seeing as it bears the necessary qualities of an Animutation and precedes “The Japanese Pokerap” by about a year (shown below). Cicierega has cited this video as an influence.

Fanimutations

On February 15th, 2005, the Wiki “Fanmutations” launched. Currently, the site holds a large list of different videos, many of which exist on Newgrounds, Animutation Portal, YouTube, and Albino Blacksheep. Fanimutations are generally created with flash, and though many creators have uploaded versions of the videos to YouTube, they retain a higher quality in their original format.

Recurring Animutation Characters

Some popularly known people and fictional characters often recur in several Animutations. This list contains the most notable of those characters.

Real People

Fictional Characters

Original Characters

Copyright Infringement

Because of legal issues concerning some pop culture characters being featured in Animutations, some of the videos had to be edited so as to be posted on YouTube again.

One notable example is an Animutation known as JamezBond. After Randy Costan filed a copyright claim against using his image in videos not his, the creator of the Animutation, Dwedit replaced Peter Pan Guy with a green silhouette version of the man with text below him that reads “DMCA Violation.”