By Andrew Lovdahl
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Monday, Jan. 29, The OG, arts

“RED VS. BLUE,” an animated comedy series created by Texas-based Rooster Teeth Productions, follows the misadventures of two teams of futuristic soldiers stationed in a desolate canyon. The show is released episode by episode from the “Red vs. Blue” Web site, which also supports a MySpace-esque community of more than 500,000 fans.

The show's creators use an alternative to traditional animation known as “machinima” (machine + cinema + animation), which involves “capturing” footage from a video game (in this case, the “Halo” series) and audio overlays. The production team members lend their voice talents to the characters, recording dialogue beforehand and then puppeteering their “Halo” characters to match the audio.

Each episode feeds directly into the next, as opposed to nonserial shows such as “The Simpsons,” where episodes are viewed independent of one another.

At the end of each season (about 20 episodes), a compilation DVD is released along with a multitude of special features, including several entertaining “public service announcements” and specials that are not part of the main storyline. This special, arguably the most popular among fans, deals with the various differences between reality and the Internet.

The teams and characters

Although the teams are in the midst of a civil war, only one or two of the 10-plus characters are inclined to do any fighting. As Simmons, a sycophantic Red Team subordinate, observes, the only reason that either team has a base in the remote canyon is because the other side has one.

“If we were to pull out today,” he says, “and they were to come take over our base, they'd have two bases in the middle of a box canyon.”

However, most of the characters are also completely incapable of formulating military strategies, so whether they want to fight is irrelevant. For example, a Blue team member, fittingly named Caboose, keeps crayons in his gun and has inadvertently killed or maimed his teammate Church on multiple occasions.

The dialogue is absolutely hilarious (albeit very crude), and the relationships between the characters also provide a great deal of humor.

The people behind the series

The main creator of “Red vs. Blue,” Burnie Burns, began his career as a tech support director. His college friends, Matt Hullum and Joel Heyman, had moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of work in Hollywood; Hullum worked in visual effects while Heyman was an actor.

Burnie, who remained in Texas, met two friends named Gus Sorola and Geoff Fink. These men had spent much of their adulthood playing video games and drinking alcohol, as well as maintaining a Web site about playing video games while drunk.

Burnie Burns, creator of “Red vs. Blue”

Identifying with the pair's sense of humor, Burns started writing for their Web site. His other coworkers included Jason Saldana, a “psuedo-homeless kid” who seldom showered, and a “cheese-loving, shoe-hating hippie” named Dan Godwin.

Burns was making gameplay videos from “Halo: Combat Evolved” to put on the Web site when he realized that he could create a full-fledged show with the “Halo” engine. (Although Burns' idea was original, he was not the first person to come up with the idea.)

Burns' friends did not take his idea seriously, and sometime later Sorola and Fink's Web site shut down. (During a visit to the University of Illinois campus in October, Burns claimed that Sorola accidentally deleted all of the files in one of his more inebriated states.)

When a gaming magazine contacted Fink about using an old Mac commercial parody (see it here), the old team resolved to create a new Web site to take advantage of the exposure from the magazine.

Burns convinced them to center the Web site around his “Halo” gameplay movies. Soon Hullum and Heyman were onboard as well (presumably because working on the “Scooby Doo” movie left something to be desired).

The series takes off

“Red vs. Blue” is indisputably the most widespread and popular machinima series on the Internet. The episode lengths vary widely; most are five minutes or less, but the longest is over 15. Length has to be restricted because larger files would use more expensive bandwidth.

To compensate for the brevity, episodes are released about once a week (during a season, at least). About 20 episodes combine to constitute a season that, when viewed end to end, plays like a movie.

However, season finales are sometimes less than conclusive. For example, at the end of Season 4 a character was abruptly flattened beneath an incoming ship and his fate was unknown until early Season 5, which debuted in late September 2006.

Death and violence in “RvB”

The show is not at all graphic, but death is treated extremely lightly. In fact, two of the main characters have been dead since Season 1, but they have since returned in “spirit form.” The only things different about their lives is that they are translucent and capable of traveling from physical host to physical host.

In Season 2 the two deceased soldiers “possessed” a teammate and were able to travel freely inside his brain, represented by a large, mostly empty “Halo” map — “It's bigger than I thought it would be,” comments one soldier — that was populated by mental images of all the main characters.

All of these projections were either inaccurate or extremely exaggerated; one character's Southern accent was mistaken for a pirate accent, while the possessed character's mental self-projection was that of an eloquent, strong-willed hero.

Maybe one reason death is treated so mildly in “Red vs. Blue” is because in the “Halo” games, death is even more trivial. Players may survive for less than 10 seconds in some of the more chaotic maps.

In a Season 3 episode, the Rooster Teeth writers made fun of this aspect of “Halo” by placing two main characters right in the midst of a typical multiplayer game of “Halo.” Each flag-obsessed side orchestrates reckless suicidal charges for a few minutes, dishing out insults in Internet-speak, and when all of them have died they leap back up and do it again, all to the confusion of the main characters.

A closer look at the characters

Besides the distant, unintelligent, and endlessly quotable Caboose and the short-tempered, vulgar Church, the Blue team contains a smart-alecky soldier named Tucker and a violent female mercenary named Tex, who is by far the most capable soldier in the canyon. A paranoid, pacifist medic (who claims his official title is “medical super-private first class”) named DuFresne, but always referred to as “Doc,” is usually associated with the Blues as well.

The ranks of the Red team include similarly inept troops. They are led by Sarge, who speaks with a heavy Southern accent and is fiercely loyal to the Red army cause; his subordinates are Grif, Simmons, and Donut.

These characters' relationships are explicitly illustrated in a Season 3 scene when the team has come under attack. Sarge commands Donut to “scream like a woman,” and Donut agreeably begins flailing his arms and running aimlessly around.

Sarge tells Simmons to compliment him at will, and Simmons quickly responds with lavish praise. Finally, Sarge instructs Grif to prepare to sacrifice himself for a nearby commanding officer, and Grif snidely responds by requesting permission to assist Donut.

Most of the action takes place in “Halo” map Blood Gulch, a nondescript canyon, but Season 3 and Season 4 occur all over the place; in the 4th season (which is my personal favorite) most of the Blues embark on a “sacred quest” through varying climates.

The teams share a couple of common enemies, most notably a maniacal artificial intelligence program named O'Malley, who can take over any soldier whose armor can support his technology. He has spent most of the series occupying Doc, whose personality is almost the complete opposite of the scheming O'Malley. Wyoming, a British mercenary who works for O'Malley, is another villain.

If you want more …

The one downside is that since the episodes are serial, watching a random episode may be confusing and feel like one big inside joke. However, all the episodes are hosted on sites like Google Video and YouTube; they are also available for download on the “Red vs. Blue” Web site and machinima.com.

Also, if this sounds like something you'd like to watch, an Agora Days class has been proposed for just that purpose (approval pending).

Here's a memorable excerpt from Season 4, when Doc has just made a highly questionable diagnosis:

Doc: It's true, your friend Tucker [spoiler removed]. See, my little gizmo lights up green to indicate [spoiler].

Church: I thought it lights up green to indicate flesh wounds.

Doc: Yeah. Also that.

Church: And infectious diseases.

Doc: Heh. Yeah, it lights up green for just about everything. It takes awhile to figure out the difference. Like this green indicates a high level of anger stemming from suppressed feelings of inadequacy.

Church: If that thing keeps talking bad about me I'm gonna … smash it.

Doc: And this green means impotency. Oops, actually that green causes impotency. My bad, Church.