| This article is about the series' creator. For the character, see noogai3. |
| For the channel, see Alan Becker's YouTube channel. |
Alan Becker is an American animator and YouTuber. He is the creator of Animator vs. Animation and its accompanying franchise, where he portrays noogai3. He also appears on his side channel Animators VS Games where he plays various games with his friend DJ Welch, who is also an animator.
Life & Career
Alan Becker was born on May 18th, 1989, in Dublin, Ohio, alongside with his sister Harmony Becker, who is a cartoonist and an illustrator. He grew up living with his parents, sister, and a brother.
Becker, since his youth, has been fascinated with the world of 2D traditional animation. Some of his favorite cartoon series included Looney Tunes and the short Daffy Duck short Duck Amuck which would later inspire the creation of his famous franchise Animator vs. Animation.[1]
Growing up in a financially struggling family, Becker claimed that his family owned merely one computer that was shared between him and his siblings. He only got limited access to the computer.
It was through this computer that he began experimenting with pixel art, beginning in 2001.
In 2005, he was home-schooled through an online training course which provided him with his first laptop. This laptop would motivate him to "experiment" with animations, and entered a course for Macromedia Flash to learn the topic in-depth. He began animating with Macromedia Flash (later Adobe Flash and currently Adobe Animate) After some time discovering the entertainment website Newgrounds, the first animation of his filmography Pink Army was produced.
Early Years
Some time after the reception of Pink Army, Becker animated the short Animator vs. Animation that depicted a stick figure fighting with its creator (noogai3) in an application (Macromedia Flash) on Windows. It was uploaded to Newgrounds on June 3, 2006, and earned 2nd place on the site the next morning. However, this was just heating up Becker's record over the internet.
Several website owners contacted Becker asking to host the animation on their website, one of which who offered $75 at the price of a contract that gave exclusive rights to the animation. Due to personal household struggles, Becker nearly signed the contract until Steven Lerner emailed him, warning him of the consequences if Becker were to follow through, because if he signed it, he wouldn't be able to post his animation anywhere else since the total ownership of his animation would not go to Alan; so he didn't post his contract for the incentive.[1]
eBaum's World
The website eBaum's World hosted Animator vs. Animation without Becker's permission as a "Weekly Best of the Web" post (for which the site was infamous of doing to many other video creators). Steven Lerner and many other people at the time were on a legal campaign to fight against eBaum's World's theft of images/videos without permission of the content creator, including Animator vs. Animation as one of many victimized flash animations that fought with the case.
In a while, eBaum's World discovered that Becker was in contact with Lerner. Becker described his concern at the moment as, "getting paid for my work and keeping rights to my animation". The company compromised by offering $250 to host the animation, which he accepted. Afterwards, the site pressured him to create a testimonial that would restore the company's "tainted" image. Lerner later created a blog post that described Becker "selling" him out, and after ongoing conversations with Lerner, Becker returned the profits to demand eBaum's World to remove the video and the testimonial from the site.
Becker's animation was found across the web, but had not received any formal credit or profits from it. Atomfilms (now CC Studios) approached Becker to fund the creation of a sequel known as Animator vs. Animation 2. It released on November 4, 2006. Within the animation, Becker included his real AOL username, which ended up with him discontinuing his account there, due to massive amounts of text messages from strangers. Charles Yeh managed to contact Becker in the flooding spam to create a game based on the animation. The two collaborated to create Animator vs. Animation: The Game.[1]
With YouTube beginning to trend in 2007, Becker wanted to begin to start uploading the series on the platform. However, other copies of the exact same animation were already uploaded there. Each of them had over a million views. After reporting these duplicates as copyright infringements, Alan was able to ascend the search results as an official content creator. The public demanded the release of a third film, described as the "epic finale" to the trilogy by ending the user's computer with a blue screen of death. It was meant to be a shelved series that helped Becker's attempt to pursue animation and get a career at Pixar Studios. However, the request to join their internship was denied for two years consecutively.[1]
During his time in college, he created a variety of films with classmates, students and teachers that gave their own unique story and environment as seen with the short Lumin in 2013.[2]
Animator vs. Animation Reboot
Becker's professor and/or instructor Thomas Richner at Columbia College of Arts and Design advised that Becker move forward with the Animator vs. Animation series due to its large fan base and unique potential, which values more than working professionally at a company. After his graduation, he started a kick-starter campaign to fund for a fourth film. After the release of Animator vs. Animation 4 in October 2, 2014, his subscriber count grew to over one-hundred thousand. The large exponential increase of followers gave motivation to create another installment that came to be Animation vs. Minecraft which put him at one million in less than a month.[1] Unlike the previous four films, outsourced labor was used this movie forward.[3]
Two years later, Becker began production on Animation vs. YouTube that required him to contact thousands of other content creators on YouTube such as PewDiePie, Smosh and Zach King. It was delayed due to his personal life events, one of which included his marriage and first child.[4] It reached public audiences on August 3, 2017.
On November 18, 2017, Becker debuted a pilot short which became the AVM Series. Midway through Season 1, he announced a second series AVA Shorts which revolves around the return of The Chosen One and The Dark Lord, antagonists of the original trilogy.[5] For the fifth and sixteenth episodes of the AVM Shorts series, Becker commissioned Aaron Grooves for the special note block music.
In November 29, 2019, Becker announced he now has his own tutorial series (in collaboration with Bloop Animation) that goes in-depth with the entire process of how each of the episodes/movies are made and includes an exclusive animation that is inspired by Animator vs. Animation.[6][7]
He has a second channel called "Alan Becker Tutorials" in which he shared tutorials and Animation Flash. It is currently inactive.
Becker is married to an author of Mochi Magic and a cook specializing in Japanese cuisine, Kaori in February 10, 2010. Alan made an announced on July 27, 2017 that he became a father.
Filmography
| The main article can be found here: Alan Becker |
Alan Becker's YouTube Channels
Alan Becker
Alan Becker is Alan's main channel, being the home of the Animator vs. Animation Franchise as well as other animations made by him.
AlanBeckerTutorials
AlanBeckerTutorials is a channel in which Alan shows some Flash Tutorials. This channel is currently inactive. It was created on September 26th, 2011.
AlanBeckerMinecraft
AlanBeckerMinecraft is a channel where Alan plays Minecraft. The channel originally started as a showcase video for his SpiritedAwayMinecraft project (which was later renamed GhibliCraft). This turned into a Minecraft network that developed more game modes unrelated to Studio Ghibli and more related to his main work, AvA. As a result, the entire admin team decided to split the game modes and the Ghibli side into two servers: AlanBeckerMC (ABMC for short) and GhibliCraft. The channel and (both) servers are still owned by Alan Becker himself, but the day-to-day operations has been handed over to the admins of both ABMC and GhibliCraft, the latter of which is now also producing content for this YouTube channel. The channel was created on December 9, 2013.
Animators VS Games
Animators VS Games is a channel where Alan Becker and his friend DJ Welch play many different games. They have collaborated with TheOdd1sOut, Skip the Tutorial, Jaiden Animations, and many other YouTubers. This channel is currently very active! It was created on August 20th, 2018.
Alan Becker Clips
This channel cuts parts of his videos into YouTube Shorts clips. It was created on March 19th, 2021.
Alan Plays
Alan Plays is a music channel of Alan playing the otamatone. It is currently inactive. It was created on March 19th, 2021, the same day the Alan Becker Clips channel was created.
Videos
Gallery
| Gallery |
|---|
 Alan Becker logo  logo  atom.com profile  Alan Becker and Charles Yeh atom.com profile  Twitter banner  alanbeckersupport eBay profile  Alan sitting with the Stick Figures.  Alan with headphones.  Newgrounds profile picture  Alan as a stick figure. |
Trivia
- On September 29th, 2020, Alan posted a GIF on his Twitter showing Green as a stick bug, in reference to a meme. (The GIF was animated by @ellis02magson)
| “is this meme dead yet?” — Tweet description, Twitter |
- On May 18th, 2022, Alan posted an animation on his Twitter made by Able Rai, one of his animators, for his birthday.
- His favorite scene in AvA whole, is The Second Coming using his enormous laser beam, as it is shown five other times.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 The Story of Animator vs. Animation - 10 Year Anniversary by Alan Becker (June 3, 2016)
- ↑ Lumin (2013) by Columbia College of Art and Design
- ↑ Behind the Scenes - Animation vs. Minecraft by Alan Becker (December 14, 2015)
- ↑ I have an announcement! by Alan Becker (July 26, 2017)
- ↑ Villagers - Animation vs. Minecraft Shorts Ep. 9 by Alan Becker (July 18, 2018)
- ↑ I made a Stick Figure Animation Course! by Alan Becker (November 29, 2019)
- ↑ Stick Figure Animation by Alan Becker on Bloop Animation