General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Dick Figures

Dick Figures is an American flash-animated comedy web series about two stick-figure friends, Red and Blue, created by Ed Skudder and Zack Keller, produced at the Los Angeles studio Six Point Harness, and distributed by Mondo Media on YouTube. The pilot, A Bee or Something, launched in 2010, and the series ran through 2014, producing five seasons, 50 episodes, and a 73-minute feature film.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Created by	Ed Skudder; written, directed, and produced with Zack Keller¹
First episode	A Bee or Something, 2010; first aired November 18, 2010¹^•³
Run	2010–2014, five seasons, 50 episodes²^•¹
Production	Six Point Harness, in association with Mondo Media¹
Feature film	Dick Figures: The Movie (2013), 73 minutes, funded by a record $314,411 Kickstarter campaign⁴^•⁵
Audience	99% positive rating and roughly 1 billion views during its 2010–2014 run, per co-creator Zack Keller²
Recognition	Nominations for Annie, Streamy, Webby, and International Academy of Web & Television awards²

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series follows two dysfunctional friends, Red and Blue, who, in the show's own tagline, make up for what they lack in smarts and sex appeal with a long string of bad decisions.² Red is voiced by Ed Skudder and Blue by Zack Keller; the recurring cast includes Lauren K. Sokolov as Stacy, Shea Logsdon as Pink, Austin Madison as Earl Grey, and Ben Tuller as Lord Tourettes.⁶^•⁷ The humor is crude and built on internet culture: episode titles include Chug-A-Chug-A-Brew-Brew and The Fart Knight Rises, and the characters emote with the memetic "rage faces" common on message boards.⁵^•⁸ The show carries mature ratings in most territories, TV-MA in the United States and R for the film.⁹^•⁷

Origin and production

The show grew out of an internal development project at Six Point Harness, where Skudder animated a short about two stick figures named Red and Blue. Studio development director Chapman Maddox saw the short and proposed developing it for the web, and Six Point partnered with Mondo Media, which distributed the series on its Mondo Mini Shows YouTube channel.¹⁰ Skudder and Keller, who met at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, wrote, directed, animated, and voiced the show themselves; Keller had previously worked as an editor at Pixar on Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up.¹⁰

Growth was rapid. By June 2011, when the second season launched, the series had passed 17 million views on YouTube.¹⁰ By July 2012, near the end of its fourth season, it had accumulated 135 million views in 18 months, averaged over four million unique views a week, and held a 99 percent positive rating; its first t-shirt order sold out in eight hours.¹¹ The Los Angeles Times reported 350 million views in the series' first three years.⁵ Keller's own site puts the total at roughly one billion views across the 2010–2014 run, and Skudder's site cites almost half a billion cross-platform views; the figures differ because they were measured at different times and scopes.²^•¹

Dick Figures: The Movie

In May 2012, Skudder and Keller launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance a feature film. It became the highest-funded animation project on Kickstarter at the time, and finished at $314,411, breaking the record for the most money raised for an animated project.¹¹^•⁴ The 73-minute film was produced at Six Point Harness by a small team in under a year and set for digital release on September 17, 2013, through a partnership with YouTube, distributor Mondo Media, digital distribution company Cinedigm, and video-on-demand technology company Yekra.⁴^•⁵ The plot sends Red and Blue around the world to find a powerful artifact.¹²

Release model. To reward the fan funding, the film was released for free on YouTube in twelve chapters, with the option to buy the complete film from Mondo Media's website. Six Point Harness recouped its investment in three weeks, and YouTube dubbed the strategy the "Dick Figures model".⁴ The film was later drawn frame by frame in Flash, a rarity for feature-length animation; a survey of the medium identified it as one of only two such features.⁸ It holds an R rating and a 6.5/10 IMDb score.⁷

Music and merchandise

Soundtracks covering all five seasons and the film feature music and score by Nick Keller, with guest artists including the comedy-music duo Ninja Sex Party, who also performed Dick Figures: The Movie - The Song.¹^•⁴ Merchandise demand grew alongside the audience, with soundtracks, apparel, and other products sold online.¹¹

Reception and legacy

The series drew award nominations for Annie Awards directing, International Academy of Web & Television Best Animated Series, Streamy Awards Best Animated Series, and Webby Awards Best Writing.² On IMDb it holds a 7.7/10 rating from 743 user votes.¹³ Six Point Harness CEO Brendan Burch credited Mondo Media with building the show into the number-one animated series on YouTube within a year of launch.¹⁴ The trademark registration for the name, filed by Six Point Harness in 2011, records a first use in commerce of November 1, 2010.¹⁵ Skudder's site describes the series as a cult hit of what it calls the internet's golden age of animation.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 1999 to 2016

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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