Pen Pals is a Youtube channel ran by three people, all prominent figures on
r/comics, who seem to be good friends IRL (well, at least before The Doxx:tm
. All three of them share the love of the craft...joking, it's all NSFW content on Patreon.
Let's introduce our Pals, shall we?
First up,
Colm's Comics.
Colm's an Irish guy and a decently competent artist that's the workforce behind the channel. He was the guy that ran the whole thing, advertised it on his Reddit, made the most crossover comics of the three, as well as the host of the show.
His thing are long run comics of
either his own fantasy settings, or Pokemon.
He seems to be extremely horny for Lopunny, a Pokemon, as shown in one of his crossover comics, as you'll see later, some of the Pen Pals episodes,
as well as this work.
I have no idea what extent his current works go to, since the last Kemono leak of his happened two years ago,
but his Patreon page now shows the following tiers.
It does include NSFW content there, and. of course, the first tier that includes it is the most popular.
From the leaks I have,
this is probably his most NSFW work. Rest are implied blowjobs.
Colm LOVES drawing sexy men. Whenether he gets a chance to turn himself into a femboy, or draw a sexy male character (even if said character is only tangentially male), he will...which is concerning, considering he is at least engaged to a girl, maybe even married, and later had kids. He's very comptetent at it in
most cases, albeit there are times where he tries way too hard and fucks up real bad, like the episode 3, to which we'll get to. He's, however, also the person to most closely follow the prompts for the competitions, which automatically gives him an edge over the others.
Then...Pizzacake Comics.
She's - oh, come on, I don't need to explain who Pizzacake is in her literal thread.
I'll just go over some Pen Pals specific things I find worth pointing out.
See,
Ellen is the worst artist of the group. At times, it genuinely feels like this show only exists as an in-cheek way to teach Ellen how to draw, especially as the other two artists will comment, in real time, on the techniques they've used or what they've done, whilst winking at Ellen. She, however, never comments on her work in any way, other than to say how much better she is than the others, or to say something along the lines of "yeah, I couldn't really think of a good way to draw this, so I just...".
Yeah, Ellen has a chronic case of not following the prompt she is asked to, to the annoyance of the other people on the show. This, then, creates a lot of tension from the other two (sometimes more) people there, which causes massive arguments during the show's run. It often feels like the other two are just trying to explain something simple to her, but she won't accept it.
Besides that, Ellen will often make gooner jokes, joke about very sexual things, ect. Colm does this too, for instance, joking about leaning over to female cosplayers, his femboyness, or when drawing a sexy version of Elk to ask her "Are you aroused?", but Ellen will do that almost exclusively. Since she has no competition in the regular field, she will also only ever draw goonerbait...or zombies. We will get to the latter.
Then...
Hollering Elk Comics.
Elk's the closest Ellen has to a friend, it seems. She's a midwest girl who's the most competent artist of the group and who loves drawing gore and horror content.
She, however, also draws romantic stuff from time to time.
NSFW content she makes is, again, mostly gore.
Her nudity's usually a comedic punchline or a
mild, tasteful accentuation of a romantic scene.
Whereas Colm was all guys, she's all chicks, though mostly buff chicks. They're, like, polar opposites in that regard.
Another field in which they're opposites is related to Elk's greatest weakness, but also her greatest strength, her artstyle.
Elk's artstyle is very unique, detailed and grotesque. The problem, however, is that it's all she can really draw. Unlike Colm, she can't adapt to other artstyles at all. This makes her automatically lose in all competitions involving a different artstyle...then again, Ellen NEVER deviates from her artstyle because she simply can't draw, so they're tied on that front.
Each episode of Pen Pals (or, at least, most of them, can't be sure for them all) follows a very specific structure.
- A week before the episode, each artist gets a prompt to draw, following a theme. If it's something that involves another artist, another artist provides them with that prompt, and they provide their own prompt to another artist. They will then proceed to record a timelapse of themselves making that work.
- At the start of each episode, the previous episode winner gets a crown. That entitles them to go first in that episode.
- The three people play the said timelapses, one by one, explaining the techniques during the work, with the other artists asking about various things...usually unrelated to the work at hand. Usually just banter.
- At the end, the work is shown while the artists still banter about the work at hand. This can take many minutes and is extremely painful to sit through.
- After all three works are done, they are shown side by side, with the artists asking you to write in the comments which one you liked the best.
- Credits, during which Colm inserts witty remarks about the video you've just watched, like "has a thick Irish accent - Colm"
Each episode is around 30 minutes, though the shortest episode is around 15 minutes and the longest is around 50. There are 22 episodes in total, with only one after The Doxx:tm:, made after Colm had twins, as a bit of a tie-in to that.
