Netflix announced back in June 2022 that for the past two years an animated series from a YouTube channel has been in the works. The new show is about a boy inspired by James Rallison’s YouTube channel The Odds1Out. The show, called Oddballs, will air on Netflix on October 7th.
Here is the trailer:
Oddballs is created by Rallison and Ethan Banville, both of who also serve as executive producers, along with Carl Faruolo and Michael Zoumas, with production in association with Atomic Cartoons.
The summary of the series is: Oddballs follows James, a bubble-shaped boy, whose observations on life fuel his comedic rants at everyday annoyances and elevates them to laughably absurd heights. Along with his best friends Max (a talking crocodile) and Echo (a girl who claims to be from the future), James’ ridiculous schemes to question norms often result in disaster.
Voice casts includes James Rallison as himself, Julian Gant as Max, Kimberly Brooks as Echo, Gary Anthony Williams as Mr McFly, and Carl Faruolo as Stuart.
In a recent video from September 24th, The Odds1Out uploaded a video giving advice and tips and what to expect when you are pitching a story idea. In the video, James also gave background into what it was like for him and Ethan to find someone who would approve their show pitch idea. He shared the story of what happened on the very first pitch meeting. After pitching their idea, an executive told James that “no studio would ever want to work with a YouTuber.” The Odds1Out YouTube channel was created on August 30th, 2014 and currently has 18.2 million subscribers.
They first pitched to Netflix in the beginning of 2020, but did not get greenlit to make the show until August 2020. Given that by then the world was shutting down, this meant that the entire production was created during the lockdowns with little to no human interaction. This includes the writing, storyboarding, designing, and voicing acting.
Check out these two videos to see the announcement from June and the latest video from September 24th talking about his experience with making the new animated series:
James Rallison is currently running his third gaming Kickstarter campaign. The first two were from 2018 and 2020, with both being successfully funded for two different card games. The latest Kickstarter is an interactive puzzle adventure that incorporates augmented reality via mobile phones and tablets. It was fully funded on Launch Day on September 24th. The campaign ends on October 25th.
If you are interested in learning more about the Kickstarter campaign, click the link here:
What do you think of seeing a YouTuber getting their own animated series on a major streaming platform? Are you interested in watching it? Let us know!
