Indie animation... I am all for breathing new blood into art, and I do love to see alternatives to what we have animation-wise. Not only does it feel refreshing, but it encourages creativity too, especially is the project both has a solid premises and the writing to back it. However if there's one personal problem that I have with most of these indie pilots, even when said pilot is great (small budget or not)... it's 100% the lack of proper villains.
I know not every story needs a villain or an antagonist, but if you really do want to introduce an overarching narrative within an episodic format (which is something most of these pilots like doing), give us your big bad. They don't have to be the main focus, but it helps to set them up immediately so the audience gets an idea of exactly what kind of threat is going to make the lives of these protagonists worse. So allow me to give some flowers to some of the pilots that not only introduce their villains, but have done so effectively.
Lackadaisy proved to be a pretty solid pilot, which makes sense because the comic it was based off already had some juicy details to build off of. However what made me eager to see this show actually make it beyond the pilot was the introduction of Asa Sweet immediately after the ruthless Mordecai Heller was defeated. In contrast to Mordecai's more composed and uber-serious demeanor, Sweet is your traditional cigar chomping mob boss who is as professional as he is casual, one who clearly recognizes the problem that Lackidaisy as a problem for his business. We don't get a lot of him, but what we do get has clear potential.
The Amazing Digital Circus on the other hand takes a different approach with its villain in the pilot. Caine is introduced right away, but he's more suspicious instead of actively heinous. You're introduced to the concept of abstracting and the whole fake exit, but never once is he painted as a deliberate instigator. Instead you just get the feeling that he might not continue being as pleasant as he presents himself to be, and oh boy does the actual show give one helluva payoff (so far, please do NOT share the leaks).
In contrast, we have Knights of Guinevere, a Disney critique that gives us the promise of an extremely psychotic and broken foe. Olivia Park is the daughter of Orville Park, a Walt Disney expy who is a brilliant artist and a flawed man. While she easily could've been written as just a spoiled nepobaby, Olivia is written as an obsessive lunatic and a hollowed out little girl, even as a frail old woman. She feels dead inside, she's making it everyone else's problem, and she intends to make those problems worse if it means mending her wounded soul.
And after that darker project is a more comical series, Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl, a Magical Girl subversion with a villain that feels like she can still do a lot of damage. Lady Devoid is still relatively new, but based off what we have and some art from the creator, she is going to be the big bad of this show who's doing her work through her more laughable lackey, Eclipse. She hasn't done much yet, but she is the one who gave Eclipse some deadly power, and it's clearly only a taste of what would be to come. Ultimately, once the pilot finishes you know that she's going to throw whatever corrupted foes and shadowy monsters she can at our hero.
And finally we have Gameoverse, which admittedly... has a solid antagonistic force despite everything else not clicking into place so far. Warrick, despite his appearance and more comically evil henchmen, is not only kinda funny, but the little snippet we get about his motive is actually wonderful. His home was presumably destroyed so now he is out assisting heroes of different game worlds in order to destroy said game worlds and harvest their energy for the sole purpose of rebuilding worlds that have already been destroyed. He isn't out to merely rule or destroy a universe, he's out to rebuild it even if it means ruining countless lives in the process. We learn just enough about him to understand his deal, and to top it all off we actually see the lengths he's willing to go through, meaning his villainy can only go up from here.
So overall, if your indie animation is going to have a main antagonist, best introduce them early in some way, shape, or form. Introduce their minions, introduce snippets of them at the start of their saga, make their first appearance deliver a fraction of the weight their appearances within the actual greenlit show might carry. Just bring on the bad guys as soon as ya can!
