 |
This Article Contains Spoilers -
WARNING: This article contains major spoilers. If you do not wish to know vital information on plot / character elements in a story, you may not wish to read beyond this warning: We hold no responsibility for any negative effects these facts may have on your enjoyment of said media should you continue. That is all. |
Ballista is a major antagonist in Season 3 of the Animator vs. Animation web series.
He is a member of the mercenary team hired by Victim and Agent to assist them in their plans of getting revenge on the Animator and the Chosen One. Tiny but aggressive, Ballista can shapeshift his body and has supernatural speed and strength.
Appearance[]
Ballista is a short, pixelated stick figure with a filled-in white head. He can shapeshift his body, allowing him to split his head in half to reveal a machine gun, or make large teeth that take up half his head when shown.
History[]
"Mercenary Tryouts"[]
Sometime between August 2018 and April 2023, Rocket Corp held auditions at their headquarters in search for new mercenaries to recruit for the company. Many stick figures headed over to put their skills into play to become the next potential mercenary to join Agent and Victim in their quest for vengeance by being placed in a box to attack a worker and show their divergent abilities. After each stick figure was done with their audition, Agent would then rank their efficiency and effectiveness on a graded scale with the top three stick figures joining Agent as a team.
Ballista would rank third highest, showcasing his skill by summoning an army of weaponry from his split head and attacking the worker with it. He ended up one of the three finalists, alongside Hazard and Primal.
Wanted - Animator vs. Animation 9[]
Ballista is introduced chasing after the Chosen One alongside Hazard, Agent and Primal, endangering the citizens of the city they're in. Alongside his teammates, he is on a hoverbike that shoots out glitchy bullets that corrupt anything they touch. Eventually, the Chosen One gets the idea of distracting the four mercenaries while he goes to get the Second Coming to help. He first kicks away Ballista's hoverbike before summoning a thunderstorm that briefly takes out its power.
By the time we return to the mercenaries, Ballista and his teammates rebegin their chase on ground. When they notice the Second Coming, Agent realizes he's working alongside his target and tries to kill him, with Ballista joining him. Once the Second Coming uses his pencil to create animals to defeat his opponents, Agent tells Ballista to attack. He throws away his gun and runs in a different direction to open up his mouth and reveal a machine gun, before summong two guns of his own from nowhere. Once the Second Coming creates a shark to defeat him, he starts pummeling it before launching it into the air. He then knocks out a second shark, but is crushed by the first one.
After a few minutes, Ballista creates a gigantic sword (and superhero cape) to slice the sharks in half. Before he, Hazard and Primal could kill the Second Coming, Agent interrupts them and challenges his enemy to a one-on-one fight. During this, the remaining mercs hold down the injured Chosen One to stop him from fighting. However, he manages to throw them all off him and tries to kill Agent, but he simply pauses him mid-flight. The four mercs then take the two stick figures back with them, them laying on Ballista's ship.
Back at the Rocket Corp headquarters, the Second Coming and the Chosen One are imprisoned and the former's pencil is taken away for experimentation. The mercenaries then go to their boss, Victim, to inform him the mission has been accomplished.
The Box - Animator vs. Animation 10[]
The five villains go visit the Chosen One, Victim entering the box he's trapped in while Agent operates it from a computer. Ballista watches as Victim decides to toy with the Chosen One and torment him, seemingly bored and unimpressed. After more torture, Victim decides to question the Chosen One about the Animator.
Halfway through, some scientists come in with the Second Coming, who was briefly questioned. At the same time, Victim decides to search through the Chosen One's memories to see anything; they find out the Second Coming possesses superpowers, causing everyone present to react in shock; even the Second Coming is surprised, having amnesia from the one time he used them. After locking up the Second Coming in a steel cage, Victim searches through more of the Chosen One's memories and finds out one of the orange stick figure's friends, Yellow, found a way to summon the Animator to the Outernet. He immediately puts a bounty on his head, only to turn out Yellow and his friends sneaked into the organization's building. Agent arrests him while Victim prepares his revenge against the Animator.
Hacker - Animator vs. Animation 12[]
While Victim and Agent take off with a paused Chosen One to get their revenge, the mercenaries stay at Rocket Corp headquarters. While hanging out together, Primal hears Green, Red and Blue crawling through the vents and tells his coworkers to split and search for the intruders. Ballista runs off and bumps into Red, the two entering a battle. Since Red is clearly outmatched physically, he instead relies on dodging Ballista's attacks and running off to safety. After locking himself in the janitor's closet, he tries to find something to use while Ballista is slowly busting the door down. Taking use of the powerstrip and blowtorch, he ties the merc up with the powerstrip's cable, bashes him in the head with the blowtorch and then uses it to weld the door shut. After briefly celebrating, he runs off once Ballista tries to break out.
Personality[]
Ballista's body language shows him to be someone angry, aggressive and impatient: His means of fighting the Second Coming are rather violent compared to the other mercs, his walk after Victim puts a hit out on Yellow shows him to be rather angry, he was seemingly annoyed with Victim's torture of the Chosen One, etc. That said, he is also shown to be sadistic as proven by his large grin when he searches for the Chosen One. He is seemingly angry Agent stopped him from killing the Second Coming, implying he loves fighting. Despite this, he is shown to be relatively chill off the job, with him and Hazard having a casual conversation before Primal interrupts them.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Superhuman attributes: Ballista is shown to be vastly superior to the likes of the Second Coming, who can already perform feats far beyond those of normal humans.
- Teamwork: Ballista works alongside three other mercenaries and cooperates with them perfectly.
- Marksmanship: While his aim is far from perfect, Ballista can easily operate a gun.
- Shapeshifting: Ballista can easily shift his body into whatever he wants, most often weaponry. He can make guns, rockets, cannons and fireworks emerge from his split-in-half head to bombard enemies; suddenly gain a massive set of teeth; pull out a large sword out of nowhere; or apparently grow a superhero cape out of his body.
- Swordsmanship: Ballista has a sword strong enough to cut sharks in half, and operates it easily.
Weaknesses[]
- Impulsiveness: Ballista is aggressive, as shown in both his personality and fighting style. This can be used against him as he doesn't think much, as shown when he tries to bust a door open instead of just pulling it.
- Lack of fighting experience: While unbelievably powerful, Ballista seemingly has no prior combat experience before being hired by Rocket Corp. Because of this, Red - who has no superpowers but almost a decade's worth of experience adventuring - can best him in battle.
- Doors: Bizarrely, despite his power, Ballista has trouble breaking down doors as seen when several guns, a laser and a rocket launcher do nothing to open one. This seems to be in reference to his original animation, where he pulled out all the stops to open a door.
Trivia[]
- Ballista is a direct reference to the famous 壁砕き animation, better known by its translation Wall Breaker or just Stickman VS Door, with the titular stickman being confirmed to be called Ballista by the video's creator, hence why we know his name.
- That said, series creator Alan Becker has also said he likes the name Pixel. The character's official stand-in name is "Merc (Pixel)", as shown in the popularity polls.
- His production name was eventually revealed to be EZToon, after the animation program he came from. It's not considered his canon name.
- He's been called Henry Stickmin by DJ Welch, a friend of Alan Becker.
- Ballista makes a quick cameo in the Actual Shorts episode "Corn Dog Guy", showing the events of "Wanted" through the perspective of an unlucky corn dog salesman.
- Ballista took the second-to-last place on the 2024 popularity poll with 218 votes, ranking 15th. He then took 17th place at the 2025 poll with 650 votes.
- His placement in the tryouts shows that he's the least powerful of the three Mercenaries. While it's easy to see why Hazard is considered more powerful (since his ability to generate a nuke is more destructive that the weapons Ballista can shapeshift his body into), it's not clear why Primal is more powerful than him since their powersets are similar and Ballista's weaponry is based on firearms while Primal's is made up of rudimental weapons. It's possible that Primal's ability to generate tendrils and his sheer physical strenght were deemed by Agent to surpass Ballista in terms of utility rather than power.
[]
 Villains
| ||
|
Stick Figures Hostile Mobs Other Video Games YouTube Others Non-Canon | ||