Junkyard King Chapter 3 is a riveting inter-dimensional romp from a 1.5-person crew
Henry Daubrez's Junkyard King Chapter 3 sends Artie, Kai and a mechanical crow through a gate into Avalon, a riveting romp with a punk manga look and a shape-shifting score. He made it with a crew of one and a half in four weeks, though invideo supports the compute, which he puts at $1,000 to $1,500 a finished minute.
A boy in a leather jacket and a Misfits T-shirt walks out of a wall of pink light in a rain-dark forest, a glowing sword hanging from one hand. A red-haired kid with round glasses and what appears to be a homemade weapon of some sort follows him through, while a mechanical crow keeps watch from the trees. The gate has been open for three weeks, and on the other side is Avalon.
That is the setup of "The Other Side", Chapter 3 of Junkyard King, the original animated series created and directed by Henry Daubrez (@henrydaubrez) under his studio Odd Kid. He posted it on X on Wednesday 7 October, with the full episode on YouTube the same minute, and it is a riveting inter-dimensional romp that is bursting with nostalgia. It is our creator pick, and we will be coming back to watch it again.
A romp that wears its nostalgia well
Artie, Kai and Socket the crow go through the gate looking for a missing girl, Emily, and the episode turns into a long walk, a chase and a big fight. Along the way it drops a few pop culture references that made us smile. Before the trek begins, one of the boys says: "You remember that scene in Willow where they leave the Nelwyn village and head for the crossroads... Well, this is exactly that, so we walk a lot." Later, Kai starts a "Goonies never say" line, and you can finish it yourself.
Those nods fit a series set in the early 90s, which Daubrez has said draws on Explorers, The NeverEnding Story, Arthurian myth and shonen manga. Artie and Kai feel both familiar and novel at the same time, and we already identify and empathize with parts of both of their personalities. The fantasy realm they land in gives the show free agency to bring in wild and wonderful characters, and it does not disappoint.
A look somewhere between punk manga and Gorillaz
The animation style lands somewhere between punk manga, anime, early hand-drawn studio animation and a grown-up version of the characters Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of Tank Girl, drew for Gorillaz, the designs that gave that band such an iconic and memorable look. The world is rich and layered, with an instantly recognizable color palette and character wardrobe: rain-soaked teal forest, hot pink magic, a Misfits jacket and a plaid overshirt you would know from a single frame.
That is a read of the style, not of the method. The frames themselves are painterly, stylized images generated and composited by the team, not drawn by hand, and Daubrez is open about that.
A soundtrack that keeps changing gear
The soundtrack is a standout. It feels part 90s grunge, part orchestral Final Fantasy battle music and part progressive rock, with flavors of Dream Theater and Mick Gordon's DOOM score, and part Prince of Persia, using the Phrygian dominant mode to build tension and intrigue. The music is credited to Pink Static, the in-world band Daubrez produces the show's songs under, and the episode closes on one of their pop-rock tracks. He has not said which tools made the score or the voices for this chapter, although diving into threads on Pink Static elsewhere suggests that Suno might be in use here.
How a crew of one and a half made it
Daubrez's launch post calls it a 16-minute, "feature-quality" animated episode made by a tiny team in under a month. In replies on X he put the crew at "1.5 person": he wrote, art directed, edited and handled sound, music and animation, while the artist Julie Wieland made additional visual art and shots. He said it took four weeks at about 60 hours a week for him. The YouTube upload runs 16:05; the cut on X runs 15:20, with roughly 14 and a half minutes of story before the credits.
He also named his tools in those replies and earlier posts. He switched to Seedance 2.5, ByteDance's audio and video model, for this chapter, and did post-production in After Effects and the edit in Premiere. The end card reads "Made in collaboration with invideo Agent Two", an agent he has described as keeping the whole season's script in context so plot threads and visual callbacks don't get lost.
The small crew is real, but it did not carry the whole bill. Daubrez told Animation Magazine in August that invideo is "currently supporting the compute side" of the remaining Season 1 episodes, and this week he put Chapter 3 at "1000/1500 dollars a finished minute". On his numbers, that is roughly $15,000 to $24,000 of compute for an episode this long (our calculation, not a figure he gave). X does not label the post a paid partnership; the invideo credit is on the end card and in his launch thread.
In practice, for anyone making work this week, the takeaway is the planning, not the model. Daubrez has said he locks character designs and turnarounds before generating anything, and he keeps the full season's story in one place so the agent can hold continuity across episodes, and budgets by the finished minute. If you are pitching a series, that per-minute figure is the number a backer will ask you for.
Who made it
Daubrez co-founded the design studio Dogstudio, started out as a Flash-era 2D animator, and was Google's filmmaker in residence for Flow, the video tool he made Electric Pink for at the Flow launch in 2025. He now runs Odd Kid from Salt Lake City, describing it as "a small IP studio for strange, emotional stories". He does not call himself an AI animator. "I'm a filmmaker using a new set of tools," he told Animation Magazine, adding: "The solution to an AI problem often isn't more AI. It's filmmaking."
Junkyard King is planned as eight episodes in its first season, with three seasons outlined. The pilot chapter was picked for the first Wonder TV cohort in May.
- Date: 16 Mar 2026. Episode: Chapter 0, "The Pink Edge"; Runtime: 6:31
- Date: 3 Jun 2026. Episode: Chapter 1, "Training Day"; Runtime: 9:09
- Date: 26 Aug 2026. Episode: Chapter 2, "The New Guy"; Runtime: 15:00
- Date: 7 Oct 2026. Episode: Chapter 3, "The Other Side"; Runtime: 16:05
Watch it
Most of the episode's audience so far is on X, where the post passed 29,000 impressions within a day, about five times his usual reach. The full 4K episode on YouTube had fewer than 900 views at the same point, so that is where to send your attention: youtube.com/watch?v=oa0UO-L07mw, or the launch post at x.com/henrydaubrez/status/2107863368157778401.
Junkyard King, Chapter 3: The Other Side, created and directed by Henry Daubrez (@henrydaubrez), produced by Odd Kid (@thisisoddkid), visual art by Henry Daubrez and Julie Wieland, music by Pink Static, made in collaboration with invideo. Frames are used here with credit. If you are the maker and want any of it taken down, message @the__generated on X and it comes down.
Your Voice
16 minutes in under a month changes who gets to make a film, not just how films get made
How many people worked on it, and what were their roles? Were the voices AI-generated or performed by actors?
With AI, I think we're going to get to see a lot more modern 2D animation than we would have ever gotten without AI.
Quoted from public posts on X and credited by handle. If one of these is yours and you want it removed, message @the__generated on X and it comes down.
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