Spite Box’s 2025 Wrapped
Inspired by mellohyelloh’s and SerpentMonkey’s 2025 wrapped blogposts! You guys should check them out, it’s amazing to see what they’ve both accomplished this year!
If there’s two words to describe this year for Spite Box: Busy! And red!
We did a lot this year, dropping a total of 24 videos including three new shows!
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Rat’s Nest Summer
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Syp here!! This year we expanded the world of Guard Duty with RAT’S NEST, starring Revoltge in the lead role. It was refreshing to make something serialized rather than episodic, as well as cast my friends as the titular guards. :P
This series really was a massive undertaking, and I was panicking about how long it took to make (it was largely written at the same time as GD S1!). I’m still proud of the voice cast (shoutout to Revoltge, TheiDsStudios, Daks, EBB!, Pootan, Jax, and Blankslate!!) for bringing these losers to life for this little detour, wouldn’t be the same if not for their hilarious performances.
Another thing I was so happy to include was the big animated set piece made by the immensely talented SephticMI, who nailed exactly the energy I was striving for! I really wanted to make the depiction of Prim’s death a big spectacle that ultimately left Trooper empty, it was awesome seeing this scene come together.
The soundtrack was also a great spin on the usual Guard Duty flare, giving Rat’s Nest a distinct sound inspired by old westerns. VERY VERY special thank you to Cole Vakassian for being the composing wizard that has defined Guard Duty’s musical identity!
Rat’s Nest Summer forever!!!
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Red Line Fridays
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Syp again! Another BIG BIG thing we did was branch out into a new medium with RED LINE, being an audio drama! While I’m no stranger to audio editing with machinima, this was a different beast altogether but the idea was so enticing I couldn’t resist, ha!
When Jax and I first began developing this project, it was gonna be smaller scale as an experiment into a different medium. The thing was, as we kept writing down ideas and fleshing out the characters, we couldn’t put the pens down! As a result, Red Line was able to develop an identity of its own across five episodes and I couldn’t be prouder of it thanks to the incredible voice cast (very special shoutout to leading costars mellohyelloh and boxofmyheart!!) and Jax for providing artwork + graphic design throughout and of course writing this series with me (as well as directing/editing an episode!)!
One thing that we really wanted to depict was the events of Guard Duty from the perspective of regular people, and what better way to show that than to have it center on a couple of journalists making a podcast haha. It was so fun to break away from the sillier tone we usually write for a more grounded series with a setting that felt more lived in than a stinky old military outpost, ha!
We had a powerhouse of a team working on this one, and it’s been one hell of a ride having it come together. Probably some of the most fun I’ve had working on anything, and while Red Line is over I don’t think it’ll be the last time we do something in the audio medium hehe :3c
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Nine to Five
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Time to Clock In, y’all.
Jax the Beetle here, the other part of Spite Box who joined just this year.
Originally planned as a comic, NINE TO FIVE sprouted into the Machinima realm- this time into Halo: Reach! Kinda!
It was supposed to be a simple task really, add Flood bipedals into Reach, but then we learned this year, nothing’s simple in the engine created to be the blueprint for Destiny the game.
So instead we stripped what we wanted from its assets, models, maps, and bailed back into a heavily modified Halo 3.
Despite its mumps and bumps, 9-5 has been an amazing learning experience and a neat outlet. It really wouldn’t have been possible without our incredible modder, HeroesUnite and Syp the Mighty who helped me with editing and body acting.
Casting our Team 199 was the most fun and scary experience I’ve had this year. Hearing such talented and charismatic groups of voice actors act out my writing gave me heart attacks
We had a lot of auditions for our main Team 199 (even one from Revoltage who showed up late to the party) but only five who really stood out.
Kami from Duel Wield had a crazy approach to make our main character Shep Ackerman sound almost like a villain and J.C. Bourne gave Private Presley a colorful personality with her improv! Fun fact, episode 1 was cut in half so there’ll be more characters that’ll show up in episode 2 that we’re so excited to debut!
Ahhh there’s so much more to say about this show, from the editing style we approached to the opening and intro music, but im running out of sp
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Spite Box Community
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We launched our discord server this year with a silly video. So far we are 80 members strong! Hosting no game or community nights we just scratch our butts.
You guys really showed off your creative muscles with fanart! It means so much to us to see people enjoy the show enough to draw it!!!
We also went international in 2025 with a Guard Duty Spanish Fan Dub by Doblajes by Jake!
Reactions and Pondering with Lady Red who made a trilogy of Guard Duty fan vids. Peep at her reactions, theories, and analysis and see if you also agree…
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Closing Thoughts
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What… we’re still talkin’???
Okay to wrap it up, we did livestreams! Those were fun and we plan many many more!
We also released a comic dub of Syp’s webcomic Interestingly Strange featuring some of Guard Duty’s recurring castmates!
We ventured out to new territory! YouTube Shorts! And started getting the hang of that, yes they’re tedious but fun to edit and can’t help but really feel proud of them.
Guard Duty Season 1 movie edit has just hit 8k as of writing this! Holy shit! I (Syp, againx3) really can’t believe so many people watched my silly little Halo show, it’s been a labor of love from me, Revoltge, and the entire cast and crew!!! It was the first video project I fully saw through with an intentional ending, which was super fulfilling. It really felt like the stars aligned for it to come together, from animators SephticMI and EprothStudios having the time to animate segments to Cole Vakassian providing the original score to the incredibly funny voice cast (including Intro-Mind, Ella Rhee, Xanthe Folan, and Blankslate!). Very happy to see people checking it out, and I hope you’ll stay tuned for what’s next in Guard Duty Land!
Thank you guys!! We can’t wait for y’all to see what we have in store for the new year, see you there!
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