The Summoning

About

The Summoning is a 2017 web animation pilot set in a typical fantasy setting. The pilot was released on YouTube in November of 2017, inspiring memes, fanart and even cosplays.

History

On November 7th, 2017, the animated cartoon pilot The Summoning, set in a high fantasy world of elves and witchcraft and created by Elyse Castro premiered on the Cartoon Hangover YouTube channel (full pilot, shown below).

The pilot follows the story of a young, half cat witch named Claire and her pet anthropomorphic cat Edgar as they go together in search of troll fat to create a potion to summon a demon so it can (on Claire's words) "eliminate some scum."

Reception

Following its release, the pilot received positive reviews from critics and audiences. As of October 11th, 2022, on IMDb, the pilot had an average score of 7.4 out of 10 based on over 123 reviews while the video itself on Youtube got 298,210 likes and 6.1 million views.

Fandom

With the release of the pilot, people were inspired to draw fanart. For example, on November 9th, 2017, Newgrounds artist RonDMC made one of the earliest pieces of fanart showing Claire standing on a pentagram which in the following years has received 1,662 views, 12 favorites, and 29 votes for a total score of 4.26 / 5.00 (shown below).
Other than that, the short has had over 168 pieces of art one in Newgrounds alone, while DeviantArt has over 112 results and over 100 posts on Twitter.

The main character, Claire, is the main focus point of topic discussion within the fandom with many debates revolving on her being an anthropomorphic cat, while she was originally intended to be a wood elf. The series creator, Elyse Castro, eventually confirmed her to be a 12 to 14 years old half wood elf and half cat. Claire has had a long standing presence, particulary in 4chan's /co/ board, where she is frequently brought up whenever a waifu discussion comes up.