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# The General and the Chocolate Biscuit Prank
- URL: https://www.houseofnormal.com.au/the-general-and-the-chocolate-biscuit-prank/
- Published: 2026-01-24T00:53:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-28T07:56:05.000Z
- Description: A Blackadder-inspired General brought to life in Blender’s Grease Pencil — simple layered face animation and line wobble. Blender, Clip Studio Paint and DaVinci Resolve.
- Author: Damien K Quick
- Tags: The Lab, Animation

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The General and the chocolate biscuit prank

**The General** was an exercise to learn Blender’s Grease Pencil and test lip-sync techniques. I’d already recorded the audio during a livestream as part of an OBS mic plugin test, so it ended up being the perfect length to use.

Now, I have a habit of rambling on — opening my mouth before I’ve actually thought about anything — and sometimes strange things come out. This recording is a prime example. After listening back (which genuinely made me laugh), I’m pretty sure it was influenced by the *Blackadder* Season 4 character General Melchett, played by the legendary Stephen Fry. And when I think about it further, it’s actually a blend of General Melchett and the Season 2 character Sir Walter Raleigh, played by Simon Jones — especially his line: “Well, on Tuesdays he’s normally in bed with the Captain.”

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The General original audio recording from obs

We’d recently rewatched all of *Blackadder* (Series 1 to 4), so that’s most likely where the inspiration came from.

That’s exactly what sparked the animated character, which is obviously based on General Melchett. I found a screenshot from a scene in Series 4 to use as reference.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f5/06/f506ab6d-e203-43c2-a0f2-3799d8a41c9c/content/images/2026/01/Steven-Fry-and-Rowan-Atkinson---Blackadder-the-Fourth.jpg)

Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson - Blackadder the Fourth

I started with a static drawing of the character, then used the line wobble effect, with the face broken into separate layers — which meant the face was basically all I needed to animate. Nice and simple as a starting point. I also added a slow camera zoom to bring in a bit of extra motion.

![The General animation blender timeline](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f5/06/f506ab6d-e203-43c2-a0f2-3799d8a41c9c/content/images/2026/01/The-General-animation-blender-timeline-1.png)

The General animation blender timeline

The line wobble is a built-in Grease Pencil function. It mimics the 2–3 frame wobble that’s traditionally achieved by drawing multiple separate but very similar frames.

Once the animation was finished, I rendered it out as individual frames (1920 × 1080 px PNGs) and imported them into DaVinci Resolve. Extra background audio was also added at this stage, such as the bomb and gun noise. 

A quick tip: make sure your DaVinci project and timeline are set to the same frame rate you used in Blender. Otherwise, your audio will slowly drift out of sync. Sounds silly, yes — but I forget often enough that it’s worth the reminder.

![DaVinci final edit](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f5/06/f506ab6d-e203-43c2-a0f2-3799d8a41c9c/content/images/2026/01/DaVinci-final-edit.png)

DaVinci final edit

**Programs used:**  
Clip Studio Paint Ex  
Blender 4.4  
DaVinci Resolve 18.6

[Click for the youtube shorts version](https://youtube.com/shorts/yRVAlmaPnlE?si=xKE1NSCEWQRYtNTA&ref=houseofnormal.com.au)

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