Adventure Time is an American animated fantasy television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network. It follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (John DiMaggio)a dog with the power to change size and shape at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch), the Ice King (Tom Kenny), Marceline the Vampire Queen (Olivia Olson), BMO (Niki Yang), and others. It was produced by Cartoon Network Studios and Frederator Studios.
Ward's creation is based on his 2007 short film that aired on Nicktoons as a pilot on Frederator's Random! Cartoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Nickelodeon's executives passed on its option before Cartoon Network commissioned a full-length series from Fred Seibert and Ward, which was previewed on March 11, 2010. The same year, the series premiered on Cartoon Network on April 5, and it ended its eight-year run on September 3, 2018. The series has since been succeeded by several spin-offs and follow-up shows, starting with the Adventure Time: Distant Lands specials in 2020.
The series drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and video games. It was produced using hand-drawn animation; action and dialogue for episodes were decided by storyboard artists based on rough outlines. Because each episode took roughly eight to nine months to complete, multiple episodes were worked on concurrently. The cast members recorded their lines in group recordings, and the series regularly employed guest actors for minor and recurring characters. Each episode runs for about eleven minutes; pairs of episodes are often telecast to fill half-hour program slots.
Adventure Time was a ratings success for Cartoon Network, with some of its episodes attracting over three million viewers. It has been praised for its originality and worldbuilding. The show won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, three Annie Awards, two British Academy Children's Awards, a Motion Picture Sound Editors Award, and a Kerrang! Award. The series has also been nominated for three Critics' Choice Television Awards, two Annecy Festival Awards, a TCA Award, and a Sundance Film Festival Award, among others. Of the many comic book spin-offs based on the series, one received an Eisner Award and two Harvey Awards. It has also spawned various forms of licensed merchandise, including books, video games and clothing.
Premise
Adventure Time follows the adventures of a boy, named Finn the Human, and his best friend and adoptive brother, Jake the Dog, who has magical powers to change shape and size at will. Pendleton Ward, the series' creator, describes Finn as a "fiery little kid with strong morals". Jake, on the other hand, is based on Tripper Harrison, Bill Murray's character in Meatballs. This means that while Jake is somewhat carefree, he will "sit [Finn] down and give him some decent advice if he really needs it". Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, which was ravaged by a cataclysmic event known as the "Mushroom War", a nuclear war that destroyed civilization a thousand years before the series' events.
Throughout the series, Finn and Jake interact with major characters, including Princess Bubblegum, the sovereign of the Candy Kingdom and a sentient piece of gum; the Ice King, a menacing but largely misunderstood ice wizard; Marceline the Vampire Queen, a thousand-year-old vampire and rock music enthusiast; Lumpy Space Princess (Pendleton Ward), a melodramatic and immature princess made out of "lumps"; BMO, a sentient video game console-shaped robot that lives with Finn and Jake; and Flame Princess (Jessica DiCicco), a flame elemental and ruler of the Fire Kingdom.
Development Concept and creation
According to series creator Pendleton Ward, the show's style was influenced by his time attending the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and his experiences working as a writer and storyboard artist on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, a series that ran on Cartoon Network from 2008 until 2010. In an interview with Animation World Network, Ward said he strove to combine Adventure Times subversive humor with "beautiful" moments, using Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro as inspiration for the latter. Ward has also named Home Movies and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist as influences, largely because both shows are "relaxing" and feature "conversational dialogue that feels natural [and is neither] over the top [nor] cartoony and shrill".
The series traces its origins to a seven-minute, stand-alone animated short film of the same name (this short was later identified as the show's pilot post factum). Produced by Frederator Studios, the short was created by Ward almost entirely by himself, and its production concluded in early 2006. It was first broadcast on Nicktoons Network on January 11, 2007, and was re-broadcast as part of Frederator's anthology show Random! Cartoons on December 7, 2008. After its initial release, the video became a viral hit on the Internet. Frederator then pitched an Adventure Time series to Nicktoons Network, which rejected it five times. When Nicktoons' rights to commission a full series expired, Frederator pitched it to other channels. One of the studios that Frederator approached was Cartoon Network, which was interested in producing a full series, but would commit to a deal only if Ward could prove the pilot "wasn't a one-hit wonder". Rob Sorcher, the chief content officer at Cartoon Network, was influential in getting the network to take a chance on the show; he recognized the series as "something that felt really indie ... comic book-y [and] new".
Cartoon Network asked Ward to submit a sample script for their consideration, but Frederator convinced him to rough out a storyboard instead, as "a board would give a better sense of what was on Pen's mind", according to Frederator's vice president Eric Homan. Ward and his college friends Patrick McHale and Adam Muto (who both would go on to take significant roles in the series' production) began developing ideas, all the while concentrating on "keep[ing] the good things about the original short [while also] improv[ing] on" them. The group's first product was a rough storyboard featuring Finn and Princess Bubblegum going on a spaghetti-supper date. After Cartoon Network rejected the initial story, Ward, McHale, and Muto storyboarded "The Enchiridion!" to emulate the original Nicktoons short. This tactic proved successful, and in August 2008, Cartoon Network approved a first season, which was produced by Cartoon Network Studios. "The Enchiridion!" was the first episode to enter into production.
Ward and his production team began storyboarding episodes and writing plot outlines, but Cartoon Network was still concerned about the direction of the new series. McHale later recalled that during the pitch of an episode titled "Brothers in Insomnia" (which, for various reasons, was scrapped) the room was filled with executives from Cartoon Network. The pitch went well, but the production staff was soon inundated with questions about the stylistic nature of the series. Around this time, Cartoon Network paused the production of the show in an attempt to resolve these creative issues. A number of writers and animators were let go, and in their place, Cartoon Network management hired three veteran animators who had worked on SpongeBob SquarePants: Derek Drymon (who served as executive producer for the first season of Adventure Time), Merriwether Williams (who served as head story editor for the show's first and second seasons), and Nick Jennings (who became the series' long-serving art director). Drymon, in particular, played a key role at this time, ensuring that both Cartoon Network and the show's production crew were on the same creative page. Thurop Van Orman, the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, was also hired to guide Ward and his staff for the first two seasons. The storyboard for "Prisoners of Love" assuaged many of the fears some Cartoon Network executives had expressed.
As production for season one progressed, more artists were brought on board. Dan "Ghostshrimp" Bandit, a freelance illustrator who had also written and storyboarded on Flapjack, was hired as the show's lead background designer; Ward told him to create background art that set the show "in a 'Ghostshrimp World". Ghostshrimp designed major locations, including Finn and Jake's home, the Candy Kingdom, and the Ice Kingdom. The position of lead character designer was given to Phil Rynda, who held this role for two and a half seasons. The show's lead production crew (which included Ward and McHale) was initially hesitant to bring him on board, but they were soon convinced by director Larry Leichliter, who assured them Rynda was talented and could draw in a variety of styles. With the producers satisfied, Rynda quickly began designing characters that were simple but still fell in line with "Pen's natural aesthetic". Around this time, Rynda and McHale began drafting artistic guidelines for the show, so that its animation style would always be somewhat consistent. With many of the lead production roles filled, Ward turned his attention to choosing storyboard artists for the first season. He assembled a team made up largely of "younger, inexperienced people", many of whom he discovered on the Internet. Many of these individuals had backgrounds in indie comics, and Ward has called them "really smart, smartypants people" who were responsible for inserting more idiosyncratic and spiritual ideas into the series.
For the show's first four and a half seasons, Ward served as the showrunner. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said he had stepped down from this role sometime during the fifth season. As a naturally shy person, he found interacting with and directing people every day to be exhausting. After Ward resigned from the post, Adam Muto became the showrunner. Until late 2014, Ward continued to work on the series as a storyboard artist and storyline writer. After November 2014, he stopped regularly contributing to episode outlines, but still looked over stories, provided occasional input, and continued to storyboard for the series on a limited basis.Examples of latter series episodes storyboarded by Ward include:
Production Writing and storyboarding
Warda self-professed fan of ambivalent emotions, such as feeling "happy and scared at the same time"has called the show a "dark comedy". He has also cited the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragonsof which many of the show's writers are devoteesas an inspiration for the show. In the United States, the series is rated TV-PG; Ward said he never wanted to push the boundaries of the PG rating, noting in an interview with Art of the Title that he "never really even thought about the rating ... we don't like stuff that's overly gross. We like cute stuff and nice things". Ward intended the show's world to have a coherent physical logic, and although magic exists in the story, the show's writers tried to create an internal consistency in the characters' interactions with the world.