And that's what we do with the girl characters." 'I was a small fat child who never left the house. I'd just like to find a normal girl, a friend who's nice to know. "They're either really girly or incredibly tough. "With girl characters they're either dumb or incredibly smart," he argues. "I liked the more artful fraggle in Fraggle Rock, who was really sensitive and liked poetry." Ward reckons that female characters on children's TV are made from "cliches and stereotypes", something he tries to avoid. "I liked Velma over Daphne in Scooby-Doo," he laughs. Princess Bubblegum, ruler of the Candy Kingdom and object of Finn's affections, is informed by the female characters in cartoons that Ward had crushes on as a kid. The music playfully references 8-bit videogame soundtracks, as well as folk, R&B and hip-hop, while the likes of Emo Philips, Kristen Schaal and Henry Rollins – as a rainbow-coloured unicorn, no less – provide the voices. Like many of his Hollywood peers, Ward's influences are largely televisual, and Adventure Time has a pop culture-infused style. "I wasn't a big adventurer and then I had a show that I was finally able to plug all my adventure experience into." "I was a small fat child who never left the house," he admits. Ward credits this spirit of outdoorsiness with a childhood spent doing quite the opposite. Finn and Jake spend most of their time rescuing – or being rescued by – princesses and the rest exploring monster-filled caves. At its best Adventure Time feels like it can go anywhere and do anything, a spirit of curiosity best exemplified by the show's leads. The result was a fizzing, iridescent sugar rush of a show, detached from the spangly, shallow pre-teen dramas and lumbering faux-anime that seem to dominate children's TV. Ward took the loose, sketchy animation of the short and expanded it into something noticeably bigger and brighter. Ward's adventure short went viral, with over a million views online, and after a short apprenticeship as a storyboard artist on Cartoon Network's The Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack, he was given the opportunity to turn Adventure Time into a full series. Perhaps more inspiring for prospective animators is what happened next. "I pitched my show and they liked it and picked up the pilot. "I just lucked out," is Ward's overly modest take on how he got the gig. Reading this on mobile? Click here to view
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |