“It's adventure time,
C'mon, grab your friends,
We'll go to very distant lands
With Jake the Dog,
And Finn the Human,
The fun will never end,
It's Adventure Time!”

Through wood and wasteland penguins cuddle at the outset of the wonderful Land of Ooo. Pendleton Ward's cartwheel of an opening sequence to his Adventure Time series sports all the warm-and-fuzzies of a My Little Pony rainbow and Conan The Destroyer's Atlantean Sword. The unaffected acoustic theme, which Pen also sings, establishes the fever dream folktales that follow. This is a silly smart world punctuated with noodle-armed pounds and a few scares by dint of (what else) adventure.

Art of the Title: Tell us your back story.

Pendleton Ward: My Mom was an artist and she had friends who knew about animation, so I've always been intrigued by it (animation). I started animating flip books in elementary school and got my Bachelor’s Degree in character animation.

I pitched the Adventure Time pilot to Frederator right after I finished school at Cal Arts. That pilot was my first lead on a gig. It was nominated for an Annie Award, but no one had seen it because it hadn’t aired yet. As soon as they put it on YouTube, it went viral. Luckily, they took a chance on me!

Art of the Title: What was the evolution of the pilot?

Pendleton Ward: Nickelodeon came to Cal Arts and asked all of the students to pitch one minute long shorts to them, so I tried it out. That was the very first incarnation of Adventure Time, that one minute long pitch to a couple of execs. They didn't buy it or even give me feedback on it. I don't think they really liked it.

Then, after I graduated, I heard about Frederator doing their pilot program. At the time, I sketched a lot and was trying to find ideas to pitch. I saw Finn and Jake just sitting there - a kid with a bear hat and his bulldog riding on a boat- and I built the world around them and my initial sketches. I was on vacation with my family and boarded out a story, stream of consciousness style. It was just a boy and his dog living in the magical world where they save a princess; that and other ideas I thought were funny.

Original pitch art, Spring 2008

Original pitch art, Spring 2008

Art of the Title: Frederator pilot program?

Pendleton Ward: They did a series called "Random Cartoons" where they were asking people to come in and pitch them ideas whether they had industry experience or not. They were open to anyone and I did it and I was straight out of school. I think that's one of the coolest things about Fred Seibert and his company. They're always looking for fresh ideas. He's one of the smartest executives I've ever met. He takes a lot of risks, which is good, you have to do that to find interesting projects... that's why he's successful.

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Adventure Time original seven minute pilot (Click to Watch)

Art of the Title: So what happened after the initial explosion of the 7 minute pilot?

Pendleton Ward: We began pitching it to Cartoon Network over the next 2-3 years though it was sort of in limbo. During that time I spent a year as a storyboard artist on a show called "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack", also for Cartoon Network. After a while, we heard that they picked up Adventure Time. Everyone liked the pilot, but no one understood what made it successful. A lot of people said it was charming and zany and full of weird ideas.

Once it was picked up, I made two versions of the “bible” for the show where I tried to flesh out who the characters were and what they wanted. I added a couple of new characters - one character was Marceline the Vampire Queen - to make it a little more scary when we needed it. The bible contains character descriptions along with short episode synopsis's, details on what the land of Ooo is like, etc. It changes over time as the show evolves and as the characters get new quirks. This is partly due to the fact that each storyboard artist is also writing on the show. The show is storyboard driven which means that there's a writing phase where we put together a three page page outline with the two staff writers on the show and then give that outline to the board guys. The storyboard guys write all of the dialog along with all of the storyboarding. In the end, each storyboard guy plugs his/her personality into the characters.

Main title initial concept drawing

Art of the Title: The opening title sequence is epic and each episode hits the personal notes of the ensuing lunacy of Finn and Jake; was this an idea adopted early on?

Pendleton Ward: The first pass of the title sequence was really quick and it was just sort of crazy nonsensical adventure where the characters were just punching random ghosts and monsters, jumping through anything and everything... there were a bunch of atomic bombs at the end of it. It was really silly.

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Main title initial concept (Click to Watch)

I showed that to the network and their initial reaction was... they weren't totally stoked. From the start of this this gig I knew I was going to be working with a lot of people and that anything that I wanted to do creatively could lead to some kind of battle, but I always felt that I was up to the challenge of listening to someone else’s notes. Part of that is being receptive to their notes and finding the best path to take while keeping the show funny.

With the title sequence, their notes were asking for something more 'graphical' and maybe something "Brady Bunch"... similar to a lot of older title sequences that they liked. They also wanted to see more of the world. When I was a kid, I liked Pee Wee's Playhouse and The Simpsons intros because the initial sound to those is this “hhmmmMMMMM!” sound. That always got me really exited! It's like a pregnant pause in a conversation... it makes you hold your breath and I really wanted that kind of beginning.

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Main title animatic (Click to Watch)

So I went back into the intro and did a terrible pass of rolling mountains and we handed that off to a layout guy and animator who really tied down the camera move for us. Then I did the silly character stuff on top of his pass; the penguins kissing, the zombie hand coming out of the stump; And then Pat McHale worked on the Ice King's “high school book” smile when he turns around. We also had Marceline in the shadows (because she burns) underneath the ruined highway and that was a big ordeal to get that right.

Art of the Title: When the title sequence was being worked on, how many episodes of the show had been completed?

Pendleton Ward: It was actually right before we aired. We were so close that we even debated on airing shows without the title sequence at the beginning.

Art of the Title: There's also a nice nod to Frank Frazetta's and Boris Vallejo's artworks.

Pendleton Ward: Yep, we pulled inspiration from Frank Frazetta for that end title painting. It was in the original pilot and we wanted to replicate that in the series titles. I'm a fan of Frazetta's works and you can see that throughout the show.

Going back to the network’s desire for some more “graphical” ...obviously that can be interpreted in a number of different ways. What it meant to me was using the words "Finn the Human" and "Jake the Dog" in the middle of it. At the time, I really liked the opening title to "Superbad." I liked how simple it was with the flat colors and the silhouette. That's why the Finn and Jake title cards are the way they are.

“Superbad” title frames

Art of the Title: Tell us about the theme song.

Pendleton Ward: Well it's the same song we used for the pilot, just re-recorded with a different instrument. For the pilot, I recorded the song with a guitar, but for the series I used a ukulele. It sounds higher because I'm probably trying to match the ukulele.

If you listen carefully to the recording, you can actually hear Derek Drymon typing on a keyboard in the bit when Jake is walking... a little clickity clack in that wide shot when his legs are stretched out. I recorded the lyrics for the opening title in the animatics room where we have this little crummy microphone JUST so that we could add it to the titles and submit it to the network. Later, we tried re-recording it and I didn't like it... I only liked the temp one. A lot of the music for our show has hiss and grit to it anyways because our composer is a cool guy and basically lives in a pirate ship he's built inside of an apartment. You can hear floorboards squeaking and there are a lot of weird sounds there.

Art of the Title: So how big is the production team?

Pendleton Ward: There's about thirty people on the crew here at Cartoon Network not counting the execs. There's also two studios overseas doing the animation, so that's another sixty people in Korea.

Cartoon Network production crew pic 11:45am pst, March 4, 2009 (key here)

Art of the Title: How does the approval and review process work for each show and how involved are you?

Pendleton Ward: I'm mostly involved in the story part of the show. Pat McHale is my creative director and he works with more of the visual side of the show with our awesome Art Director Nick Jennings. They manage the backgrounds, the color, and the character design. I'm in the writers room during the outline phase and then I hand that off to the story boarders. From there, they have one week to rough thumbnail a storyboard and then Pat and I go in and give notes. After that, they have another week to implement our notes. It takes two weeks to clean up, so it comes out to four weeks altogether for each storyboard and we're involved every step of the way.

Tree fort background example

Character design examples

For the first season I was re-writing a lot, but I've let go of a lot since then. There are a lot of really talented dudes and ladies working on the show, so the board guys are more in control of their episodes now.

Art of the Title: So does everything go through you? You mentioned being more relaxed with the production process now.

Pendleton Ward: (laughs) If I'm not satisfied with something, I'll revise it; right now, I'm really happy with what everyone is doing. I go to all the voice recording sessions and I do post-production and sit with the animatic guys. I'm still really involved with every step of the process.

Art of the Title: Is it hard to tiptoe around the PG rating?

Pendleton Ward: No, not really. I want to create children's television because it affected my life so intensely when I was a kid - watching Ren & Stimpy and The Simpsons - it just rocked my imagination. I want to make stuff that kids get stoked on. I've never really even thought about the rating. We just do whatever we want to do and so far... we haven't really hit any snags. Pat and I... we don't like stuff that's overly gross. We like cute stuff and nice things; So, we try to plug the show full of that. I mean, there is a lot of gross weirdo stuff in the show, but only because there are so many voices. When something gets too sick, Pat usually gets grossed out and then I revise it, or we'd think about how we'd react when we were kids.

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'Good Buddies' animatic (Click to Watch)

Art of the Title: How did you sell the show, what was your strategy in explaining who the target audience was, etc. You mentioned that it took a couple of years before it was picked up, was that because it was a complicated show to sell?

Pendleton Ward: The show didn't really have a tagline or catchphrase that could sum it up. It was really just these two buddies that hang out in this magical world, which obviously was important to me, but it wasn’t a really strong selling point. (laughs) I was just stumbling through the process and trying to be as genuine with it as I could. I don't know how it happened. It was just a blur of me taking notes on what I thought they would want while trying to make sure that it stayed cool and fun feeling.

Episode title cards

Art of the Title: Tell us about each episode's title cards? There seems to be an enormous amount of detail, care and love in each one.

Pendleton Ward: We were initially thinking about getting a bunch of different guest comic artists to create them. I started emailing with Paul Pope who had heard about the show through our background designer Ghostshrimp and we were talking about Paul doing a couple title cards. That ended up being too difficult to organize. We didn't go through with it, so I ended up just brainstorming with Nick and Pat. We all like pulp comic covers, mysteries and detective stuff; so Nick sort of ran with it. He's a weirdo and collects all of this old paper... he scanned in this vintage paper to use as the borders of the title cards. A bunch of people worked on them, we just like that stuff so we ran with it.

“The Enchiridion!” title card progression

I'll do an initial sketch of what I was thinking for each episode on something like a post-it note and then I give that to Phil Rynda who is our Lead Character & Prop Designer. He does a really nice tied down drawing of it and then we send that to Paul Linsley. Paul is the artist who painted the original “Frazetta style” title cards for the pilot. He does the painting and then hands them to Nick Jennings who usually goes over them (maybe changes the colors here and there). He really manipulates them a lot. He adds the final dithering process that mimics old comic book print. You can't even detect all the detail watching in HD.

“The Enchiridion!” alternate title card

Art of the Title: Will you continue with the same format for the next season?

Pendleton Ward: Yeah, it's the same feeling. I like consistency unless it's funny to break out of it... but I like what we're doing right now.

Art of the Title: The social aspect of the series is very prevalent. You seem to have an amazing connection to your audience, tell us about this.

Pendleton Ward: Fred is the mastermind behind all that. One philosophy of his is putting the content out there for fans to become invested in. That's how we create the fan base. Much to the dismay of most of the crew, he takes everyone's stuff and puts it out there - putting up rough ideas that aren't even finalized - he puts everything up. I think it's cool because it's crazy... I like Fred because he's doing these things that no one else is doing... I like chaos. I like posting the stuff too, because I like seeing how people respond to it. I check all the forums; I read everything. I like to post stuff if I think people are going to get stoked on it.

Selects from the Autumn Society's tribute to Adventure Time

I like the “social experiment” of having a television show that'll be entering the minds of both children and adults across the nation. I like how that is going to affect everyone. I grew up being a fanboy for The Simpsons... I know Krusty the Clown's middle name is Shmoikel and... I was always excited to find out more about the creators of the stuff that I liked, so I like being in that position now... the position to give people who like the show that kind of stuff. I know where they're coming from. So when I'm talking to fans at, say Comic Con, I know what's going through their head. It's fun to be as friendly as I can be and to put out as much stuff as possible... As a fan, I know that’s what I would want.

"Adventure Time" creator Pendleton Ward

• USA
• 2010
• Color
• 1.78:1
• English
• Available on iTunes

Title Design: Pendleton Ward

Adventure Time production blog
Adventure Time art blog.
Fred Seibert's "Adventure Time" Flickr collection (an incredible resource!)
Frederator Studios
Pendleton Ward on Twitter