I was doing the same jobs that I did on "Adventure Time". It was also awesome to work with Pen, and with all the other "Adventure Time" folks. That said, working on "Adventure Time" in that capacity taught me everything I needed to know to run my own show, and also earned me some trust with the network. My fingers were in everything, but my hand was never fully submerged into the pot. I never "wrote an episode" or "created a character". Even though I was putting my heart and soul into the show, I could never feel much ownership over anything. I was Creative Director on the first couple seasons and my job was all about going to meetings, and dealing with people, and structuring stories, and giving notes, and improving gags, and cleaning up storyboards, and going over designs, etc. "Adventure Time," on the other hand, was a lot harder because I was in a different role. It was great to just write & draw stuff, and let other people deal with making the show. He let us feel ownership over everything we did. I was learning a lot, and Thurop (the show creator) just let us run wild with our ideas ~~ as long as they were on-character, and the stories were clear & structured. PM: Working as a storyboard artist on "Flapjack" was the most fun. Making television is a very collaborative process by nature, but what's the difference between working on something you created (like "Over the Garden Wall") as opposed to somebody's else's baby (like "Adventure Time" or "Flapjack?") SK: Hello, Patrick, and thanks so much for agreeing to be with us today. He was also the creative director for Cartoon Network mainstay "Adventure Time" and a writer and storyboard artist for "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack." There's so much to talk about with today's guest, I'm not going to waste any (more) time with folksy anecdotes and just jump right into the interview. Patrick is the creator, executive producer, writer, storyboard artist, and songwriter of "Over the Garden Wall." His short, "Tome of the Unknown," which was the basis for "Over the Garden Wall," won the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Award. I'm very pleased to introduce today's guest, Patrick McHale. (Once you've watched it, you'll know why.) So I was able to finish the story in that one frigid November week, and as soon as I did I immediately had to start over and watch again.
Luckily this incredible and strangely moving show was a miniseries, the first ever Cartoon Network miniseries in fact, a delivery method that seemed oddly in keeping with its offbeat content.
#Cartoons like over the garden wall tv
The story of two lost and often freezing boys spoke to me in a peculiar way, and I found myself absorbed and obsessed with what would happen next in a TV show in a way I haven't felt in, well, years. It was then, cold to the point of numbness and barely able to do anything that involved moving from the warm cocoon of my couch-womb, that I discovered "Over the Garden Wall" on the Cartoon Network. So I spent the unseasonably cold first week of November huddled under a blanket next to a space heater on my couch watching cable TV, like I imagine the pioneers did in frontier days. "Luckily," it was just that our furnace had gone completely kaput. The next morning, as my lungs filled with smoke, I had to question whether the house was on fire. It was unusually cold this past Halloween so we cranked up the heat early this year.