Interested in animation from an early age (born 1982),
Pendleton Ward studied at CalArts, where he met many people who he would later
end up working with. At an end of year film show, Eric Homan (Vice President of
Development, Frederator Studios) asked him to pitch an idea to him, which ultimately
led to Ward making shorts for the studio. [1]
Brandon Graham (born 1986) grew up in Seattle, where he was
mainly a graffiti artist before moving on to work on comics with Antarctic
Press and Radio Comix.
I’ve chosen these two illustrators because their work has
such a high contrast between the mundane (relaxing with your friends, hanging
out in a restaraunt ), and the fantastical (meeting Abraham Lincoln on Mars,
using a cat as a sniper rifle), which always seems to keep the work fresh and
exciting.
Pendleton Ward
Ward’s works include the webcomic series Bueno the bear
(taken down because he finds them to be “terrible”) which was also made into
his first Frederator short Barrista.
After this he produced two shorts for Frederator’s Random! Cartoons: Adventure Time, and Bravest
Warriors.
Both of which went on to be made into series’, although he
has no creative control over Bravest Warriors.
Direct Influences
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an
animated television show, created by cartoonist Matt Groening. It focuses on
the eponymous dysfunctional family. It started as a collection of shorts on The Tracy Ullman Show in 1987, before
being made into a full half an hour program for the Fox network in 1989. Ward
has said that amongst the other works that inspired him, the Simpsons “made the biggest impression on [him]” [3], and it can
easily be seen by comparing it to Adventure
Time.
Both shows have a vibrant, almost childish art style, using
bold, cheery colours to depict the majority of things in the shows. Both shows
also tend to have a fairly light hearted subject matter (suburban family life,
exploring with your best friend) which can suddenly take a shocking swerve and
have quite a bit of darkness to them (a possible nuclear meltdown, the
extinction of all life).
The characters in both shows are simply designed, usually
with only around three or four different colours per character (most likely to
keep them easily identifiable, as both shows have a wide cast of characters).
The character’s faces are especially simplified, where most character’s faces
are interchangeable with each other.
The Simpsons is
arguably the American cartoon of the
80’s and the 90’s, so I think it’d be hard to find an American illustrator or
animator growing up in that time period who wasn’t
influenced by it.
David Lynch
David Lynch is an acclaimed filmmaker and director, known
for his surreal and often violent films such as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s
classic sci-fi novel Dune. Ward has
outright claimed that Lynch’s films were a big influence on him [4], and this
can often be seen in the plot and general style of Adventure Time.
Lynch’s films often include scary scenes set in broad
daylight, in a normal location. This can sort of be seen in Adventure Time. While it certainly isn’t
a normal location, it is a bright and cheery one. It seems like a bright happy
setting until the show subtly alludes to a nuclear war in the show’s past, with
a rusted car, or a desiccated skeleton just lying around in the undergrowth of
the bright landscapes the show usually takes place in.
As well as that, episodes often end in a completely bizarre
fashion, devoid of logic or reason, much like the majority of Lynch’s films.
My Neighbor Totoro
My Neighbor Totoro
is possibly the most well known Japanese animated film to western audiences
(arguably tied with Ghost in the Shell)
Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 film involves a family living in post-war Japan moving to
the country, where the two daughters encounter the titular forest spirit and go
on adventures with him and the other spirits, while coping with their sick
mother and other problems.
It was widely
acclaimed world-wide, so it makes sense that Ward has claimed that Miyazaki’s film
is another of his influences[5], and it can quite clearly be seen when you
compare the two. Much like with The
Simpsons, they both have bright, vibrant styles, colourful characters and
the like. It also contrasts this vibrant style with a dark subject matter (the
girl’s mother could be dying).
Unlike The Simpsons,
My Neighbour Totoro has incredibly
detailed backgrounds which make the relatively simplistic characters stand out
(and of course, animating characters of the same quality as the background would
be much more difficult). The same is true with Adventure Time (Not in the earlier episodes, which has a more
simplistic style) to a slightly lesser degree.
As well as that, both series involve a pair of siblings
(adopted in Adventure Time’s case)
interacting with strange and surreal creatures in a setting that can be fairly
mundane one moment, and suddenly very strange the next.
The Adventures of
Tintin
Written by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, The Adventures of Tintin is one the most
successful European comic of the 20th century, being adapted into a
cartoon series as well as an animated feature film.
You can see Tintin’s
influence [6] on Ward’s work almost immediately. Starting with the most obvious
trait they all share – The beady, dot like eyes. Every character in The Adventures of Tintin has the same,
simplistic eyes, as do the majority of characters in Adventure Time and Bravest
Warriors. In fact Ward seems to give nearly every
character he draws the dot eyes.
The dot eyes would simplify things in the production of the
comics/cartoons, however giving characters eyes such as that would make it
harder for the characters to express emotion, which is vital in a narrative. Tintin gets around it by leaving the
characters with eyebrows, but Adventure
Time gets around it in a more… unconventional way.
Eschewing eyebrows all together, the way the eyes ‘bug out’
and start shining is also very reminiscent of Anime (more on that later). Then
of course there are the other similarities between Tintin and Adventure Time,
such as both being around a young male protagonist and his dog going on
adventures.
Julian Narino
Narino is an artist who works mainly as a storyboarder, and
has worked with Ward on several occasions, being a storyboard artist for Random! Cartoons and providing
background art for Adventure time. Ward said that Narino’s “Wide eyed
expressions and sense of humour influenced [him]” [7] and it can be seen in
many episodes of Adventure Time.
Frank Frazetta
Frank Frazetta (1929-2010) was an American artist who mainly
painted Sci-Fi or Fantasy art, and was renowned for his paintings, as well as
his posters and book/album covers. He is arguably the most influential Fantasy
and Sci-Fi painter of the 20th century, with his influence still
felt today by those working in the same genre.
Frazetta’s artwork is referenced several times in Adventure Time, and Ward mentions
specifically that they based the title card off of his paintings. “I’m a fan of
Frazetta’s works and you can see that throughout the show.” [8]
The title card doesn’t seem to be inspired directly by one
of Frazetta’s paintings in particular, and instead draws from his usual subject
matter of the heroes stood on a mountain peak surrounded by enemies or corpses.
Aside from the show’s main title card, Frazetta’s art is
referenced in the episode specific title card for ‘His Hero’, which is heavily
inspired by one of Frazetta’s Death
Dealer paintings:
Wider Influences
Dungeons and Dragons
Dungeons and Dragons (First
created in 1974 by Gary Gygax) is without a doubt the most famous tabletop
role-playing game (if only for the controversy in the 70’s involving alleged
links to Satanism). Pendleton Ward mentions drawing inspiration from games of Dungeons and Dragons in several
interviews [9], and was even interviewed by Wizards of the Coast [10] (The
game’s current copyright owners). Adventure
Time is full of references to Dungeons
and Dragons, and regularly uses art assets inspired by the game’s setting.
A ‘mimic’ from Dungeons
and Dragons (illustration from the first monster manual, released in 1977
and written by Gary Gygax), and an unnamed chest monster from the season 1
episode of Adventure Time ‘Dungeon’.
The referencing to Dungeons
and Dragons is so much that Adventure
Time’s own title card seems to be directly inspired by the typography from
the 3rd Edition of Dungeons
and Dragons:
Speculative Influences
Matt Groening
Whilst Pendleton Ward mentioned The Simpsons were a big influence on his work, he didn’t mention any
of Groening’s other works. I largely suspect this is because Groening’s earlier
work was still fairly niche, and his newer work was released when Ward had
largely established his style. I believe he was still largely aware of
Groening’s other work, being such a fan of The
Simpsons.
The first of Groening’s work I can see some having some
influence on Ward’s is Futurama.
Futurama is a darkly comedic vision of the
future, first airing in 1999. A sitcom like The
Simpsons, only set in the future. Like The
Simpsons it is shown in bright cheerful colours for the most part, which I
think Bravest Warrior’s draws from
(More so now, but Ward isn’t involved in a major way), as well as Adventure Time (although in that case it
only has elements of sci-fi).
I also think Ward was slightly inspired by Groening’s comic
strip Life in Hell, at least in
regards to his character design. Life in hell was Groening’s first major work,
and was launched in 1977. It centres around a family of anthropomorphic rabbits
and a gay couple who look identical to each other.
I didn’t mention this when discussing The Simpsons (as it’s part of Groening’s style, not exclusive to The Simpsons), but the way Groening
draws his character’s teeth may have inspired Ward:
I believe that several of the character’s expressions in Adventure Time hint that anime or manga
might be an influence on Ward, in particular the ‘Kawaii’ style of anime, with
it’s shiny black eyes. I didn’t bring this up when discussing My Neighbor Totoro as the character’s
eyes in that film are fairly consistent.
The Adventure Time characters’ eyes occasionally go like that, as I showed when I discussed The Adventures of Tintin, and Pendleton Ward has seen at least one anime film (My Neighbor Totoro), so it’s not out of the question to assume he has seen more and been inspired it.
On the other hand, Ward mentions that the biggest influences
on his style are his co-workers. Natasha Allegri (character designer,
storyboard revisionist) is one such co-worker, who regularly draws the Adventure Time characters in an anime
style on her blog [11], as well as fan art for anime such as Sailor Moon:
If Pendleton Ward didn’t pick up that way of portraying eyes
from anime then he almost certainly got it from Allegri.
Kamandi: The Last Boy
on Earth
Kamandi is a comic
series by Jack Kirby that ran from 1972 to 1978, and it involves the eponymous
hero, the last surviving boy on a post-apocalyptic earth. First conceived as a
tie-in to Planet of the Apes, they
had to make it an original work after they failed to get the rights.
Ward hasn’t mentioned any influences from Kamandi, but the similarities between it
and Adventure Time hint that there is
indeed an influence from it.
Both involve the last human boy on Earth, who is a blond
haired teenager with a fondness for the colour blue. He travels the world and
goes on surreal adventures with talking animals while battling evil.
There seems to be too many similarities between the two
works for it to just be a coincidence, but it actually really could be. The
post apocalyptic elements of Adventure
Time were only added later in production, so that’s a point against this
theory.
Of course it could just be a passing influence, which seemed
like more because of a coincidence.
Brandon Graham
Graham has worked on a wide variety of comics over the
years, but his most notable would be:
Escalator, which
was a compilation of short stories he’d written, involving truck drivers,
graffiti artists and alien pornographers.
And King City, a
short comic series about a young ‘cat master’ who does various deeds around the
eponymous city, with the help of his super powered cat Earthling.
Direct Influences
Jean Giraud AKA Moebius (1938-2012)
Giraud was a French comic artist who mostly did fantasy and
sci-fi art. His style was very adaptable, going from incredibly realistic:
To very stylized:
Graham named him as one of his influences in an interview
[12], and it can be easily seen in Giraud’s more stylized work what kind of
influence he had on Graham. Both seem to have a lot of vast, bold and
simplistic architecture, but with highly detailed, almost cluttered interiors.
The characters too are highly detailed; often intricately
so, helping them stand out even more when contrasted against the exteriors.
Zooniverse
Created by Fil Barlow in 1986, Zooniverse is a sci-fi comic series centring on political intrigue
and espionage between groups of aliens all called Zoons. Right away you can see
the similarities between Barlow and Graham’s work, with vast, almost sterile
backgrounds, and strange, grungy characters.
Zooniverse seems a
bit more detailed than Graham’s works, but there does seem to be a clear
influence [13] in the basic character design, which have sort of soft, curved
designs to them.
Both Zooniverse and King City also tackle fairly deep subject
matter (political struggles, drug abuse), whilst both having fairly soft
styles.
Conclusion
In writing this essay, I discovered the influences of
Pendelton Ward and Brandon Graham, illustrators who have themselves influenced
me. I have learned what inspired their artwork; opening up a whole new pool of
talent that I myself can take inspiration from.
Bibliography
Accessed on 19th April:
[1], [3], Page 1,
[5], Page 3
[4], Page 4
Article written by Rick Demott for Animation World Network
on April 25th, 2010
[2]Article written by Eric Mesquivel for Bleeding Cool on June 15th
2010
[6] Article written by Ernie Estrella for Buzz Focus on
April 2nd 2012
Accessed on 20th April
[7], Page 1
Article written by David M, Ewalt for Forbes on November 15th
2011
[8] Article written by Alexander Ulloa for Art of the Title
on October 12 2010
[9] Article written by Z for Wired on March 12th
2012
[10] Article written by Bart Carroll for Wizards of the
Coast on August 4th 2011
[11] Tumblr blog by Natasha Allegri
Accessed on 21st April
[12],[13] Article written by Grant Watson for his blog ‘The
Angriest’ on December 1st 2012
