Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Some people could say, "I'd like something that's super dramatic and miserable and made me cry and made me sad forever" but that's not my taste.
I can speak to my experience and say that CalArts worked out very well for me. After CalArts, I went to Cartoon Network, and then came to Disney.
One of the interesting things about making a kids TV show is that you are in living rooms all across the world and you never know who's watching.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with UFOs in particular, and the paranormal. I grew up in the '90s, which is when The X-Files was at its zenith.
It's always fun to write the little bit of TV that the characters watch in 'Gravity Falls,' because it's a perfect place to poke fun at the media.
The more a character wants and the less a character has the ability to get what they want, the more you have an endless fuel for storytelling in comedy.
I think twins can sometimes be shoved into the same mold and they can start to feel like they're not being given a chance to develop their own identities.
Yeah, my first love was 'The Simpsons,' but in terms of movies and stuff, I loved 'Back To The Future,' I loved 'Jurassic Park,' I loved 'The Truman Show.'
There are so many shows that go on endlessly until they lose their original spark, or mysteries that are cancelled before they ever get a chance to payoff.
The most relevant misadventure that I had, as a kid, is when I remember being pretty convinced that leprechauns were real and that I was going to catch one.
If you ask anyone in animation, how long they've been into animation, they'll pretty much always tell you that it's since they can remember, and I'm no exception.
When I was a kid, back in the days before cell phone cameras, I had disposable cameras I took a lot of pictures with and I just remember something always went wrong.
You don't have to sugar coat things for kids. If you make something for them with intelligence they will show that intelligence in ways that will sometimes shock you.
As long as I could hold a pencil, I was drawing and telling stories and making jokes. I've just been lucky that no one ever stopped me, and now I can do that for a living.
I remember when I was a kid, whenever you'd see cartoons cross over with each other, it always ranged from a delightful, magical surprise to a cynical, annoying cash grab.
I think the key as a creator is to just trust your own intuition, and follow your passion and trust that if you make something you love, an audience who loves it will find it.
The puberty train came late to the station for me. I was the shortest kid in my sixth-grade class - they made me pose for the yearbook with the tallest kid for comedic contrast.
A sibling is a friend for life, but they are a friend for life that you are forced to have. And like anything that you are forced to do, occasionally people will drive you crazy.
With shows like 'The X-Files' or 'Eerie, Indiana' - even though they would have comedic moments, even though they would have character moments - there was a sincerity about magic.
I personally went canvassing door to door in a local race when I was in high school and thought it was kind of hilarious how worked up people got over such small stakes elections.
In terms of creative engagement, I just love being able to produce, produce, produce. You don't always get it perfect, but it has much more of an improvisational element, and you learn.
I was obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster, I would look through these books in the library and dream about visiting Loch Ness one day… That stuff was really kind of what I loved as a kid.
Gravity Falls' has so much inspiration that comes from 'Twin Peaks,' the idea of Agent Cooper being the one to drive Dipper and Mabel home made me feel like, yeah, they're going to be all right.
A lot of the fun of 'Gravity Falls' comes from the secrecy surrounding the plot. We want fans to be able to guess and speculate, to be surprised by twists and be engaged when they get things right.
I absolutely love television. What's so great about TV is that I can tell 20 stories in a year. If I was working at a feature studio, I'd tell 1% of someone else's story, over the course of four years.
Endings are scary and foreign. They split you up emotionally and put you in a place where you don't know what's going to happen next. But with every end of the world, there is a new world that follows.
I always thought, if I was gonna make a kids show, I would want to make something that my own 12-year-old self would love. So, I put all that in a blender and stewed it together to create 'Gravity Falls.'
I think the No. 1 lesson I learned from 'The Simpsons' was just that animation could be as funny as live-action. That animation could be funnier than live-action. That animation didn't have to just be for kids.
If you ask anyone in animation, how long they've been into animation, they'll pretty much always tell you that it's since they can remember, and I'm no exception. I've always just loved drawing and loved cartoons.
When you're doing an animated series, you tend to pitch storyboards. You write a script and then you draw a comic version of that script and put it up on big boards, and then you pitch it to a big room of executives and writers.
I thought that was the coolest thing in the world, the idea of somebody trying to solve mysteries. I would see conspiracies in everything. I think I believed in leprechauns longer than any of my fellow classmates because I tried to catch them.
I tended toward animated material that wasn't just for kids. I could tell as a kid watching those shows that I loved the jokes that I got but I also loved the jokes I didn't get because I felt that I was hanging out with a smarter, cooler audience.
When I was 12 years old, I was obsessed with codes, conspiracies, and secret messages. I would record TV commercials with SoundRecorder.exe on Windows 95 and reverse them to see if I was being subliminally influenced to watch Pokémon by Japanese spies.
When me and my sister were growing up, we just had very different personalities. I was sort of analytical and took myself too seriously, and she was sort of goofy and nuts and full of love - too much love, she had a crush on a different guy every week.
I've always just loved drawing and loved cartoons. Growing up, I loved Disney films, I loved The Simpsons, and I was a big fan of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes and the way that they would have weird fantasy and then down-to-earth funny character comedy.
Gravity Falls' normally follows very particular rules: we start out in reality close to the world as we know it, usually one magical element presents itself, and then it's essentially vanished or hidden back to where it came from by the end of the 20 minutes.
Everyone has days where they don't get their way, where you have to go to bed early or you have too much homework to do or you can't eat the candy that you want or you miss your favorite TV show and, in those moments, you just want to tear the whole world down.
I've always loved The Simpsons, just because it was really, really funny. As a kid, you love the characters. You know that the dad is dumb and frustrated, and you know that the boy is smarter than everyone else around him and is constantly getting into mischief.
It's weird because we live in this age of reboots. Everything is getting rebooted: 'The X-Files,' 'Twin Peaks.' We have shows like 'Gravity Falls' that were inspired by these shows, that are now ending and being followed up by reboots of the shows that inspired them.
I never doubted that if I applied myself and tried to learn that I would good at it. I've had a lot of lucky turns, no doubt. But it's actually been a fairly direct line from control-freak, cartoon-obsessed kindergartner to control-freak, cartoon-obsessed executive producer.
We passed a sign for Boring, Oregon. We never went there, but I was positively enchanted with the idea that there was a town called Boring. 'Gravity Falls' is partially from what I imagine Boring might be like. Or maybe the opposite of Boring, Oregon, would be 'Gravity Falls.'
When I went to California Institute of the Arts, I was classmates with a lot of like-minded weirdoes, some of who have gone on to create other cartoon shows-J.G. Quintel, 'Regular Show;' Pen Ward, 'Adventure Time.' We were all friends in school and pushed each other and made each other laugh.
My sister, when we were in Elementary school, had one particular lime green fuzzy troll doll sweater with a gem sticking out of the belly and actual hair that stuck to it, and I just remember, even though I was very young, being like 'This is unusual. It is weird that she is wearing this in public.'
I feel like the best kids shows aren't just for kids. The best kids shows have something in it for everyone. As you grow up, you're increasingly proud to be a fan of the show, rather than getting to an age where you suddenly become embarrassed that you ever liked it because it's only for seven-year-olds.
One thing that's a lot harder to put into stories than you'd think is the idea of a traditional monster, because monsters with a capital 'M' don't inherently lend themselves to a story about your character. Unless one of your characters is themselves the monster, simply having a monster leads to a chase or a hunt.
I believe that one of the reasons Gravity Falls is such an unusual place, maybe part of the reason that the stoplights switch on and off at random times and cell phones don't get proper reception and compasses spin wildly - is because of the strange kinetic influence of the UFO buried just underneath everyone's feet.
The concern about what's too violent or what's too scary is something that I just completely don't let enter into my creative process. I feel like, if I spend a lot of time trying to worry about whether it will appeal to everyone and who will like it and who won't, and I try to please everyone, I'll just spread myself too thin and lose my mind.
Think about how rare it is that you exist at all. Also think about time this way: If something exists, even for a second, then forever in the future that thing “existed”, and forever in the past that thing “was going to exist”. So to even be conscious for a millisecond is a kind of immortality, but you have more than a millisecond. You have minutes. Hours. Months. A year? Years! This is a gift.
I built a leprechaun trap that was made to look like a tiny hotel. There was a ramp where the leprechaun could walk into the hotel, see a Lego pot of gold on the other side, try to reach it, fall through a trap door, go through a tube, wind up in a biscuit tin, and be trapped. My mom, encouraging my madness, told me that the leprechaun might escape and that I needed a shot glass of whiskey down there to keep him occupied while he was in there.