Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546404
opposite page: The updated art style for Adventure Time: Side Quests removes outlines used in the original and features painterly backgrounds; this page: (from top) Outlines around the original Finn and Jake gave the pair a more cartoony look; With the new series returning to the original's early timeline, Story Artists had to revert from fully developed back stories for characters like Ice King. 2018, and Cash served as a Storyboard Supervisor, Creative Director, and Supervising Director on the original. He describes young Finn as a bombastic "righteous barbarian," an unpolished version of a sweet mythic hero, and so he centered the idea of Adventure Time: Side Quests on a collection of new adventures tucked within the early timeline of the original series, paying homage to when the show was still exploring and had an impromptu feel. "Everybody's in that nice little bubble of time where it was just innocence and running around and going on adventures," says Supervising Director Victor Courtright. He adds that the early seasons were flexible with a mindset of pure exploration, allowing the creative team to tell any kind of story. Working with characters both old and new, Cash, who is now an Executive Producer, says that they were careful not to contradict or disrupt anything that had become lore in the show. For example, later in the original series the character Peppermint Butler grew a little nefarious with the dark arts. However, they didn't want Finn and Jake to be aware of that in Side Quests, so they could only hint at it, which becomes an Easter egg for fans. Many of the new crew worked on the original series, and each discovered rewards while also facing issues unique to their roles. Writer and Director Nikki Yang, who voices the characters BMO and Lady Rainicorn, felt like she was reuniting with old friends, but from a story perspective, she says it's difficult to come up with something new for characters that have been around for so long. "I was kind of hesitant to return to the world of Ooo," says Writer and Storyboard Artist Jesse Moynihan. "I wasn't sure if I could write in Finn and Jake's voice after many years off, but it was like getting back on a bike and going for a whimsical ride around a deep blue lake." Writer and Character Designer Tom Herpich adds: "I went back to being a Character Designer for Side Quests, which I hadn't done since Season 1 of the original. I got to revamp a bunch of designs I originally drew 15 years ago. It was nice to fix some little mistakes, but also nice to take stock of how far the show and myself have come since then. It's been a wild ride." In creating Side Quests, Courtright notes that they incorporated a lot of classic animation techniques, including cel, stop motion, and paper cutout, as well as pixel art. Cash describes how Courtright even transferred a scene to VHS, placed it in a VCR, and then "started kicking the VCR to get actual VHS distortion on it." The rationale for this, they say, is because the original series allowed that kind of experimentation with guest directors. But Art Director Nick Cross notes that Cash wanted to make sure Side Quests had a look that would separate it from the original. While he didn't want to change the design of the characters, Images courtesy of Cartoon Network Studios FALL 2026 29