CalArtian’s New Cartoon Series, Gravity Falls, Lands on Disney Channel

Next Friday (June 29), the new animated show Gravity Falls premieres on the Disney Channel. Created, directed and executive produced by alumnus Alex Hirsch (Film/Video BFA 07), the show features the voices of Hirsch and actors Kristen Schaal and Jason Ritter.

The cartoon series, designed for children ages 7 and up, mixes adult humor into the writing and the direction. It focuses on twins spending a summer with their eccentric great-uncle in a strange little town in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The series features “supernatural elements of adventure and mystery” inspired by the real-life childhood summer family trips shared by Hirsch and his twin sister.

Los Angeles Times Television Critic Robert Lloyd discusses Hirsch’s new project in a recent review:

Gently twisted, with some Disneyfied action and heart-warming folded in, the series was created by Alex Hirsch, yet another young product of CalArts, the Harvard Business School of animation, and a veteran of Disney Channel’s Fish Hooks and Cartoon Network‘s The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. He also voices the twins’ Grunkle Stan — drawn with an old man’s big ears and knobby nose, big square glasses and a Shriner’s fez — with the phlegmy bark of a retired Borscht Belt comic: “My ex-wife still misses me, but her aim is getting better. You see? It’s funny because marriage is terrible.”

Lloyd reports that Hirsch’s show often references the live-action supernatural series, Twin Peaks (1990-91), and also resembles an animated version of the NBC sci-fi series Eerie, Indiana (1991-92).

The first episode, Tourist Trapped, officially premieres on June 29. The episode can be downloaded for free on iTunes.

Gravity Falls
Disney Channel
Fridays, beginning June 29 at 6:30 Pacific

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