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.