Celebrating Patrick McHale

Few names are associated with as many modern childhood classics as Patrick McHale. As an employee of Cartoon Network, McHale worked as both a storyboard artist for The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and creative director for Adventure Time. But it was his work as the creator of the Emmy award-winning limited series Over the Garden Wall that demonstrated his unique vision as a writer, artist, and showrunner. His fusion of beautiful old-fashioned vignettes, music matching the era of animation (often either comical or haunting), memorable characters, hilarious dialogue, and terrifying villains reveals a remarkable talent: Every aspect of McHale’s work, down to the oddest, quirkiest detail, is exceptionally well cared for. There is an evident love for the little pieces found within OTGW at any degree of inspection. In that way, Patrick McHale is a master of making things that are easy to love. 

Since then, McHale has also worked on various projects (for example, the graphic novel, Bags). Most recently, McHale co-wrote Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which won a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature.

I reached out to Mr. McHale just before winter break 2022, to see if he’d be interested in an interview. He graciously accepted. His only request was that the interview should be written instead of in person, allowing him time to answer each question thoughtfully. In response, I constructed as many interesting prompts as I could over the next few hours. I was amazed to discover, upon receiving his replies, that, out of many optional prompts, he answered every single question, fully and thoughtfully.

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Hunter Melton: I've always loved Over the Garden Wall’s Beast as an antagonist. In particular, I've always admired how he's introduced into the story— first as hearsay, then a voice/song, or a pair of eyes floating in the dark. He isn't given too much screen time and his existence isn't actually confirmed until a few episodes after he is first mentioned. He's the perfect villain for the Unknown in how he encourages the imagination more than he takes up space on the screen. How did you develop the plan for sequencing the introduction of the beast? 

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Patrick McHale: I think it mostly came down to trying to add the most twists and turns possible in our short amount of time. A lot of it had to do with the mystery of the woodsman. In the show’s early incarnations, when I was thinking about 3 seasons worth of stories, I had been thinking that the first season would be the woodsman as the wise man of the woods, then in season two, we find out that he’s the one who’s actually trapped Wirt and Greg, and in season three we find out he did it for their own good— because if he didn’t trap them, then he believed they’d finally die. It was a nice arc! Doing a miniseries required different thinking though, so the beast was a way to communicate a somewhat similar arc in a quicker way.

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HM: Where did the idea for the beast initially come from? How did that idea change over time?

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PM: Well, even before that woodsman version, in my very first pitches in 2006, the antagonist of the series was “Old Scratch” which was essentially just the Devil. So for the miniseries we ended up using both the woodsman and the devil character combined.

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HM: And as a character that depended so much on not being revealed, what inspired the look for the beast's true form (which was momentarily revealed during the final confrontation)?

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PM: Funny… it was actually this iPhone game about alpacas. It was some sort of idle game where you keep tapping and eventually the alpacas transform into hideous multi-headed alpaca monstrosities. That was where the initial inspiration for all those faces came from. And then Nick Cross wanted to gross me out by adding all those holes because we had some conversations about trypophobia. 

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HM: What exactly does it mean to be a creative director? Would you care to elaborate on the different challenges or requirements of the many roles you've played on various projects (artist, writer, etc.)?

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PM: Creative Director is kind of a made-up term that can mean different things in different situations. On Adventure Time, I was basically an assistant director… or… co-director… or co-showrunner… or something like that. Basically, Pen Ward was the creator and showrunner of Adventure Time, but he had tons of meetings all the time with executives and marketing and whoever else, so he was spread pretty thin. So I was a second-in-command and met with the art director and character designers and storyboard artists, writers, etc, etc to help shepherd Pen’s “vision” for the show even when he wasn’t available. If Pen was the President, then I was the Vice President I guess.

Being Creative Director was hard because it’s a ton of work, but it’s hard to tell where your contributions begin and end. Although I touched everything, none of it was mine. So as an artist, it was taxing on my ego. Being a storyboard artist is a little easier on the ego because it’s clear what my contribution is. Same with being a writer.

Being the creator AND show-runner (like on OTGW) is the best though, haha, because I have complete unchecked power, haha. 

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HM: Over the Garden Wall is a triumph of mixed media— harmoniously utilizing story, voice acting, art, and music. What themes and mechanisms— the original tenets— were used to tie these different mediums together? 

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PM: One of the main things we talked about was how early animation pioneers were not inspired by animation art — simply because there wasn’t much animation art yet — so they were inspired by golden age illustration or old master artwork. So instead of looking at old animation art for inspiration, we tried to look further back. Same with the music. 

Sometimes we took shortcuts and diverged from that tenet, but that was the original intention; to try to create something that COULD have been created long ago, but wasn’t.

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HM: Working through an individual scene, how did you ensure music, art, and writing all worked together to convey a certain emotion or tone (potentially choosing a specific scene as an example)?

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PM: It’s just all about the mood it creates. It’s hard to explain, but I think it just comes from having a really clear feeling in my head/heart, and trying my best to show/communicate that with the people I’m working with.

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HM: Over the Garden Wall famously had a traditional hand-drawn look to it (I've heard a lot of it actually was drawn by hand digitally, though I have no idea if that's true). 

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PM: It was animated on paper in pencil, and then “inked” in pencil too, then scanned and digitally manipulated a bit to make the lines feel a bit more like ink, and then colored digitally.  The backgrounds were painted digitally.

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HM: Adventure Time was also intimately animated through a 2D medium, each episode taking several months to draw, which I'm sure affected the writing process. How did it feel transitioning to write for Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio, a stop-motion project? Were there major differences to consider when plotting out scenes? What did that process look like?

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PM: Yeah, 2D TV animation is a very different process from stop-motion feature animation. But in terms of plotting out scenes, it wasn’t hugely different — except for the kind of major difference that OTGW & Adventure Time were “storyboard driven” shows, whereas Pinocchio was “script driven”. Meaning, OTGW & Adventure Time started as outlines, and then were given to storyboard artists to both draw AND write the dialog (in the case of OTGW, I kind of got a little obsessive and rewrote most of the dialog— but still, it was in the storyboard/animatic stage). While Pinocchio was written as a script, and the storyboard artists stuck to the script.

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HM: You played a major part in creating an era of children's animation with which my generation seems to have a uniquely intimate relationship. My roommate and I still watch Over the Garden Wall every Halloween, and it wasn't long ago that some friends and I last watched an episode of Adventure Time. Amongst the dense myriad of existing media, made so easily accessible by streaming services, these sorts of shows occupy a hallowed ground. Now that you've embarked on another major project, how does it feel writing, now v.s. then, for a new generation of audience members (or perhaps the same generation all grown up)? 

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PM: Well, I still just feel like a guy living in a house, haha. I dunno. When we were working on Flapjack, we were really excited when we saw that there were people online talking about it. At this point, seeing people talk about stuff online is kind of overwhelming. Just too many people online maybe. So that’s a big change. It used to feel like we were making things for ourselves and for a few weirdo kids and even weirder adults out in the world. And now it kind of feels like everything people make is for the entire world all at once.

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HM: How has the audience (and the artist’s message) changed from the inception of Adventure Time and Over the Garden Wall to now in the post-Bags era?

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PM: Well, another thing that’s very different — or maybe I was just lucky early on — is that it feels VERY very hard to make original content. If you have a pitch, it should at least be based on a book or graphic novel.

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HM: Speaking of Pinocchio, Guillermo Del Toro is a director famous for films that combine the fantasy elements of child-oriented stories with darker themes (I'm thinking of Pan's Labyrinth in particular). Over the Garden Wall took a similar route by tackling heavier subjects than typical Cartoon Network shows, allowing it to reach a larger audience. What drove you to marry these two seemingly contradictory aspects? Or, put another way, why use children's oriented programming as a platform?

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PA: I tend to be drawn to extreme things. I like very adorable innocent children’s stories and I like very horrific horror films. I like things that are very troubling and uncomfortable, and things that are very joyful and comfortable. Most likely anything I make is going to have some extremes to it. And… Guillermo is even MORE extreme I think! 

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