For this part of our module, I was in the American Animation group, and after a group discussion, we decided to do our research on Cartoon Network and its different offshoots.
I chose to research Adult Swim as I have always been interested in adult-centric animation, and it’s the section of the industry I would absolutely love to go into.
“Ever since The Simpsons came out, adult animation has basically been an arms race of different ways to copy The Simpsons,” says Alex Hirsch.
Below, I have compiled my notes about adult swimming and its inception:
Adult Swim came to fruition in 2001 on September 2nd, an experiment for Cartoon Network as they knew they had a sizable adult audience. However, the idea of adult swimming came about after the success of ‘Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast’ as it fostered a cult following among teens and young adults. Which gave executives ideas about how to fill their late-night ad space.
“We started to notice that, at any given time, a third of the people watching Cartoon Network were adults who weren’t parents.” Michael Ouweleen (President of Adult Swim).
“ As a kids’ network, how would we actively market to adults? Was it a violation of our contract with cable operators? I put my career on the line to say it was a good idea.” JIM SAMPLES (general manager and executive vice president of Cartoon Network when Adult Swim launched)
Adult Swim kicked off the channel premiere with spoofs of Hanna-Barbara superheroes such as Aqua Team Hunger Force or Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Shows like Bobs Burgers and Family Guy gained a second life on Adult Swim, without which they would’ve likely faced cancellation
Adult Swim was very crucial to experimental animation becoming more accepted in the mainstream with shows like Superjail and Moral Oral; however, Moral Oral’s experimental nature ironically led to its cancellation from Adult Swim.
Adult Animation has found its home on Adult Swim and the Adult Animation industry is only growing. At the time around the conception of Adult Swim, it was a very radical idea that Adults would watch cartoons and many big network executives weren’t willing to give it a chance until the success of The Simpsons, but even then “In the past, if you weren’t right for Fox Sunday night, then you weren’t on the air,” says Nick Kroll. However, after Adult Swim was given some restrictive creative freedom to experiment with shows like Harvey Birdman and Attorney at Law, Adult Animation began to grow with cult followings.
These notes will be summarised and cut down heavily to fit the poster and my script.
I was also tasked with designing the poster. When I was looking at the example posters for ideas, I felt they were far too wordy and the colour palettes they used were very confusing to the eye so I decided to really stick with our Cartoon Network theme and used the cartoon network colour palette when forming our poster.
The colour palette:
I pitched this rough idea to the group:
I chose to use the Cartoon Network colour palette as I felt it wasn’t too much and would allow us to present our points in a clear, simple and effective way.
I thought putting characters that are associated with the network around the poster would fill up any dead space but not distract too much from any text.
After our group meetup, they gave me some very useful feedback:
- The squares should be swapped out for more organic shapes, as it fit the CN theme better and the aesthetic of the poster better
- Add more character and make them bigger to fill up more dead space
So I went back and did a better version of the poster using this feedback and came back with this:
Part of me wanted to add in more characters; however, I really want to avoid making the poster too busy or having the graphics clash with the information we are trying to present.
If I were to do this project over again, I think I would want us to communicate better as a team. During the buildup to the presentation, I think we got a bit confused as to what exactly we were doing (whether it was a timeline or about CNs offshoots) I think having one or two discord calls to discuss our thoughts and what we think would be best to do.
As for things I specifically would do, I would do deeper research into Adult Swim, their highs and lows, and their biggest controversies, such as the cancellation of Moral Oral over its representation of sexual assault despite other episodes making jokes on the topic. I would also like to do more research into what Adult Swim stands for, what do they try to provide to young animator and talent? What has their programming done to change the landscape of the animation industry? I would’ve liked to delve deeper into these topics.
I also would have loved to rehearse our poster to get our timing right, but I feel like we kept within the 10 minute time limit.
I would also spend more time experimenting with the design of the poster. I did the design on procreate however I know many people in the class use Canva for posters and presentations so I would have liked to experiment with canvas design features to create a more visually appealing poster.