The Adventure Time world has entertained fans for the last ten or more years, from starting on Cartoon Network with Finn and Jake in two 11-minute stories per episode to now with this new spin-off. It gave them a full 22-minute slot to tell deeper multiverse narratives with Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. CGMagazine was able to have a deeper conversation in the Adventure Time multiverse with showrunner, storyboard artist and executive producer Adam Muto at SCAD AnimationFest 2023. Muto also received the SCAD AnimationFest Spotlight Award for his outstanding work in the animation industry. Here is the full interview with Muto:
So, my introduction to Adventure Time With Finn and Jake actually started with the video game MultiVersus. I was wondering if you had involvement with that and how that all came to fruition.
Adam Muto: I think Warner Brothers just owns a lot of characters. And I think they were looking at what would work in MultiVersus. I don’t know. I don’t think we had any direct involvement in the games, though. That’s a different department. Sometimes, they cross over, but not usually. It’s usually they do their own thing. And you can kind of tell that because some of the model sheets they use are older.
But yeah, it was cool to see, but was definitely not our initiative. I don’t think we’re in a position to say you need to put this character. I was actually excited to see that they had a more obscure skin, like there was a Fern [Mertens] skin. And they got the voice actor to come in to do that. And whenever I see that, I’m like, ‘Yay, they got paid!’ That’s great.
That is always great! And have you had the chance to play some MultiVersus yourself?
Adam Muto: I haven’t. Is it available now? I thought it was in beta.
Yeah, it was in beta for a time. Were you able to test out the beta?
Adam Muto: No, but I’d watch some stream of it. But yeah, I didn’t play it directly.
Cool. Another fact I was learning about the Adventure Time series was that you all would collaborate with animators in South Korea. So, I was wondering how the diverse animation style affected the whole creative process of Adventure Time.
Adam Muto: Yeah, our partner studios are Saerom Animation and Rough Draft Korea (RDK). And they both are located around Seoul, in South Korea, and a lot of production is. And even the original series, they did all those episodes, too. They split it between the two of them. So, in some ways, it was a lot easier because we had a shorthand. It was some of the same directors who had worked on the original series.
In terms of how it informs the show, that’s harder to say because we do all the pre-production here and ship it over there. And then they’ll send back the finished coloured animation, and then we’ll do post-production here. But yeah, there is a time difference and a literal translation process. When we send our materials, the first week is just translating everything for their departments. They’re great.
Going off of the translations and sending work back and forth, are there moments where different ideas spark anything new and help keep the creative engines flowing?
Adam Muto: That happens sometimes. But for the most part, they’re going off of the storyboards we send and the timing we send. So if something is wildly different from animatic or what the storyboard indicated, it can be creative—and if it’s funny, we’ll leave it in sometimes. But there’s usually less of a large-scale miscommunication because you usually don’t want to be surprised when you get a work print back. And oh, this is not at all what we planned on.
Most times, if something is miscommunicated or different, it could be a colour is missing. Or something is a layer is off. It’s not like a completely different character was added in because that’s a bit harder to deal with, and it’s not usually something you have to correct. But talking to them, sometimes we’ll see what their strengths are and try to gear what we send them towards that.
Makes sense. And with Fionna and Cake being a part of another expansion like Distant Lands, were there any concerns or pushback about pitching and creating Fionna and Cake?
Adam Muto: I think what people sometimes misunderstand is the network is not always asking us for more. It’s not a cash grab. We have to actively pitch what we think we can do. So, I don’t know if there was pushback necessarily. I think we had to get them up to speed—like, who are Fionna and Cake? And why would they be able to sustain the show? And why would enough people watch to justify it? So I think it’s just kind of making a case rather than pushing back towards anything.
Right. And switching gears a little, with Fionna and Cake being an alternate version of Finn and Jake, what was the process of creating a series that still had to keep the essence of these original characters yet have its own voice and style?
Adam Muto: A lot of it involves getting a lot of the same crew that we could, so they’re already steeped in the world. And trying to identify what makes the show feel like Adventure Time. A lot of it’s the character designs and how we approach those. So, we tried not to change the character designs. It’s not like an anime reboot—to me, it’s very clearly connected to the design language of the original series. That’s kind of what rooted it and the backgrounds, and it’s a lot of the same background artists that we used in the Adventure Time series, too.
In terms of the stories themselves, to keep them feeling like Adventure Time, it’s weird because it’s kind of undefinable. We’ll look at it and say, ‘Does this feel like a story we would do? Or does this feel like something else?’ And that’s kind of how we would approach the original series’ stories, too. And it was not always very clear what that meant exactly. It was more of a feeling. Kind of just remembering how we approach those and not doing something too calculating.
I know you talked about pushing or fighting for a certain Adventure Time storytelling aspect to be left in at the panel yesterday. Were there any more similar challenges like that one at the studio?
Adam Muto: I think it was making the series while these bigger changes at the company were happening, trying to keep morale up. And just staying focused and staying as much on schedule as we could. Because part of the show was produced during the pandemic, too, a lot of it was worked on from home. I think that has been a challenge for everybody. But the latter specials we did during lockdown. And then we started Fionna and Cake during lockdown and kind of ended it afterward. Eventually, people were filtering back to the office, but the majority of the production was done with people on Zoom calls.
So I think that was a challenge for everybody. I’ll probably try to repress all that in the next couple of years. That was definitely a big deal. Sometimes, I forget that was hard. Animation is so collaborative that you’re used to being in the same space and being able to just walk down the hallway and ask somebody a question. And not having that ease of communication and community, and just eating lunch with people on the roof or in the common areas. So much of what makes a crew cohesive is invisible, and a lot of that was really hard to recreate during lockdown, especially.
I think it was really hard to enforce community. But it was important to try. But also, it doesn’t work the same way. Like even trying to pitch over a Zoom call is ten times harder than just pitching in person. Having a person right in front of you, you get a direct reaction. You can tell if they laugh or if they don’t laugh. On a Zoom call, you’re just staring at this wall of faces. And most of them are muted, and you’re just talking to yourself—that’s like a dead room. It feels like everything is bombing in most pitches.
And last question, for people like me who haven’t seen the original Adventure Time series yet, why is it a good time to jump into the world—when watching Fionna and Cake?
Adam Muto: I mean, it’s all on Max and Hulu. And I guess if you like the series, you’re connected to the series. You don’t have to look at watching the rest of it as homework. It’s more like, ‘Oh, I wonder about this character.’ So you could look up what episodes they appeared in, right? And just kind of explore it that way. I think that was our hope, that you could drop in if you hadn’t watched any episodes of the original series.
And you could explore the library, but it was never a case where we expected every single person coming to it to have watched ten seasons of episodes. That’s even a tall order for people who are fans of the show. They’re not going to remember everything. I don’t think they have to. It’s not homework. It should feel like something you want to explore. So I feel like there are lists out there of episodes you could start with if you didn’t want to go in order.
Well, thanks so much! This was a great talk. Can’t wait to watch more and maybe discuss more specific details in the future.
All episodes of Adventure Time and season one episodes of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake are out now on HBO Max and/or Hulu. Check out our recent review of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake!
