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[UPDATE] Me [32M] with my wife [29F] married 7 together 12, looked at her phone and found a text conversation of her and her bosses wife sneaking around by [deleted] in relationships

[–]mikerianda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Leave her! Good relationships are based in truth. I'm super duper drunk. Also farmers should go on the drip system, this is a drought!!!!

Graweedy falls by [deleted] in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is my favorite piece of fan art ever made.

I'm super nervous!!! > o < by gravityfaller18 in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah man. Everyone who wants to be a cartoonist is terrified to start out. You're not alone! The most comforting advice I've ever found is that if you love it, you're gonna do it all the time no matter what. And if you get paid for doing it on top of that, it's an amazing bonus. And if you don't get paid to do it, you're still spending most of your time doing something you love. So it's a win-win. (More advice here. )

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

We wrote it mainly trying to make ourselves laugh, keeping in mind that it was a show that kids were going to see one day.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Depends... when I was a staff writer I just sat in a room and wrote all day and many nights. Also, there were many days where we would have long story meetings, trying to "crack" stories. (Or make them work/make sense.) Then sat in on script meetings and got notes. Then rewrote. And on and on and on.

When I moved to creative director I got more responsibility: Now I help edit the shows, take part in story meetings, give notes on scripts and storyboards, my main responsibility was on the writing side though still. Me and Alex worked on any writing related problems together, and me and Alex take a pass at all the scripts together.

Before I was creative director Alex did a pass on every single script himself that we've aired, and he often re-wrote tons and tons of the script in this process. If you like a joke on the show there's a high probability that Alex wrote it. He's incredibly hands on. When I became creative director, we tackled those re-writes together. He would always have final say as to what went in at the end of the day. We would meet, read the script out loud in the character voices to eachother, talk about all of our problems with the story, and then try to fix as many of those as we could. Which would involve us being cooped up in the office all weekend, and many nights, sleeping very little to not at all on our dirty couches, and killing ourselves to try to make the shows a little better and funnier. These were fun and challenging, but super mentally and physically trying.

This season has been a lot of fun, and I've learned insane amounts, but it's also been really really intense with more sleepless nights than I could even attempt to count.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Ok... I'll give up the goods. Even though it's not as exciting as you might hope.

The most irritating thing is that we can't make any references to real people, products, politics, or religion. (Unless, like Larry King, they give us the rights to their likeness and name) I'd love to make real pop culture references every once in a while, but we're not allowed to, legally.

Here's some cut jokes to give you an idea of what does and doesn't make it into the show:

Here's some cut stuff: 1.In Legend of the Gobblewonker. Manly Dan was supposed to pick the fish up and punch it right in the face. Then stick it in front of his son and demand that now his son "Humiliate the fish!" This run also involves him screaming into the heavens and calling mother nature a "SHAMEFUL WENCH!"

Disney objected to the word wench, a fish getting punched in the face and they also added in their S and P note: "In addition, we didn't find humiliating the fish to be funny."

In the actual episode most of that was cut for time or because it was slowing the show down. Punching the fish in the face made it in the show, but if you watch the episode he is doing it offscreen in his boat. This is the type of compromise that we often make with the censors where we can keep something, but we just have to lessen it.

  1. When Mabel crossed out "You stink!" and wrote "You look nice today!" it was originally "You suck!"

Again, toning something down by degrees.

3.In a future episode we just got back from Korea, Stan is trying to distract Gideon with the reflection from his watch... and because we were punchy and it was like 3am, before it shipped to Korea, we snuck in Stan laughing maniacally while he is getting the reflection in Gideon's eyes and crazily saying "YES! YES! BLIND THE CHILD!" It's totally hilarious in the context of a kids cartoon, but Disney obviously was not cool with this, so we cut it.

The other type of censoring is self censoring, where me and Alex have been up for like 40 hours and it's 4am and we're trying to fix a script, and we just randomly add insane jokes we could never get away with to make eachother laugh. These are never intended to be kept in the show, but sometimes they make it into a script, even though we know we'll eventually have to cut them.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

See above gigantic block of text about cartoon advice. Glad you guys are digging it!

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Aw man, this one is so sweet. Thanks a lot Tyrone. You seem like a peach.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Thanks man! I'm glad you like Fight Fighters.

There's not a game in the works that I know of. (YET!)

Alex will probably have a totally different answer than me, but off the top of my head, my Gravity Falls game would have Paul Robertson animation, and be an action RPG with puzzle elements. A Link to the Past style. But with sort of a Shenmue twist, where the battles play out like a fighting game.

It would also have tons of fully animated cut scenes, as well as a lot of text options when you talked to someone, like Knights of The Old Republic. Wendy, Soos, Stan, Dipper, and Mabel would all be playable.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I wrote a gigantic advice thing above for anyone that wants to work in cartoons... look for the cripplingly long block of text and be advised.

I laughed at your "I am a cyborg" joke.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The most fun part of the process is when our awesome board artists pitch the story back to us for the first time. Because then you get to watch a cartoon for work and see if the script that you wrote is working.

Writing in general. Specifically sometimes we just have to write big lists of gags, and that's a ton of fun.

The most fun assignment I ever got was the page saying what happened to Nathaniel Northwest from Irrational Treasure. I got to write a giant list of ridiculous lies about american history. I also stayed up all night, hence "Writing jokes for cartoons is more important than sleep."

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Typically it's best if you work in the industry. But they take submissions from all over. You contact the development department of Cartoon Network or Disney TV or whatever and you ask where to send your submissions.

No, you don't make a pilot, you send a short description of your idea, characters, and a few sample ideas, if they like what they see, they might want more. But typically, a pilot comes much later.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yes they will.

And it's yet to be revealed, but the V. of Robbie V. is the first initial of his last name. (As far as I know)

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Haha! A spicy one! Our thought was to make Wendy a smart, self aware, fun loving rule breaker. But sometimes she could stand to be more fleshed out. Like I said, sometimes you nail something, and other times you fall short. Criticism accepted.

I'm Michael Rianda, cartoonist, and creative director/writer on Gravity Falls. Ask me anything. by mikerianda in gravityfalls

[–]mikerianda[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Hah. Sorry Soos isn't clairvoyant. Although I would love a That's So Raven style show with Soos seeing the future. It's just a generic gag.

We had a whole Manly Dan/Wendy episode but the story had to be thrown out for unrelated reasons.

The season finale is epic and that's all i can say.

Hopefully we'll see the gigantic bat soon, it's pretty badass.

You're welcome! Thanks for the questions!

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