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Description
Who needs Candied Island?
It's safer at the docks
But there ain't no streams of sodie pops
No tricklin' down the rocks
It's dangerous and risky!
But adventurous and free!
Adventure, that's the life for me!
There's lollipop trees and a lemonade sea!

15 years ago on this day, Cartoon Network aired the first episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Created by Thurop van Orman, the show follows the adventures of a young boy named Flapjack, who wants to become a great adventurer. Alongside him are Captain K'nuckles, a rugged, washed up adventurer who claims to be the greatest adventurer there is, and Bubbie, a light blue whale who is Flapjack's primary caretaker. However, being a great adventurer means having to go into uncharted territory, where anything and everything could pose as a threat. So, they spend most of their time in the town of Stormalong Harbor, where the inhabitants are just as weird as the dangers outside the seabound town.

When the show premiered, it became a staple of the channel alongside fellow Cartoon Network show Chowder, as they were both shows that embraced their wackiness and bizarre humor. However, in the case of Flapjack, it would also cement itself as one of the strangest shows on the channel. The show was often noted for its heavy use of gross-out humor, featuring characters that are ugly to the bone and, at times, like to do those horrifying Ren and Stimpy or SpongeBob-like close ups that really elevate the creepiness. In fact, the creepiness was such a staple to the show, that people often rank it alongside Courage the Cowardly Dog as one of the scariest cartoons they grew up with. I mean, can you really blame them when the show has the balls to feature this creepy-looking cat and a guy who has eyes and ears on his tongue ? When it comes to my experiences with Flapjack, I did like this show when growing up, especially since it had the courage to be what it wanted to be with its reliance on gross-out humor and making its audience unsettled... just like Courage the Cowardly Dog. However, I think it paled in comparison to Chowder, which I think was the funnier show by being purely driven with its comedy. As for what I would call my favorite episode, it has to be the Season 1 episode "Gone Wishin'", which is about Flapjack and K'nuckles playing around with a mermaid's heart, which is a container full of her tears that are capable of granting wishes. I have some other favorites, like "Beard Buddies", "How the West Was Fun", and "Balance". However, it's not just my support for this show on why I made this.

If you've been following the animation community for a while, you probably have heard of something called the "Flapjack Family of Cartoons". To put it simply, this chart explains that some of the show's key players would go on to create their own show, and some of the people who worked on those shows would go on to create their own as well. For example, three of the main contributors to Flapjack are Pendleton Ward, JG Quintel and Alex Hirsch, the creators of Adventure Time, Regular Show and Gravity Falls respectively. Adventure Time had Rebecca Sugar, who created Steven Universe, Regular Show had Owen Dennis, who created Infinity Train, and Gravity Falls had Matt Braly and Dana Terrace, who created Amphibia and The Owl House respectively. As you can see, Flapjack is essentially responsible for revolutionizing the animation industry for creating some of the most famous cartoons of the 2010 decade. In fact, two of those cartoons, Regular Show and Gravity Falls, wound up earning spots in my top 5 favorite cartoons of all time. I have a hunch that the "Flapjack Family of Cartoons" will continue to grow as the years go on, and if those shows would become world renowned, we would all have this show to thank.

Now onto the artwork!

I've stated quite a few times a few paragraphs ago that one of the show's most notable traits is its high use of gross-out humor and imagery. Well, another thing that this show loves make evident is the sense of adventure (I mean, it's in the title). Of course, when you have a show about characters going on adventures, the scale can be quite big. I figured that, to celebrate this milestone anniversary, I should try to create an artwork that features the same scale of grandness. And there's no other character that can match that scale (and danger) than one of the show's recurring antagonists, Eight-Armed Willy, a giant octopus pirate. To make sure he was as threatening as possible, I tried to include as many of his grotesque details as possible, like his numerous scars and stitches, the bumps on his body, his pointy teeth, and being massive overall. In order to elevate that sense of danger, and because you can't make an anniversary artwork without the starring characters, I drew in Bubble desparately trying to swim away from the gargantuan cephalopod while Flapjack and K'nuckles are just jumping triumphantly into the air, since it means that they're on the adventure of a lifetime.

When looking at some reference pics in order to figure out what I wanted the overall image to look like, I noticed that the show's art style has somewhat of a rigid look to it, like some outlines aren't perfectly smooth, and there are parts of the characters' bodies that have a lot of black emphasis, like around their eyes. I realized that this was the perfect opportunity for me to use this brush called Classic Cartoonist, which resembles that of a runny sharpie. The end result is that you have these outlines that are so rough looking, it fits perfectly well with the fact that this cartoon doesn't exactly have the cleanest look to it. Another thing I noticed when looking at my reference pics is that the backgrounds appear to be made with watercolors. Since I'm unsure on which of my brush settings can easily replicate the look of watercolors, I decided to go the easy way and just take something off Google. This is the case with the sky and the water. For the sky, it's a standard blue watercolor background, to which I then darkened in order to give it the appearance of a stormy sky. For the water, it's turquose instead of blue, and I used the lasso tool to create these splashing water-like cutouts. I orginally created three of these lines of water, but I stuck with two because, since the perspective of this artwork suggests that you're looking at what you're seeing at a low angle, you wouldn't be able to see much water at that eye level. One last thing I want to bring up about the making of this artwork is that, when there's action on the water, it's only believable if there would be some splashing. That's where the white blobs behind Bubbie and the blue blobs behind Willy come in. To create those splashing effects, I took a brush that splatters speckles, and rubbed the shape I desired. Initially, I was going to leave it at that, but I decided to give them a bit of a blur so that it could have that foamy look to it, since water gets all bubbly if splahed enough.

One last thing I'd like to talk about is the title of the artwork. When thinking up of names, one of the things that came to mind was the Pixar film, Up, where the main antagonist's catchphrase is "Adventure is out there!" The moment that phrase popped in my head, I immediately replaced "Adventure" with "Misadventure", not only because it's in the name of the show, but also because the show is all about Flapjack and K'nuckles getting into all sorts of trouble and mischief. I honestly hoped I could come up with something better, since Up is a Disney reference instead of a Cartoon Network one, but the name just stuck, and it just rolls off the tongue so well.

That's all I got to say here. It was quite a lot, but that's what happens when you realize that this show left a bigger impact than most people think. Hope you like this dedication of epic proportions, and I want to ask, what are your thoughts on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack?

Description
Who needs Candied Island?
It's safer at the docks
But there ain't no streams of sodie pops
No tricklin' down the rocks
It's dangerous and risky!
But adventurous and free!
Adventure, that's the life for me!
There's lollipop trees and a lemonade sea!

15 years ago on this day, Cartoon Network aired the first episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Created by Thurop van Orman, the show follows the adventures of a young boy named Flapjack, who wants to become a great adventurer. Alongside him are Captain K'nuckles, a rugged, washed up adventurer who claims to be the greatest adventurer there is, and Bubbie, a light blue whale who is Flapjack's primary caretaker. However, being a great adventurer means having to go into uncharted territory, where anything and everything could pose as a threat. So, they spend most of their time in the town of Stormalong Harbor, where the inhabitants are just as weird as the dangers outside the seabound town.

When the show premiered, it became a staple of the channel alongside fellow Cartoon Network show Chowder, as they were both shows that embraced their wackiness and bizarre humor. However, in the case of Flapjack, it would also cement itself as one of the strangest shows on the channel. The show was often noted for its heavy use of gross-out humor, featuring characters that are ugly to the bone and, at times, like to do those horrifying Ren and Stimpy or SpongeBob-like close ups that really elevate the creepiness. In fact, the creepiness was such a staple to the show, that people often rank it alongside Courage the Cowardly Dog as one of the scariest cartoons they grew up with. I mean, can you really blame them when the show has the balls to feature this creepy-looking cat and a guy who has eyes and ears on his tongue ? When it comes to my experiences with Flapjack, I did like this show when growing up, especially since it had the courage to be what it wanted to be with its reliance on gross-out humor and making its audience unsettled... just like Courage the Cowardly Dog. However, I think it paled in comparison to Chowder, which I think was the funnier show by being purely driven with its comedy. As for what I would call my favorite episode, it has to be the Season 1 episode "Gone Wishin'", which is about Flapjack and K'nuckles playing around with a mermaid's heart, which is a container full of her tears that are capable of granting wishes. I have some other favorites, like "Beard Buddies", "How the West Was Fun", and "Balance". However, it's not just my support for this show on why I made this.

If you've been following the animation community for a while, you probably have heard of something called the "Flapjack Family of Cartoons". To put it simply, this chart explains that some of the show's key players would go on to create their own show, and some of the people who worked on those shows would go on to create their own as well. For example, three of the main contributors to Flapjack are Pendleton Ward, JG Quintel and Alex Hirsch, the creators of Adventure Time, Regular Show and Gravity Falls respectively. Adventure Time had Rebecca Sugar, who created Steven Universe, Regular Show had Owen Dennis, who created Infinity Train, and Gravity Falls had Matt Braly and Dana Terrace, who created Amphibia and The Owl House respectively. As you can see, Flapjack is essentially responsible for revolutionizing the animation industry for creating some of the most famous cartoons of the 2010 decade. In fact, two of those cartoons, Regular Show and Gravity Falls, wound up earning spots in my top 5 favorite cartoons of all time. I have a hunch that the "Flapjack Family of Cartoons" will continue to grow as the years go on, and if those shows would become world renowned, we would all have this show to thank.

Now onto the artwork!

I've stated quite a few times a few paragraphs ago that one of the show's most notable traits is its high use of gross-out humor and imagery. Well, another thing that this show loves make evident is the sense of adventure (I mean, it's in the title). Of course, when you have a show about characters going on adventures, the scale can be quite big. I figured that, to celebrate this milestone anniversary, I should try to create an artwork that features the same scale of grandness. And there's no other character that can match that scale (and danger) than one of the show's recurring antagonists, Eight-Armed Willy, a giant octopus pirate. To make sure he was as threatening as possible, I tried to include as many of his grotesque details as possible, like his numerous scars and stitches, the bumps on his body, his pointy teeth, and being massive overall. In order to elevate that sense of danger, and because you can't make an anniversary artwork without the starring characters, I drew in Bubble desparately trying to swim away from the gargantuan cephalopod while Flapjack and K'nuckles are just jumping triumphantly into the air, since it means that they're on the adventure of a lifetime.

When looking at some reference pics in order to figure out what I wanted the overall image to look like, I noticed that the show's art style has somewhat of a rigid look to it, like some outlines aren't perfectly smooth, and there are parts of the characters' bodies that have a lot of black emphasis, like around their eyes. I realized that this was the perfect opportunity for me to use this brush called Classic Cartoonist, which resembles that of a runny sharpie. The end result is that you have these outlines that are so rough looking, it fits perfectly well with the fact that this cartoon doesn't exactly have the cleanest look to it. Another thing I noticed when looking at my reference pics is that the backgrounds appear to be made with watercolors. Since I'm unsure on which of my brush settings can easily replicate the look of watercolors, I decided to go the easy way and just take something off Google. This is the case with the sky and the water. For the sky, it's a standard blue watercolor background, to which I then darkened in order to give it the appearance of a stormy sky. For the water, it's turquose instead of blue, and I used the lasso tool to create these splashing water-like cutouts. I orginally created three of these lines of water, but I stuck with two because, since the perspective of this artwork suggests that you're looking at what you're seeing at a low angle, you wouldn't be able to see much water at that eye level. One last thing I want to bring up about the making of this artwork is that, when there's action on the water, it's only believable if there would be some splashing. That's where the white blobs behind Bubbie and the blue blobs behind Willy come in. To create those splashing effects, I took a brush that splatters speckles, and rubbed the shape I desired. Initially, I was going to leave it at that, but I decided to give them a bit of a blur so that it could have that foamy look to it, since water gets all bubbly if splahed enough.

One last thing I'd like to talk about is the title of the artwork. When thinking up of names, one of the things that came to mind was the Pixar film, Up, where the main antagonist's catchphrase is "Adventure is out there!" The moment that phrase popped in my head, I immediately replaced "Adventure" with "Misadventure", not only because it's in the name of the show, but also because the show is all about Flapjack and K'nuckles getting into all sorts of trouble and mischief. I honestly hoped I could come up with something better, since Up is a Disney reference instead of a Cartoon Network one, but the name just stuck, and it just rolls off the tongue so well.

That's all I got to say here. It was quite a lot, but that's what happens when you realize that this show left a bigger impact than most people think. Hope you like this dedication of epic proportions, and I want to ask, what are your thoughts on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack?