Pendleton Ward

Pendleton Ward
Pendleton Ward in 2011
Born	July 8, 1982
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Occupation(s)	Animator, writer, voice actor
Years active	2007 – present
Notable work	Adventure Time Bravest Warriors

Pendleton "Pen" Ward (born July 8, 1982) is an American animator, screenwriter and producer who works for Cartoon Network Studios, and Frederator Studios. He created the three time Emmy-nominated Adventure Time (2010) and Bravest Warriors (2012). Ward is a graduate of the CalArts Animation Program.

Ward entered Frederator Studios when the vice-president, Eric Homan, contacted him after watching one of his films at the annual CalArts animation screenings. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California and grew up in San Antonio, Texas.

Early life

Ward became interested in animation at an early age, inspired by his mother, who is an artist and worked with animators. He started drawing flipbooks in first grade. On his Dad's side he was related to Nick Winwood-Withers.

During his hard childhood, Ward attended CalArts, where he became friends with J. G. Quintel. (They later worked on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack together, and in 2009 Quintel went on to create Regular Show.) At a "Producers Show" at CalArts, Ward met Eric Homan from Frederator Studios, which was his first lead in working with Frederator.

Career

In 2002/2003, Pendleton Ward published a webcomic titled Bueno the Bear. He later took down the comics because he thought they were "terrible". However, he retains the name "buenothebear" for his website and his handle on sites like Twitter. Later, Pen created a short for Frederator Studios titled Barrista, starring Bueno the Bear.

Pen continued to work on short animations for Frederator's Random! Cartoons, which aired on the Nicktoons Network. There, he worked with several people who later would join him on the Adventure Time series, including composer Casey James Basichis, Adam Muto and Niki Yang, many of whom had attended the California Institute of the Arts alongside Pen. His two shorts were The Bravest Warriors and the Adventure Time animated short. The Adventure Time short was made in 2006 and went on to become an internet phenomenon in 2007, with over 1,000,000 views by November of that year. Pen initially pitched Adventure Time to Nickelodeon, but was rejected, but took some time before Cartoon Network decided to pick it up.

In 2007, Ward was hired to work on the first season of Cartoon Network's The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack as a writer and storyboard artist. Flapjack was a storyboard-driven show, it allowed the storyboard artists to write all the dialogue and draw all the action based on an outline assigned to them. During his time on Flapjack Ward was paired up with Mike Roth (currently the supervising producer of Regular Show) and later Alex Hirsch, who has since went on to create the show Gravity Falls and develop Fish Hooks for Disney. The experience inspired Pen to approach Adventure Time the same way once it was picked up as a series.

In 2012, Frederator Studios developed Bravest Warriors and turned it into a web series for the relaunch of Cartoon Hangover. Former Adventure Time lead designer Phil Rynda worked on the redesigns of the characters for the series. The series premiered during the fall of 2012 through Cartoon Hangover's YouTube channel alongside a comic book series of the same name by Boom! Studios.

Filmography

Television

Year	Title	Role
2008–2009	Random! Cartoons	Creator, director 2 episodes
2008–2009	The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack	Writer, storyboard artist
2010–present	Adventure Time	Creator, writer, storyboard artist
2012–present	Bravest Warriors	Web series creator

Video games

Year	Title	Role
2012	Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!	Creator, writer

Shorts

Year	Title	Role
2007	Barrista	Writer, animator
2011	Pikapew Poop Chu	Story, animatic, soundmixing
2011	Thank You	Story

Voice roles

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2007	Barrista	Bueno the Bear Sasha	Short
2008	Random! Cartoons	Abraham Lincoln Old Man	Episode: "Adventure Time"
2009	The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack	Rower #1 Sail Boss	Episode: "Ben Boozled"
2010–present	Adventure Time	Lumpy Space Princess Shelby Additional voices	26 episodes
2011	Pikapew Poop Chu	Ash Brock	Short
2012–present	Bravest Warriors	Medical Computer	Episode: "Emotion Lord"

Bibliography

Year	Title	Issues	Roles
2012–present	Adventure Time	8	Creator
2012	Marceline and the Scream Queens	6	Creator
2012–present	Bravest Warriors	6	Creator

Influences

Ward has previously stated that his friends, many of whom he works alongside on Adventure Time, are his biggest drawing and animating influences. In another interview, he explained that he was influenced by The Simpsons, Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, David Lynch, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Dr. Tran, The Adventures of Tintin and The Office.

Further reading

The template {{Expand}} has been deprecated since 26 December 2010, and is retained only for old revisions. If this page is a current revision, please remove the template.

• Farago, Andrew. "Random Thoughts from Frederator Cartoonists". Animation World Network. Thursday January 29, 2009. Retrieved on July 28, 2011.
• DeMott, Rick. "Time for Some Adventure with Pendleton Ward." Animation World Network. Sunday April 25, 2010. Retrieved on November 20, 2010.
• http://www.artofthetitle.com/2010/10/12/adventure-time/

External links

• Official website
• Pendleton Ward on Twitter
• Pendleton Ward at IMDb
• Pendleton Ward on Tumblr