Adult Swim’s upcoming special, The Elephant, brings together several familiar animation names for a three act experiment. Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), Ian Jones-Quartey (OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes), Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time), and Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall) each developed their portion of the overarching story in isolation and with their own team. Together, the teams independently created three parts that tied cleanly into a cohesive narrative. Reminiscent of a time where experimental animation showcases were commonplace, The Elephant is a whimsical exploration of the importance of continuing a visual medium that is quickly being extinguished.
During an early screening to commemorate The Elephant, Ward, Sugar, and Jones-Quartey shared behind-the-scenes information on how this project came to be and how they chose to craft their individual parts. Vishnu Athreya (SVP of Content Strategy & Current Series Production at Warner Bros. Animation) brought together the creators who would then create a short film started by the surrealist game known as The Exquisite Corpse.
Each team would choose which part (the head, the middle, and the feet) they’d like to tackle. With that in mind, the title of the project itself makes more sense as the creators were not allowed to see the other’s parts, but still had to think of how to bridge their story to the others. The “game keepers,” Jack Pendarvis and Kent Osborne, would assist with maintaining a collective flow without spoiling the details between teams.
Photo by Kalai Chik
Fans of Ward, Sugar, Jones-Quartey, or McHale can easily distinguish which parts of the story they worked on. Their individually unique narrative voices and visual motifs come across in their seven-minute sections, and connect well to the overarching message of existentialism and relationships. Pendleton’s vast expansive landscape combined with an understated script, Jones-Quartey and Sugar’s self-reflective narrative, and McHale’s profound ability to tell a story within a story are all captured in the half-hour special.
As creatives who used to work together on Adventure Time and later spearheaded other projects, their work on The Elephant conceptualizes how well they understand each other. “We thought Pat or Pen wouldn’t choose a city,” voiced Jones-Quartey. “Come to find out, we all chose the city. It was a big surprise for us.” They could ask the game masters questions, and they would interweave and encourage incorporating references between the three shorts without outright telling the creatives to do so. The whole project became a “trust exercise” between each other as well as within their own production teams.
“I was the beginning and all I knew was beginning vibes,” said Ward. “Newness while making this energetic and making the characters discover things for the first time.”
“We didn’t know the setup or payoff was,” added Sugar, referring to the lack of visibility to either McHale or Ward’s development. “We knew we all wanted to have our individual opinions about style and execution, but how do we make it all cohesive when not being cohesive is the point?”
In fact, all four of them were worried that the end result would be a mess or “might not work.” However, after witnessing their shorts in its completed form, they couldn’t be more proud and delighted. The international co-production of an experimental work like this is becoming increasingly rare, and so is the opportunity to work on an animated project in general. The teams had the opportunity to build their own production teams for their seven-minute short, including collaborating with different animation studios and musicians Dolphin Hyperspace, Jeff Lu, and The Blasting Company.
“It feels like Liquid TV,” shared Jones-Quartey. Indeed, The Elephant seems right at home among the MTV experimental animation segments, which is exactly what makes this project so sentimental. This animated special evokes a feeling of nostalgia for viewers who grew up in a period where exploratory animation was more commonplace. It’s heartening that creatives at Warner Bros. Animation and Adult Swim see the value in pursuing projects like these, even as the media landscape continues to shrink.
The Elephant will debut on December 19 at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Adult Swim, and stream the day after on HBO Max. A complementary documentary, titled Behind the Elephant, will debut during an encore airing and stream on HBO Max on December 20th. The documentary includes footage and thoughts from the production team, and uncovers the challenges of working on a project of this scale in total isolation from each other.
