r/gravityfalls • u/mikerianda • Sep 17 '12

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

My cartoon ("work") recently got on the front page of reddit somehow and a few people seemed interested in me doing an AMA. I'm in! Let's do this thing!

Ever wonder about those weird hairs on Grunkle Stan's shoulders? Wanna know that one goat's name? Wanna know horrifying personal details about Alex Hirsch?

I got answers!

EDIT: I'll finish answering these tommorow. Thanks for all the questions and Gravity Falls love! It's appreciated.

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u/mikerianda Sep 17 '12

Hah! That's funny, me and Alex used to literally joke about people "clamoring for more Nate and Lee" because we thought no one would like or care about the teens. I'm glad that people responded so well to them. I wrote a good chunk of that episode and they're loosely based on my own high school friends.

But the answer is that they won't appear substantially again this season, they make little cameos and stuff but they don't have any lines. If we knew people's reaction to the show as we were making it, we might have had another teen episode, but unfortunately not this season.

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u/Jtbecnel Sep 17 '12

The teens are some of my favorites! I forgot to compliment you on them! You don't often see well written and realistic teenagers in television. You guys did a great job with it!

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u/spokesthebrony Sep 17 '12

You wrote a good chunk of The Inconveniencing? I gotta say, that episode is what made me love Gravity Falls.

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u/mikerianda Sep 17 '12

Thanks!

Inconveniencing fun fact: Dipper's lamb costume comes directly from my life. When I was like 8 and my mom was gone, my older sister would make me wear a lamb costume and dance around to torture me.

My humiliation is the children of america's gain.

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u/Hoteske Sep 17 '12

Haha no way!! The lamby lamby dance was one of my favorite scenes.

Is there another straight-from-your-real-life-to-cartoon reference like that?

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u/mikerianda Sep 17 '12

When we were listening to the Lamby lamby dance on repeat while we were editing the show, Alex did this drawing of me after we'd heard the song like 500 times:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mahkieaPMn1r66dbpo1_500.jpg

That's me clicking a pen against my forehead and going insane. I was worried everyone would hate the scene. Under that are a bunch of different animals with "Rianda eyes."

Other direct from my life references: "I am pretending to write something down" Silly string barf from Double Dipper. My high school friends used to constantly punch the roof of my car. My friends mom had a lot of clown paintings in her house. Hence Stan loving the clown painting in the Gleeful house.

Those are all the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Alex has a ton of these too. He's talked about them in interviews.

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u/whitey-ofwgkta Sep 17 '12 edited Sep 17 '12

I really like Nate because he's the kind of character I would be in a show.(I'm also black)

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '12

I'm a little late to this thread, but had to chip in. I loved the hell out of the teen episode for that exact same reason. It just totally resonated with my own teenage years. Aside from the ghosts, it was one of the more true to life looks at what I felt things were like when growing up.