Behind the Scenes

The show was the first miniseries on Cartoon Network. Creator, Patrick McHale first envisioned it in 2004 and pitched it to the network in 2006. After working on other Cartoon Network shows including The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Adventure Time, the network expressed interest in McHale pitching a pilot. That pilot, Tome of the Unknown, became the catalyst for Over the Garden Wall. Production of the show began in March 2014 and was largely done in Burbank, California, but many of the show's artists worked from other U.S. cities, while the program's animation was outsourced to South Korean studio Digital eMation. The series' environment evokes 19th- and 20th-century Americana, while its digital backgrounds are designed to resemble brunaille paintings.

The series was very well received by television critics, who praised its atmosphere and characters. In 2015, the series won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. A one-shot comic book adaptation penned by McHale has been produced, with four further issues commissioned. This was later expanded into an ongoing comic series that ran for 20 issues and continued in a series of graphic novels and comic book miniseries.

"Tome of the Unknown: Harvest Melody", usually shortened to "Tome of the Unknown", is a 2013 animated short film created by Patrick McHale and produced by Cartoon Network Studios. In the film—which is narrated by Warren Burton— Wirt, his brother Gregory, and Beatrice head to the big city in search of an arcane book of all known things, meeting a vegetable man along the way.

McHale initially pitched the idea to Cartoon Network as a three-season television series, but was asked to develop it into a feature film for Cartoon Network's planned feature film department. He had trouble rewriting the series into a feature, and it was ultimately put on hold when McHale went to work on Adventure Time. Several years later, Cartoon Network asked McHale for another pitch. He reworked his pitch for Tome of the Unknown, which was accepted as a pilot and made into a short film. Released in 2013 to multiple film festivals, Tome of the Unknown has received several accolades.

While watching "Over the Garden Wall," some inspirations for the series may be more obvious than others. Many theorists and critics have noticed Wirt's jounrey through The Unknown is not dissimilar to Dante's journey in Dante Alighieri's "Dante's Inferno." In the episode "Songs of the Dark Latern," the Highway Man's animation during his song is very reminiscent to old 1930s black and white animations like Betty Boop, Popeye, and Mickey Mouse. In an interview with Craig Kringle, Patrick McHale reveals old postcards were also a big inspiration for the show, even stating Adelaide's design was a blatant rip off from these postcards. In the same interview, McHale states that a book called "The Complete Optimist" (1912) was a huge visual inspiration for the series in the early days. McHale also states that growing up in New Jersey and learning about early Amercian history made him very interested in old Americana, stating that the town he grew up in made history feel very "alive and real."

To see the full interview between Patrick McHale and Craig Kringle, click here.

To the left, there are a few pages from the book "Art of Over the Garden Wall," which is an artbook that showcases tons of concept art and sketches created during the development and production of making the series.