gunterfan1992

[gunterfan1992]

the legendary graffiti stairwell in the CNS building was sadly painted over by its new owners, but the complete 3D scan is now live to explore at your leisure. a cookie to anyone who can find my contribution!

[gunterfan1992]

I wanted to play dress up with Simon, so I put him in some 70's fashion looks hehe

[gunterfan1992]

here's the last of my favorite storyboards from Fionna & Cake! it was truly a blast!

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I still think about these two ;-; <3

[gunterfan1992]

As has been announced, we've begun work on Season 2 of Fionna & Cake. It's too early to say much (and it's going to be a long while until these episodes premiere) but thank you so much for watching the first season!

[gunterfan1992]

Cheers Cake transformations concept art by Tom Herpich

[gunterfan1992]

FIONNA AND CAKE SEASON 2 GREENLIT

(x)

[gunterfan1992]

Last but not least ep10 colorscript.

We didn’t have a chance to make one for episode 9.

I hope all the fans enjoyed the show. ☺️

It was an absolute pleasure to work on.

[gunterfan1992]

Adventure Time: Complete Collection DVD set illustration by BG designer Matt Houston

[gunterfan1992]

SPOILERS!!! REFERENCES AND EASTER EGGS IN F&C ep. 10: CHEERS

The finale!

Pawn Swan! This was another character who first appeared in Steve Wolfhard's post-finale loredump about the 1000+ world. I never expected to actually see him in the show.

Nuts how this is like the third time we've seen Simon's ass. I love how Shermy is just chilling and playing video games while GOLB lets this random old man take a turn at the wheel.

This establishing shot of Fionnaworld shows that it's very small. By the time it is restored at the end of the episode, this ominous white border is gone and there are more buildings, implying that it became a complete world.

I can't believe Gary was thirsting after Scarab in this situation.

There is a shop called Evergree Flowers; likely a reference to the episode Evergreen.

This shop window advertises that you can learn to kick bugs. Appropriately enough, Cake kicks Scarab through this shop window while in her Godzilla form.

The Betty statue has become GOLBetty.

It should be clear by this point that Casper and Nova are a parallel to Simon and Betty, with all of their decisions being made by Casper with little consideration for Nova due to their unbalanced power dynamic. This is why Simon realises that he should have been more considerate of Betty's dreams, rather than single-mindedly chasing the Enchiridion and the crown.

The credits confirm that genderswapped Ash is named Ashley. I wonder what happened to her after she fell into the void. Probably nothing good.

Poor Marshall never gets to finish his songs. Truly he is the genderswapped Marceline.

The name "GOLBetty" is now canon; Simon uses it in this scene.

I'm not sure what's happening to GOLBetty here. A loose thread to pick up if this story ever gets a continuation, perhaps.

Simon steps through several different universes, including all the ones we saw during this miniseries. I'm not sure what this world full of tiny bears is meant to be.

Some kind of industrial capitalist hell universe.

This is the Water Park Prank artstyle, implying that Water Park Prank takes place in a separate but canon universe. So Water Park Prank is now canonically canonical! (what a ridiculous phrase)

Some kind of Jake universe.

A universe featuring Magwood and his volcano lair, from the episode Evergreen.

The snail! It's not dead after all. And it's a great way of symbolising a return to regular Ooo, as is the reappearance of the smiley butterfly.

This was a strange selection of characters. I hope Jay hasn't left his younger siblings on their own if their dad is dead. At least baby Finn won't have to grow up in Vampworld, though part of me liked imagining what that would have been like.

Fionna mentions that his is her top fantasy. The other two of her top three fantasies were Cake being able to talk and a kingdom made of candy.

She gets a hammer, like she had in the dream sequence at the very beginning of the miniseries.

Kheirosiphon goes back to working in a teashop, just like he did on The Drift before he was imprisoned by Scarab. Also Marshall's outfit here is incredibly gay, it's great.

There is an ad here for a daddy issues themed comedy night. Sounds like Marceline's kind of place.

Prismo's face glitches for a second. Ominous.

Simon definitely needs to move out. This is probably an even more important realisation than coming to understand his influence over Betty.

In the credits of this episode, Simon is finally at peace.

And with that, the miniseries is over! Back to the long wait. Will this be it for Adventure Time? Or is there yet more to come...

[gunterfan1992]

Last two episodes of Fionna and Cake dropped today on Max. Please check them out! I wish the series had been longer. It was an absolute joy and dream come true to have had a part in this series. I hope everyone enjoyed 🥰

Here is my episode 7 color script.

Supervising Producer @sandrajiun

Art Direction: @oxfruit

[gunterfan1992]

Cake the Cat title sketches by Michael DeForge

[gunterfan1992]

I had the great pleasure of designing/animating a bunch of 3D stuff for the last two episodes of Fionna and Cake! It was a joy to work with this low-poly adventure game style. Hope you all enjoyed this great show!!

[gunterfan1992]

Jerry concept drawings by supervising director Steve Wolfhard

Some Fionna and Cake Deities! I tried to build off the designs of Cosmic Owl and Prismo, some built out of light and intangible stuff like magnetism, gravity, electricity etc, also The God Lard.

And Orbo is a

B)

BMO's mask was inspired by this cool shot from Arcane Sorcerer (a top 10 movie for me!) and Lich stuff is always fun. At one point I was really gunning for all the Jerry-World plants/grass to be floppy haha, and Lich stuff is always fun to do.

haha I was playing a lot of Elden Ring around here. "Stuff on stuff" design mentality.

[gunterfan1992]

Episode Review: “Casper & Nova”/“Cheers”

Airdate: September 28, 2023

Story by: Anthony Burch, Adam Muto, Hanna K. Nyström, Jack Pendarvis, Kate Tsang

"Casper & Nova" Storyboarded by: Iggy Craig, Graham Falk, Sonja von Marensdorff, Jacob Winkler

"Cheers" Storyboarded by: Anna Syvertsson, Hanna K. Nyström, Jim Campbell, Jackie Files

Directed by: Ryann Shannon (supervising, "Casper & Nova"), Steve Wolfhard (supervising, "Cheers"), Hans Tseng (art)

Well, here we are: The final two episodes of the Fionna & Cake miniseries. Were they good? Was the miniseries worth it? Should the show finally be allowed to die, or should there be another season?

My answer? It's complicated.

Read on for more!

But first, a quick recap: At the start of "Casper & Nova," Fionna and Cake return to their "normie" world, where they find out that not everyone is happy about the possible restoration of magic. They also discover that the Scarab, a cosmic entity that wants to destroy their world, has followed them through the portal. Meanwhile, Simon finds himself transported to a dimension wherein he faces GOLBetty, who in turn transports him into the mind of Shermy, a character living in a future version of Ooo. In order to track down that world's ice crown and undo everything that is going wrong, Simon-as-Shermy reads a book called "Ancient Artifacts" that details the adventures of "Casper and Nova." This book causes Simon-as-Shermy to realize that he has been following his own wants at the expense of Betty's.

In "Cheers," Simon then finds himself teleported to an alternate flashback in which he decides to go with Betty to search for petroglyphs. As the event plays out, however, Simon realizes that this was not what actually happened; he and Betty then recognize that they could have made better choices. Simon is returned to the GOLBetty dimension, where he coughs up a dandelion that represents Fionnaworld; he then shoves this into his head, which Fionna catches. Using the seeds of the flower allows Fionna to enliven her friends, and then, in the nick of time, Prismo teleports a number of Fionna and Cake's allies (i.e., Peppermint Butlter Tank, Baby Finn, Jay, and Little Destiny) into Fionnaworld. They collectively fight off Scarab and fix the damage her caused. The miniseries ends with Simon going to therapy while Fionna and her friends rebuild their world.

Before I dive into my review, I wish to emphatically state that unlike some members of the Adventure Time fandom, I enjoyed these episodes. They sated me, with a healthy number of solid jokes (e.g., Shermy and Beth's plan to overthrow Gibbon, which begins with "Praxis" and ends with "Burn Parliament") and bursts of freaky horror (e.g., the Lich's 'death,' Scarab's face) keeping me engaged throughout. But while I enjoyed them, I cannot help but also feel disappointment. I do not think that "Casper & Nova"/"Cheers" are anywhere near the show's best installments, and they are certainly not comparable to the heights established by past finales like "Come Along with Me" and "Together Again."

Of these two episodes, "Casper & Nova" is easily the most awkward, as much of the focus is on Simon-as-Shermy/Beth or the story of the titular characters—both of which are storylines that feel unnecessary and confusing. Why did GOLBetty transfer Simon's mind into Shermy's? Was there any deeper purpose, or was it just an opportunity for us to check in Shermy and Beth? I completely understand the impulse to revisit this world (I, for instance, would love an Ooo 1000+ miniseries), but I do not understand why the writers felt like featuring it at this point in the story, rather than earlier when the characters were actively universe-hopping. Likewise, while I get the allegorical purpose of Casper and Nova, I cannot help but feel that the allegory itself was redundant, especially since the episodes practically beat us over the head with the metaphor ("SIMON… IS… CASPER! BETTY… IS… NOVA!"). Somehow both too messy and too straightforward, "Casper & Nova" was a needless bump in the road that negatively impacted the miniseries' pacing.

"Cheers," in contrast, is a stronger episode, but one that is also marred by its own problems. Chief among these is the finale's focus on emotional tidiness at the expense of plot logic, which leads many of its beats feeling deus ex machina-y. Consider, for instance, the big climax: Scarab has gone berserk and is wreaking havoc in Fionnaworld. But before Scarab is able to fully destroy the unauthorized universe, Simon magically coughs up a flower representation of Fionnaworld(?), which he drops through the portal in his head(??). Fionna catches the flower and disperses its seeds, which manage to heal all that Scarab had destroyed(???). This is one of those moments that, when I watched it, felt emotionally satisfying, but after contemplation, makes no sense. If Simon coughed up the world, how is he able to use the portal in his head to give it to Fionna? Isn't the flower the world? And why would dispersing the universe-flower heal Fionnaworld? It all feels like a big, messy swirl that has been varnished over; on one level, it works, but only in an immediate, superficial way. Closer inspection causes the cracks to appear.

I am further conflicted with how the miniseries deals with Simon and Betty's relationship. I think that telling kids to not sacrifice their lives for the sake of others is a great message, but there is something weird about how it is used in these episodes. The miniseries seems to at first imply (especially in "Capser & Nova") that Simon was single-mindedly fixated on himself and could not see that Betty was devoted to him. But this does not really make sense given how he devastated he was when she disappeared and how desperate he was to find her and apologize to her. From my perspective, the problem was not that Simon took Betty for granted, but that both of them were equally fixated on the other, to the detriment of themselves: Betty threw her life away to cure Simon, leading her to become an eldritch demon god, whereas Simon was throwing his life away in attempt to bring Betty back. To be fair, the miniseries does hint at this idea when it has Betty say that while the two of them could have "made better choices," but by having her admit that they were both to blame, the episode kind of blows up the whole "selfish Simon" element that was beat over our head in "Capser & Nova"!

Having said all that, the miniseries' ending—which sees Simon going to therapy—was a strong, albeit abbreviated, moment. Not everything in life can be cleanly repaired. Sometimes, loss is loss and we have to deal with the seeming meaninglessness that it leaves in our hearts. That means that we have to make sense of the senseless, which is a daunting task. For Simon, this task was to recognize that the past is the past and that Betty loved him, sacrificed herself for him, and is gone. When we push away this emptiness and refuse to confront it, it is very easy for us to lapse into nihilism, seeing everything as bleak and hollow. But if we are able to, we can also open up and discuss this emptiness with others. This might not sound like a big deal ("I talk to myself all day in my head! Why would I need to talk to someone else?") but there is something powerful about conversing with another person; it lets us admit out loud what it is that is bothering us, which prompts us to consciously face our worries and fears. And because we are with another person, we are not alone in this fight! Now, I realize that therapy is not an option available to everyone (alas), but I applaud the show for suggesting that, if available, it can play a major part in overcoming depression.

Given everything I have said in this review, as well as the previous ones, was Fionna and Cake worth it? Yes, yes it was! While it might not have had the strongest ending, it nevertheless proved that the series still has gas in its tank. I hope that we get more Adventure Time content in the future (I, for one, would love an Ooo 1000+ event series), and if this comes to pass, I hope that the writers take the time to learn what worked, what didn't, and then go from there.

Final “Capser & Nova” Grade: B-

Final “Cheers” Grade: B

Final Fionna & Cake Grade: B+

#adventure time #atimers #review #fionna and cake #fionna campbell #fionna the human #cake the cat #cake #simon petrikov

[gunterfan1992]

The Star Bonnie concept art by writer/storyboard artist Jacob Winkler

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Prismo the Wishmaster concept art by BG design supervisor Jesse Balmer

Vis dev for Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake - explorations for Kheirosiphon and his teahouse owner disguise

Some exploration of Scarab for Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. Was fixated on that amorphous facial pattern a la Rorschach that would change depending on his mood.