Gravity Falls

I wouldn’t claim a character design credit on Gravity Falls, but I did get to sketch these very first versions of a few of the main characters: Dipper, Mabel, Grunkle Stan and Wendy. 

Alex Hirsch was my classmate and friend from CalArts, and he was working on a show called Fish Hooks at Disney Television Animation, but the studio asked him to come up with some original ideas for a new series. The idea they liked most was one based on his own childhood summers spent with his twin sister. He was working on the pitch for it, but while he is wonderfully comfortable with storyboarding, he is not a character designer (and he will tell you this himself). He needed to begin storyboarding a pilot episode and had no designs, but he did have ideas. He asked if I could do some drawings of the four main characters and sent me descriptions of each one. 

As far as I remember, it was something like this:

Dipper always wears a hat. Maybe a trucker hat? Some kind of hat to hide the birthmark on his forehead. He’s suspicious and curious for a kid and often annoyed with his silly twin sister.

Mabel is fun, optimistic, a bit wacky, and always wearing a novelty sweater. (I think he may have sent me a picture of a sweater with pigs on it, but there was no need—I knew exactly the type of 90s kids’ clothing he was referring to.) 

Grunkle Stan is a weird, grumpy old man – is he an uncle? Is he a grandpa? Neither, he’s a grunkle. 

Wendy is Dipper’s crush – she’s just old enough to be unattainable. She’s tall. 

Again, that’s just what I remember. I’ll leave it to Alex to correct me if I’m wrong.