http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/12/entertainment/la-et-disney-animation-20120312
“Gravity Falls” doesn’t sound like classic Disney animation.
The new cartoon comedy series follows twins Dipper and Mabel, whose school vacation plans are dashed when their parents ship them off to spend the summer with cranky old Uncle Stan in Gravity Falls, Ore., where pterodactyls swoop overhead and gnomes plot to abduct Mabel and make her their queen.
“Disney wasn’t the first place I would have thought of going to,” said the show’s creator, Alex Hirsch, who grew up watching Fox’s irreverent animated comedy “The Simpsons.” But the Disney Channel is where the show will debut in June.
“Gravity Falls” is loosely based on the summers that Hirsch and his twin sister spent camping in Northern California with their great-aunt Lois — minus the gnomes and pterodactyls and “all the magical strangeness I wish would have happened.” The imaginative series is among the new animated projects highlighting the Disney Channel’s television upfront presentation to potential sponsors Tuesday in New York City.
Disney television animation struggled for years to find success, despite founder Walt Disney’s place in the cartoon pantheon. The Disney Channel’s breakthrough began in 2007 with “Phineas and Ferb,” a concept other networks rejected as too odd and too complicated — the geometric shapes of the characters’ heads gave the series a radical look, and its intersecting plot lines were deemed too difficult for children to follow.
The series’ success proved the skeptics wrong and became a creative inflection point for the Disney Channel and its network sibling, Disney XD, which have emerged as magnets for top-flight talent.