Venture into the Unknown! A complete tour through the development and production of the Emmy-winning animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall, this volume contains hundreds of pieces of concept art and sketches, and a comprehensive look at the show’s breathtaking production art.
From the original Tome of the Unknown: Harvest Melody pilot, through each of the episodes, and beyond, take a strange and wonderful journey with Wirt, Greg, and Beatrice. Learn how the award-winning backgrounds were created, see animation storyboards, and even take a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the Mondo vinyl soundtrack and “For Sara” mix tape, as well as the ongoing Boom! Studios comics. Sean Edgar guides the tour, which includes commentary from creators Patrick McHale and Nick Cross.
“I’m so happy Sean and Dark Horse got this book to happen! It’s been really interesting going through all my old sketchbooks, notes, and file folders in search of lost bits and pieces from the show’s development,” said Patrick McHale. “This handsome volume will contain a nice mixture of beautiful drawings and paintings from the series, amusing anecdotes about the process, unseen and unused artwork that didn’t make the final cut, other mysterious odds and ends, and a whole lot of horrible ugly early development sketches that should inspire people to say, ‘Hey, I could do better than that!’”
This book is a treasure. Over the Garden Wall remains my favorite Autumn show (and it’s simply a masterpiece in its own right), with the background painting and art style being two of many reasons why I love it so much. I remember also following one of the background artists as well on social media and eating up every single detail of behind-the-scenes content he would post. So when I saw there was an art book from the show made, I was ecstatic.
Content warnings: - trypophobia (only on the Beast’s character page)
There is so much in this book. What inspired the show, little comments from those who worked on it, sketches and screenshots from all stages of the show’s progress, character concept art, other episode ideas, information about the initial pilot, and more.
At one point, there was an episode written in which a man kidnapped kids and used their bones to make little dolls (the ones you see in the opening and very ending -- where Wirt, Greg, and Jason Funderberker the frog are added to a set of the Unknown character dolls -- are directly from that idea, which is chilling. Some of the cast's ideas were obviously too scary for Cartoon Network to add, like a lot of the Beast’s initial designs. But they're great to see here!
Speaking of that guy, though, many mysteries are from the show surrounding him and his edelwood trees are expanded upon (I won’t talk about them now, of course), which may answer a lot of questions -- like what happened for me -- or create a bunch more -- like what happened for a friend of mine. The great thing about this show is that Patrick McHale and the other creators wanted you to draw your own conclusions and find your own meaning from the stories. The art book is the same way.
Most of the other pages are packed full of delights, like a sketch wall of terrible drawings from the crew, a sketch of Greg with a frying pan upside down on his head and a note reading, “Not iconic enough,” and stories about how each crew member put their own little mark on the series.
I will definitely love looking through this again from time to time.
