Pendleton Ward, known to others as “Pen”, is a well-known animator, voice actor, screenwriter, cartoonist and artist working for Cartoon Network and Frederator Studios. He has made many animations like Random! Cartoons and the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, but he was most famous for the Emmy-Award cartoon series, Adventure Time. He was born July 6 in 1982, in San Antonio, TX and the story behind Pendleton’s love for animation, was inspired by his mother, who like him is an artist. Before he made Emmy-Award winning cartoons and internet hit series, he started to do flipbooks in first grade and worked on comic books with his best friend, Alec.
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Pendleton Ward graduated at California Institute of Arts and started to make a lot of animated shorts like the Bravest Warriors and Adventure Time the animated short. Adventure Time the animated short was created in 2006, and became in internet phenomenon in 2007, getting over a million views in just one month! Originally, Pendleton was offering Adventure Time to Nickelodeon, but he was rejected as Nickelodeon was not interested. It took some time before Pendleton was called and hired to work at Cartoon Network Studios. However, at that time, Adventure Time was only a short. He first worked on the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack as a writer and a storyboard artist. Since Flapjack was a storyboard written show, it allowed the storyboard artist to write the dialogue. Each artist was put in pairs, and Pendleton was paired with Mike Roth. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he was formerly the supervising producer of Regular Show, another show that aired on Cartoon Network.
Not only did Pendleton create the show, not only did he do some of the voices, but he actually wrote some of the episodes. This includes Prisoners of Love, The Enchiridion!, My Two Favorite People, Freak City, Rainy Day Daydream, Dad’s Dungeon, James Baxter the Horse, and Bad Timing.
But enough about Adventure Time, the man has created some other amazing shows too. He actually created an internet hit series called Bravest Warriors. Fun fact, Bravest Warriors wasn’t just a hit series it has been many more than that. Before the series, it started off as a book written by authors Kate Leth, Breehn Burns, Amy Rumbarger and Jason A. Johnson. The story was set in the year of 3085 and the plot was four heroes-for-hire teenages named Christopher “Chris” Kirkman, Beth Tezuka, Wallow and Daniel “Danny” Vasquez who travel the universe to save cute aliens with their emotions. It was also a comic book with a total of eight volumes! The comic lasted till the year of 2012-2015! I guess creating comics in 1st grade really payed off for Pendleton.
In conclusion, Pendleton Ward is just an amazing person. I’ve never really acknowledge him seeing as though I’m not a huge fan of Adventure Time or the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. But seeing all the things he’s done, from helping create comics, to almost voicing everybody in Adventure Time and even the reason why he’s an artist, I’ve really looked up to him. Pendleton Ward is 34 years old now and he is still continuing to make awesome work! I can’t believe I’m saying this but, I think I like Pendleton Ward better than Rebecca Sugar.
pendleton ward
By: Zahni Sylvester-Stewart
