Aaron McCullough

Aaron McCullough (born April 2, 1983) is a American animator, writer, storyboard artist, and voice actor who works for Cartoon Network Studios. He created the long running Emmy Award-winning Cartoon Network series, Pan-Boy! (2011–) and the TBS animated series Somewhere (2014–15). He grew up in Wilmington, Delaware and currently resides in Los Angeles. The main location of Pan-Boy!, Belaware City, was based on the times when he grew up in Delaware.

Early life
McCullough was interested in animation ever since he was 5 years old, inspired by his father, who is an artist and worked with animators. He started drawing flipbooks in first grade. He often worked with his best friend, Sammy "Sam" Anderson, on short comic books around the early 90s.

Career
In 2004–2005, Ward published a webcomic titled Party Cricket, who was originally made for teens and adults. These comics were later taken down in 2012 due to McCullough thinking that they are "not interesting anymore". "However, he retains the name "partycricket" for his website and his handle on sites such as Twitter. In 2006, After moving out of his parents' house, He had an idea to make an animated series based on his Party Cricket webcomic. He pitched the idea to Nickelodeon, they declined due to the somewhat dark nature of the comic.

After McCullough didn't like the webcomic anymore, he started to make a new idea. He created an idea for a cartoon called  Super Pan-Kid!, it was eventually changed to  ''Pan-Boy! '' due to McCullough liking that name more than the former one.

He pitched Pan-Boy! to Nickelodeon in 2008, Although Nickelodeon liked the idea for the pitch, they didn't decline since that it didn't "sound very good". Around early 2009, He pitched Pan-Boy! to Cartoon Network, Since CN was already interested McCullough's Party Cricket webcomic, they accepted it. Production of the series started in May 2009.

Later in 2010, Cartoon Network and McCullough hired people who worked on SpongeBob SquarePants, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, and Phineas and Ferb (most notably Mike Roth, Larry Leichliter, Ghostshrimp, Kaz, Mark O'Hare, J.G. Quintel, and Kent Osborne). Pan-Boy! was originally supposed to premiere on November 29, 2010, then January 31, 2011, and then July 11, 2011. The show was delayed due to McCullough adding more and more time into the work of the series.

Pan-Boy! officially premiered with the episodes "Voice Crack / Quija Board" on July 11, 2011, with a sneak peak on July 5, 2011. After the first season ended in April 2012, Titmouse Inc., the animation studio for Pan-Boy! at the time, started to lose the animation for the series due to some conflict that was happening during the later episodes of Season 1. Due to this, The animation for Season 2 and onwards is now handled by Rough Draft Korea, which resulted in two episodes originally produced for the second season became cancelled.

In late 2012, McCullough starting developing a new show called Somewhere, with most of the same people who worked on Pan-Boy!.

Somewhere was pitched to TBS in 2013, They accepted it because the president of the network; Kevin Reilly, liked the idea of the series. The series premiered on January 20, 2014, with new episodes airing on Monday nights.

The show was cancelled on May 25, 2015 after two seasons and 48 episodes. The reason for the cancellation due to low ratings and TBS not liking the series all that much, despite the series premiere bringing in the highest ratings in TBS history.

Sometime during the fourth season of Pan-Boy!, McCullough abruptly stepped down from running the show, explaining that it was "time to go". According to some interviews with McCullough, He stated that "I quit the show because, well, it was time to go. I was slowing getting uninterested in the series during this time, so I decided that I just go work on other projects." In an interview with Indiewire prior to the debut of season five, head writer Steve Wolfhard noted that McCullough had stopped writing episode outlines at the beginning of season 5 but still looks over them and provides input, as he is focusing on an Pan-Boy! movie.

Influences
Ward has previously stated that his friends, many of whom he works alongside on Pan-Boy!, are his biggest drawing and animating influences. According to an interview, Pan-Boy! was inspired by SpongeBob SquarePants.