North Springs

North Springs is an American created by Don Grayman and Rob Farlane for TBS. It is set in the titular fictional town in the state of, and revolves around the lives of ten-year-olds Philly Lyndon, Tommy Briggs, Cole Makowski, and Ben Sears. The show has become very popular to due its uniqueness.

The series is animated in-house using two-dimensional computer animation, which has been produced by various companies over the years of the show's production. Since 2009, the series has been animated by North Springs Studios.

The series premiere, "Ben Almost Dies", was originally broadcast on June 2, 1996. In 1998, it became the second most-watched television series on pay television in the U.S., and it reached first place in 1999. 398 episodes have been aired. The show has also been adapted into a feature film and three video games.

North Springs has been nominated for numerous awards, including and. However, it had a perceived decline in quality.

Setting and characters


North Springs takes place during present time in North Springs, a fictional city in the U.S. state of. Its state was first revealed briefly in the season four (1999) episode "Rise of the Funky Kids".

Tommy Briggs, Philly Lyndon, Cole Makowski, and Ben Sears are the protagonists of the show, who all debuted in the series premiere. Supporting characters include Greg Wendy and Katie Emery.

Style and themes
Don Grayman and Rob Farlane credited  and the works of George Maroon as inspiration for the humor in North Springs. Their idea was to have the show look like a "kiddie" cartoon while retaining its adult themes. As a result, they created the show's simplistic art style, often excluding noses on child characters and females and fingers.

Child characters curse frequently, which Grayman said was because he and Farlane know that children use strong language when adults are not present. The duo also included the element of young characters being interested in adult topics.

Conception
In 1993, Don Grayman and Rob Farlane pitched an idea for an adult animated televidion series to the TBS television channel in 1994, who said they would come back to it "in a little bit."

Crew and deadline
In 1994, work on the show began. The production team given a 5-day production deadline. This was done so that the writers could catch up to recent events.

The first season took about two months to complete. The characters were initially designed solely by Grayman and Farlane. The writers of the series alternate between Grayman, Farlane, Josh Kimm, Stephen Kessman, Kay Atolom, Nic Kawl, and Daniel A. Salisbury.

Design and animation
The art and animation of North Springs were both heavily inspired by paper cutout animation. The show's animation begins with the characters. The art of a scene's characters is put into Toonwash, and after the characters are animated, a background is added.

The first two seasons were animated by Sequitur Studios. The seasons 3 and 4 were animated by Eye Identity Studios, seasons from 5 to 13 were animated by Paintcup Productions, and the show has been animated in-house by North Springs Studios since season 14.

The show is animated using EyeScope Animate and Wangong Axis 2D.

Episodes
Since the show's premiere, "Ben Almost Dies", aired on June 2, 1996, 27 seasons and 398 episodes have been released.

Critical reception
The show was rated 8/10 overall by OEN, the website writing, "Spectacular animated sitcom manages to keep its high quality to this day." It was also rated 8.2/10 by users on, with a B+ rating on ViewBox.

On June 29, 2010, Screen Heads named North Springs the Best Animated Comedy of the 2000s. On January 20, 2016, The OMG listed North Springs as the fourth Greatest Animated Series of All Time. On December 5, 2019, the show was ranked as #2 in Alpha.com's "Top 10 Best Animated Series of the 2010s".