'Gravity Falls' on Disney Channel in June

Mystery! Suspense! Weirdness! Gravity Falls, Oregon, is full of anything and everything an adventurous adolescent might conjure to exist deep in the unexplored forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. This is certainly the case for a pair of twelve-year-old twins, Dipper and his sister, Mabel, who for all intents and purposes, are stuck in Gravity Falls for the summer. An original 2D series premiering on Disney Channel this month, Gravity Falls mashes together a love of the outdoors, a love of boogiemen, and a love of being a kid for the sake of it.

In Gravity Falls, everything isn't just off-the-beaten-path.... it's quite simply off. The animated comedy tracks the adventures of city kids Dipper Pines and Mabel Pines, who are transplanted to this out-of-the-way ditch of the American Northwest by their parents. The summertime seems lost for the two kids, at first, but a closer look at Gravity Falls reveals a pack of suspicious beavers, purple-slime-emitting beasts of the night, and a presumably (probably, possibly, maybe) ferocious lake monster. Given all this, why not go explore the heck out of the place? Dipper and Mabel are up for a challenge.

Disney Channel will be offering viewers a full-episode advanced look of the new TV animation next Friday, June 15, 2012 (9:55pm, ET).

In the premiere episode, Dipper and Mabel parachute into Gravity Falls and make acquaintances with their eccentric Great Uncle Stan (or as the kids like to call him, Grunkle Stan). The old man is known around the area as a wily fella who runs the local tourist trap, a knickknack shop called The Mystery Shack. But alas, once he's asleep or off working on some scam to fleece visitors of their hard-earned cash, Dipper and Mabel set out exploring.

Does a legendary sea monster really exist at the bottom of the lake? What's the deal with those life-sized doppelganger wax figures? They say that Gravity Falls is just west of weird, slightly east of eerie, and always north of normal.

Dipper Pines is a kid who is always on a quest to satisfy his curiosity. Although his imagination has a tendency to blow things out of proportion from time to time, the boy's curiosity is genuine and he has pride in his newfound monster hunting skills. His sister, Mabel, is an inscrutable optimist. She's the one who reasons that a monster in the closet is probably just an opossum (and is then distracted by a bag of potato chips on the floor).

Also in Gravity Falls, viewers will encounter Soos, a happily toothless man-child and hearty worker at Graunkle Stan's shop; Wendy, "an unusually tall high school girl" with some serious outdoorsy skills, which makes her Dipper's ultimate crush; and the usual array of semi-helpful law enforcement sheriffs and deputies.

Gravity Falls is a way out of the way, remote hole in the ground that's heavy on quirky and light on everything else. Gravity Falls, a production of Disney Television Animation, is likely to be much of the same. The new animated series debuts a full hour, on Friday, June 29th (9:00pm, ET/PT).

The cartoon is created by Alex Hirsch, who served as a writer and storyboard artist for Disney's Fish Hooks and Cartoon Network's The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

Recent Diz Animation News:
"Disney Animation Upfront 2012" at AnimationInsider.net (03/2012)