Artist Spotlight – Graham Falk

July 16, 2025 Adventure Time Reviewed

Graham Falk is an interesting case – he originally joined the series for some guest board work during season five for Shh! and Root Beer Guy. In most instances, guest board artists will work on a few episodes before moving onto other projects, or simply as a one-time opportunity, like Kris Mukai and KC Green. However, Falk continued to work on the series sporadically throughout season 6 and 7, until he became a fulltime regular for season 8 and eventually even boarded the very final scene for the original series finale. There’s a lot of unique attributes to Falk’s role in the series, first being that unlike a good majority of the staff, he’s a seasoned veteran in the animation world. While most artists have a few previous gigs under their belts, Falk’s career in animation dates back as early as 1980, working as a layout artist and character designer, among several other roles for many successful animated shows. Falk even had his very own series, Untalkative Bunny, which ran for three seasons. Falk’s cartoonish style and love for classical animation can easily be seen in his work, which translates into his time on Adventure Time.

Art Style

Falk is somewhat of an enigma when it comes to locating his artwork. He doesn’t seem to have an online presence or portfolio, which tracks since he’s had such a longstanding career even before the presence of the internet. If it’s not evident enough by these screenshots, Falk’s main inspiration point in both art and storytelling is that of silent cartoons from the 1920’s and very early 1930’s, most evident in his series Untalkative Bunny and his design work for Over the Garden Wall. Dumb, silly expressions, stretched facial features, oval eyes, tilted line-of-action, dramatically big mouth emotes, and monobrows are all hallmarks of Falk’s touch. A lot of those same idiosyncrasies can be found on Summer Camp Island. For as unique as Falk’s touch is, some of his episodes for both Summer Camp Island and Adventure Time can look pretty standard and difficult to decipher, until one expression comes along that can easily be pointed out as a Falk drawing.

Finn & Friends

This one was difficult because there’s Falk hallmarks that are found across every character, and then there’s just the way that Falk draws Finn specifically – I tried to settle for a combination of both. Something very common in Falk’s posing is the 70ish degree angle that characters will stand at, as seen in images one through four. Expressions will additionally be slightly crooked, with boomerang-esque shapes, shown in Finn’s expression in image three. Expressions will also be quite large, specifically in the mouth. Falk Finn’s will be seen with huge, teethless smile, or big frown-y scowls, seen in images four and five. More standard shots of Finn from Falk actually hearken back to his earlier model sheet look, a departure from the more modernized look that most storyboards artist had adopted by the final season, which can be seen in image six. And, while most artists at the time were competing for who could draw the largest eyes on Finn, Falk’s eyes are maybe some of the smallest. Falk also likes drawing Finn in sideview perhaps more than any other artist, as seen in images three, seven, eight, and nine.

A lot of Falk’s touches for Finn also impact Jake: dramatically angled posing, wackier-than-usual expressions, a focus on sideview shots. Jake also suffers a similar fate as Finn, with Falk’s style being somewhat conformed in the final season and less of his touch being evident, as seen with the model sheet-esque Jake in the ninth image. I love how Falk draws Jake’s eyes, with the whites taking center stage and the black mildly outlining them. Falk Jakes also occasionally have mouths that don’t connect all the way to his jowls, as indicated in the first and second images.

A handful of Falk specialties. Monobrows, extreme angled posing, big frowns and smiles, eyes with thick, black outlines, and sharper-than-usual edges on mouths.