"Bad Jubies" is the twentieth episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series Adventure Time. The episode was written, storyboarded, and directed by Kirsten Lepore, and filmed entirely via stop motion. It originally aired on Cartoon Network on January 14, 2016. The episode guest stars Kevin Michael Richardson as both a sentient storm and an automated weather alert system.

The series follows the adventures of Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio), a dog with magical powers that allow him to change shape and grow and shrink at will. In this episode, a deadly storm hits the grasslands, forcing Finn, Jake, BMO (voiced by Niki Yang), and Lumpy Space Princess (voiced by Pendleton Ward) to build a bunker. In the end, Jake begins beat boxing using nature sounds he has collected, which calms the storm.

"Bad Jubies" is the fourth guest-animated episode of Adventure Time, after season five's "A Glitch Is a Glitch", and season six's "Food Chain" and "Water Park Prank". Lepore was approached about directing the episode after Adventure Time showrunner Adam Muto saw her CalArts MFA thesis film, entitled "Move Mountain". The episode took roughly one year to make and was animated by Bix Pix Entertainment. "Bad Jubies" was met with positive critical reception, and upon its debut was viewed by 1.22 million people. Jason Kolowski, the episode's production designer, later won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation at the 68th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2016. In early 2017, the episode itself won an Annie Award for Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production for Children's Audience.

Plot

After an automated weather alert system (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) announces the approach of a dangerous storm, Finn, Jake, Lumpy Space Princess, and BMO build an ad hoc storm shelter. Finn, Lumpy Space Princess, and BMO all chip in to help construct the refuge, but Jake spends most of the time wistfully contemplating nature. When the storm hits and the quartet is cut-off from the outside world, the isolation begins to drive everyone mad. It is then that Jake reveals what he had been doing out in nature earlier: collecting sounds. He begins beat boxing, using the sounds he collected as samples. Soon, the sentient storm (voiced by Richardson) breaks into the shelter, but Jake's nature beat box manages to tame the tempest.

Production

"Bad Jubies" is the fourth guest-animated episode of the series, after season five's "A Glitch Is a Glitch", and season six's "Food Chain" and "Water Park Prank". At the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, head writer Kent Osborne first revealed that the show was wanting to utilize stop motion in its next guest-directed episode. On October 24, 2014, Kirsten Lepore, an alumna of both the Maryland Institute College of Art's and CalArts's experimental animation programs, announced via her Twitter that she would be working on a "new project"; in tandem with this cryptic message, she posted a picture of an Adventure Time storyboard title sheet that listed her as the supervising director and storyboard artist for an episode.

Lepore first became involved with the show after her CalArts MFA thesis, the short film entitled "Move Mountain", was viewed by Adventure Time showrunner and executive producer Adam Muto in early 2014. He emailed Lepore, asking if she would be interested in working on the show. Muto was drawn to Lepore's work because her style—especially that which was exhibited in "Move Mountain"—was reminiscent of the spirit of Adventure Time; in an email correspondence with Lepore, Muto reportedly told her that the producers had "been wanting to do a stop motion episode for a very long time, [but they] were waiting for the right time and the right fit".  In an interview The A.V. Club, she noted: "I knew this was a huge opportunity and such a huge honor […] It was really, really exciting for me to be able to get the project." With this being said, prior to the email, Lepore had never seen an episode of Adventure Time, and she soon started to watch the show to get a feel for its aesthetic. Eventually, however, she came to genuinely enjoy the show, and she now claims it is one of her favorites.

The episode took roughly one year to make. Approximately five or six months were devoted exclusively to writing, storyboarding, and pitching the episode's plot to the show's writers and the network. Lepore was initially worried because she had limited experience with writing lines for characters, as her previous films had almost exclusively lacked dialogue. Lepore claimed to have relegated herself to her bedroom for five weeks while she wrote and storyboarded the entirety of "Bad Jubies". On August 15, 2014, Lepore submitted her storyboard for network approval, and, after gaining said approval, teamed up with Bix Pix Entertainment. This production company constructed all of the backdrops, props, and puppets, while Lepore directed the endeavor. The production of the episode presented many technical challenges which Lepore had limited experience dealing with. Because she had mostly taught herself how to animate, she soon had to learn specific industry methods that, for instance, prevented puppets from falling over, or shots from being interrupted by human error. Lepore directed four separate animators, who each worked on a different set; this allowed for four times as much footage to be captured in a single day. The episode's introduction, which Lepore animated almost entirely by herself, was the last piece of stop motion made for the show. According to Lepore, the fleeting characters that appear were made "quick and dirty" out of clay, since they only appeared briefly.

The music for the episode was composed by electronic and chiptune artist Disasterpeace. In a Tumblr post, he wrote:
I had the pleasure of scoring Kirsten Lepore's guest directed, Emmy award-winning episode of Adventure Time from Season 7, "Bad Jubies". This is one of my favorite shows and I wanted to honor the feeling of open-ended creativity I feel is often on display when watching it, so I set out to create a collage aesthetic. I asked a bunch of friends to contribute samples to the score, and I was showered with all kinds of wonderful sounds. Guitars, organs, vocalizations, old answering machines, and that's just scratching the surface really.
In terms of sampling, Lepore herself provided a collage of nature sounds.

Reception

"Bad Jubies" aired on January 14, 2016. It was seen by 1.22 million viewers and scored a 0.3 Nielsen rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic (Nielsen ratings are audience measurement systems that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States), which means that the episode was seen by 0.3 percent of all individuals aged 18 to 49 years old who were watching television at the time of the episode's airing.

Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club awarded the episode an "A−", arguing that the episode was both about "how the act of creation can alienate the artist from others, but ultimately unites people with the finished product", and a meditation on negativity, depression, and the beauty of the natural world. Sava was impressed with Lepore's handle on the characters and their voices, especially given that her previous short films had made little to no use of dialogue. He was also appreciative that while Lepore did bring a unique and striking change by using a new medium, tonally, the episode is consistent with other episodes of Adventure Time. Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the episode "catches the show's combination of cosmic consciousness and domestic farce and takes it some places you never knew you wanted it to go. It's everything a special should be." He wrote highly of Lepore's medium, contrasting it with 3-D animation by saying, "In stop-motion, the space is real; the materials are real; their texture is not modeled texture but just, you know, texture. The light is light."

For his work on this episode, Jason Kolowski (the episode's production designer) won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation at the 68th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2016, making it the series's fifth win in this category. In late 2016, the episode and several of those who worked on it were also nominated for three Annie Awards. The episode itself was nominated for Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production for Children's Audience; Kirsten Lepore was nominated for Outstanding Achievement, Directing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production; and Jason Kolowski was nominated for Outstanding Achievement, Production Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production. The episode won the Annie Award for Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production for Children's Audience.

Explanatory notes

References

External links
 

2016 American television episodes
Adventure Time (season 7) episodes
Stop-motion animated television episodes
〈Bad Jubies〉는 카툰 네트워크의 애니메이션 시리즈 《핀과 제이크의 어드벤처 타임》의 일곱 번째 시즌 스무 번째 에피소드이다. 대한민국 방영 명칭은 〈먹구름 스타일〉이다. 스톱모션 기법을 활용한 이 에피소드는 커스틴 레포어가 1년여간에 걸쳐 제작하였다. 2016년 1월 14일 첫 방영되었다.

줄거리
들판에서 놀고 있던 핀, 제이크, LSP는 비모가 전해주는 폭풍우 비상 경고 알람을 듣고는 임시 대피소를 만들기로 결정한다. 핀, LSP, 비모는 열심히 대피소를 짓지만, 제이크는 도와주기는커녕 한가롭게 자연 속에서 사색을 하며 시간을 보낸다. 폭풍이 몰아치고 넷은 대피소 안으로 들어온다. 그러나 오랜 시간 안에 갇혀있는 탓에 모두 서로에게 짜증을 내기 시작한다. 식량이 떨어지고, 문이 부서지고, 전기까지 나간 상황에서 제이크는 자신이 바깥에서 모은 것들을 모두에게 보여준다. 바로 자연의 소리였다. 제이크는 비트박스를 통해 새소리 등을 내며 노래를 부른다. 그 순간 폭풍(성우: 케빈 마이클 리처드슨)이 대피소 안으로 들어닥치고, 제이크를 포함한 넷은 자연의 소리를 통해 폭풍을 진정시킨다.

제작
〈Bad Jubies〉는 다섯 번째 시즌의 〈A Glitch is a Glitch〉, 여섯 번째 시즌 〈Food Chain〉과 〈Water Parks Prank〉에 이어서 외부 게스트가 제작한 네 번째 에피소드이다. 2014년 샌디에이고 코믹콘에서 켄트 오즈본은 《어드벤처 타임》에서 스톱모션 에피소드를 제작하고 있다는 사실을 처음으로 밝혔다. 2014년 10월 24일에는 메릴랜드 인스티튜트 칼리지 오브 아트와 캘아츠의 동문인 커스틴 레포어가 자신의 트위터를 통해 《어드벤처 타임》의 스토리보드 사진과 함께 ‘새 프로젝트’를 작업 중이라고 글을 남겼다.

2014년 3월, 레포어는 캘아츠의 미술 석사(Master of Fine Arts) 학위 작품으로 《Move Mountain》을 제작하여 공개하였다. 《어드벤처 타임》의 쇼러너인 애덤 무토는 우연히 이 단편 영화를 보게 되었고, 레포어에게 《어드벤처 타임》 제작에 참여할 의향이 있는지를 이메일로 물었다. 무토는 레포어의 작품 속에 《어드벤처 타임》을 연상케하는 정신이 들어있었다고 밝혔다. 레포어와의 이메일에서 무토는 “제작진들은 오래 전부터 스톱모션 에피소드를 제작하고 싶었지만, 적절한 시간을 위해 기다리고 있었다.”라고 말했다. 레포어는 《디 A.V. 클럽》과의 인터뷰에서 “정말로 좋은 기회이자 영광이라고 생각했다. (중략) 이 프로젝트에 참여할 수 있게 되어 정말로 신났다.”라고 말했다. 덧붙여서 레포어는 사실 이전에 《어드벤처 타임》을 시청한 적이 단 한 번도 없었으며, 제작에 참여하기 앞서 작품에 대해 자세히 알기 위해 에피소드를 보기 시작했다고 밝혔다.

〈Bad Jubies〉는 제작에 약 1년이 소요되었다. 5개월에서 6개월 정도는 대본과 스토리보드를 구상하고, 작가들과 함께 줄거리를 만드는데 쓰였다. 레포어는 자신이 이전까지 만들어온 작품에는 대화가 거의 없었기 때문에 등장인물에 어울리는 대사를 제대로 쓸 수 있을지 확신이 없었다고 밝혔다. 레포어는 이를 극복하기 위해 침실에 5주간 혼자 머물며 에피소드 전체의 스토리보드를 완성하였다. 에피소드 승인을 맡은 직후 레포어는 빅 픽스 엔터테인먼트(Bix Pix Entertainment)와 함께 제작진을 구성하였다. 빅 픽스에서는 모든 배경과 사물, 등장인물들을 제작하였고, 레포어는 전체 감독을 맡았다. 제작 도중 레포어는 익숙치 않은 분야에 있어서 여러 기술적인 문제에 맞닥뜨렸다. 가령 인형들이 쓰러지거나 실수로 인해 잘못된 장면이 찍히는 것을 막기 위해 레포어는 여러 기술들을 배워나가기 시작하였다. 또한 시간을 절약하기 위해 총 4개로 구성된 세트 하나당 한 명의 애니메이터를 고용하여 동시에 제작을 진행하였다. 오프닝은 레포어가 혼자서 제작하였다. 레포어는 오프닝에만 등장하는 인물들은 단 몇 프레임만에 지나가기 때문에 ‘빠르게 대충’ 만들었다고 밝혔다.

반응
〈Bad Jubies〉는 2016년 1월 14일 방영되었다. 122만 명의 시청자 수를 기록했으며, 18세에서 49세 연령대의 시청자 중 0.3%가 시청하였다.

《디 A.V. 클럽》의 올리버 사바(Oliver Sava)는 에피소드에 ‘A-’ 등급을 주었다. 그는 “창조의 행동이 예술가가 다른 이들로부터 소외감을 느끼게 했지만, 그 (창조의) 결과는 궁극적으로 사람들을 모두 통합시킨다는 사실”을 에피소드가 보여줬다고 말했다. 또한 등장인물들의 행동과 목소리를 스톱모션으로도 자연스럽게 표현해 낸 점에 대해 칭찬했으며, 스톱모션이라는 다른 방법을 이용했음에도 불구하고 시리즈 전체의 흐름에 잘 어울린다고 말했다. 《로스앤젤레스 타임스》의 로버트 로이드(Robert Lloyd)는 3D 애니메이션과 레포어의 애니메이션을 비교하면서, “스톱모션에서 보이는 공간은 진짜이며, 물체 또한 진짜이다. 질감은 모형이 아니라 진짜 질감이며, 빛 또한 진짜이다.”라고 말했다.

각주 

2016년 텔레비전 에피소드
핀과 제이크의 어드벤처 타임의 에피소드