Aaron McCullough

**Aaron McCullough** (born April 2, 1983) is an 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!* (2011–2020), and the series *Somewhere* (2013; 2019–2020). 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 brother, Samuel McCullough, on short comic books around the early 90s.

## Career

In 2004, McCullough published a webcomic titled *Party Cricket*, who was originally made for teens and adults. These comics were later taken down later in 2005 due to McCullough having a deep hatred for the comics. However, he retains the name "partycricket" for his website and his handle on sites such as Twitter. In 2006, 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 2007, Although Nickelodeon liked the idea for the pitch, they didn't accept since (according to them) that it didn't "sound very good". Around early 2008, 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.

McCullough later hired some of his friends 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!* officially premiered with the episodes "Voice Crack / Quija Board" on July 11, 2011, with a sneak peak on July 5, 2011. During the first season's production, Titmouse, Inc. (the animation studio for Season 1), were having some production issues, which resulted in Titmouse no longer providing the animation for *Pan-Boy!* after season 1.

So when the show moved over to Rough Draft Korea for Season 2's animation, they lost two episodes, resulting in Season 2 having 38 episodes instead of 40.

In late 2011, McCullough starting developing a new show called *Somewhere*, with most of the same people who worked on *Pan-Boy!*.

*Somewhere* premiered on March 1, 2013 on TBS, with new episodes airing randomly. The show was cancelled on May 17, 2013 after one season and 13 episodes. It was later revived by Netflix in 2019 for a second season.

Sometime during the third 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. Being the showrunner was getting too exhausting 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.

Recently, since *Pan-Boy!* finished production, McCullough (along with Kelly Crews) announced that there is going to be several *Pan-Boy!*-related projects coming to HBO Max and Cartoon Network in the following years.

## Filmography

### Television

 2013; 2019–2020
 2020–present

## Influences

McCullough has previously stated that his friends, many of whom he works with on *Pan-Boy!*, are his biggest drawing and animating influences.