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Phineas and Ferb is an American animated musical - comedy television series created by Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh that aired on Disney Channel and Disney XD for four seasons between 2007 and 2015. The series follows stepbrothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher during summer vacation. Every day, the boys undertake the construction of ...
- 4
- 129 (222 segments) (list of episodes)
- August 17, 2007 –, present
School's out for the summer, and stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb decide to make each day an adventure, from building a death-defying rollercoaster to surfing tidal waves to locating Frankenstein's ...
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Aug 31, 2022 · 14. "Magic Carpet Ride" (Season 3, Episode 6b) Most of Phineas and Ferb 's songs were penned in-house, but for "Magic Carpet Ride," the creators brought in a ringer: Robert Lopez, the EGOT-winning ...
- Overview
- Development
- Production
- Plots
- Songs
- Running Gags
is an American animated comedy-musical sitcom that centers around two stepbrothers, Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher, their sister, Candace, their pet platypus, Perry, and their adventures during summer vacation. The series aired on both Disney Channel and Disney XD. The series premiered worldwide on February 1, 2008. It is also the first Disney Channel Original Show to premiere simultaneously in all territories. The show's official US premiere was marketed as Phineas and Ferb-uary, due to new episodes being shown on many of the days during the month of February. Many of the show's voice actors also appear on other Disney Channel TV shows, such as Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
On August 25, 2011, the show was picked up for its fourth and final season on Disney Channel, later known to be 37 episodes, a possible spin-off on Isabella and the Fireside Girls and a feature film for the series. The series also had a live show that was shown in over 80 different cities across the United States. On June 9, 2014, Phineas and Ferb broke the all-time record of half-hour episodes, set by Dumbo's Circus with 120. It is Disney Channel's longest-running original animated Series, beating Kim Possible's 5 years and 3 months.
On July 25, 2014, Dan and Swampy announced that there are 20 unaired episodes of Season 4 remaining. Afterwards, they will take their first hiatus in 8 years.
The series ended after the hiatus in favor for the new spin-off series Milo Murphy's Law, which first aired in 2016 on Disney XD, which oddly enough, takes place in the same universe as Phineas and Ferb. The series' run ended on June 12, 2015 with its series finale special episode, as well as a standalone hour-long episode airing on November 9, 2015, on Disney XD and on January 15, 2016, on Disney Channel. It was the longest show to ever run beside Kim Possible which was second place.
Series creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh met as layout artists working on The Simpsons in the mid-1990s. They bonded over a shared sense of humor and eventually paired up as a writing team on Rocko's Modern Life for Nickelodeon, which better acquainted them with the animation production business.
During this time, Povenmire developed what would eventually become Phineas and Ferb. While eating at a restaurant in South Pasadena with his wife, Povenmire drew the first sketch of Phineas, a triangle-headed kid, on butcher paper using crayons, both provided by the restaurant. That night, Povenmire shared his character design with Marsh. Other characters would soon be developed based off of their dominant shapes: a rectangle for Ferb and a semi-circle for Candace. The goal was to create simple characters that kids could easily draw on their own. They also created characters that were easily recognizable in silhouette, which is an old animation standard that Matt Groening taught Povenmire while he was working on The Simpsons.
After the characters were set, they decided to work geometric shapes into the background to tie the whole thing together. Marsh describes this as an homage to legendary Looney Tunes animator/director, Tex Avery. "He had that very graphic style (in his later cartoons). A lot of what I see [in the series] now is borrowed from Tex." The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show provided additional inspiration for the show's narrative format, where several different subplots would be resolved together at the end of the episode.
For the show's color palette, Povenmire and Marsh wanted bright candy-colored characters with natural colors for the backgrounds. Marsh emphasized that "for all of the stuff that they do to work, their world needs to be grounded in reality." Disney wanted a more stylized palette. Povenmire recalled, "I actually had discussions with Disney about this because they wanted to come up with a cool color scheme. I just wanted it to feel like summer." The studio acquiesced and the creators' vision prevailed.
After Marsh moved to London to work on animation, Povenmire, working on Family Guy in the U.S., shopped the show around to various kids' networks, such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Fox Kids. The studios were worried about the complexity of the plots within the time allowed, and negotiations fizzled out between Povenmire and the studios. Finally, Povenmire got a meeting with Disney. According to Povenmire, "Disney was the first to say, 'Let's see if you can do it in 11 minutes.' We did it in the pilot, and they said, 'Let's see if you can do it for 26 episodes.'"
Disney Channel's Senior VP of Original Series, Adam Bonnet was a fan of Family Guy and wasn't scared off by Povenmire's work on the series. In fact, it was because of Povenmire's connection to the series that Bonnet wanted to see whatever he was working on. Povenmire recalls about Bonnet, "He called me for a meeting when I was working on a different pilot for them just to tell me how much he liked Family Guy. When I came back to pitch my own show, I think he was more open to it."
Writing Style
The show uses four major writers to devise story ideas according to "strict guidelines", such as that the boys' schemes never appear to be "magical." Stories are reviewed at weekly sessions on a Monday, then simultaneously scripted and storyboarded. A very rough design is built before the storyboard, featuring little more than suggested scenes and dialogue, is drafted; the writers then gather for a "play-by-play" walkthrough of the storyboard in front of the whole crew, whose reactions to the jokes are assessed before rewrites are made. The writers as well include running gags in every episode, which are generally lines spoken by characters. Almost every episode is set into two eleven-minute segments. Unlike live-action TV series, Povenmire and Marsh didn't show Disney a script. Instead, they pitched a storyboard, a scene-by-scene visual breakdown of how the episode would look. When it came time to present it to the executives overseas, Povenmire edited the storyboards together into a film, adding music, sound effects and providing the voices for all the characters. This animatic can be found on "The Fast and the Phineas (DVD)". The first story pitch eventually became the episode "Rollercoaster".
Animation
Rough Draft Studios in South Korea, Wang Film Productions in Taiwan, and Synergy Animation and Hong Ying Animation in Shanghai animated the series in 2-D animation using the software packages Toon Boom. Povenmire undertakes the bulk of production direction, along with Marsh, Jay Lender, Sue Perrotto, Zac Moncrief, and Robert Hughes. The series adopts artistic features from animator Tex Avery, such as geometric shapes integrated into characters, objects, and backgrounds. Dan Povenmire said of this inclusion, "There's a little bit of Tex Avery in there-he had that very graphic style (in his later cartoons)." Triangles (shaped like Phineas' head) are featured as an Easter egg in the background of every episode, sometimes in trees or buildings. Other shapes, such as rectangles (Ferb's head shape) and semicircles (Candace's head shape) can show up often. Bright colors are also a prominent element of the animation. Marsh elaborates, "The idea at the end of the day was candy. One of the things that I think works so well is that the characters are so bright and candy-colored and our backgrounds are a much more realistic depiction of the world: the soft green of the grass, the natural woods for the fence. In order for all of the stuff that they do to work, their world needs to be grounded in reality." The designers sought to keep their characters visually simple, so that kids "would easily be able to draw [them] themselves." Characters were also crafted to be recognizable from a distance, a technique the creators say is based on Matt Groening's goal of making characters recognizable by silhouette.
The plots grew from Povenmire's childhood in Mobile, Alabama. His mother was always encouraging them to do creative things rather than watch television. One of his activities was making home movies. Povenmire says, "My mom let me drape black material all the way across one end of our living room to use as a space field. I would hang little models o...
Almost every episode has had at least one musical performance (except for "Lights, Candace, Action!", "I Was a Middle Aged Robot", and "The Lizard Whisperer"). "Rollercoaster: The Musical!" and Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension currently tie for the record of most songs at 9 songs each. Povenmire recalls, "When we were writing Rocko, we always had one of two things, sometimes both: usually a song or a musical number, plus a big action/chase scene. Phineas and Ferb gave us a chance to write a song for every single episode, starting with the third episode, "Flop Starz". We played it and Perry's secret agent theme for the Disney executives. We were a little trepidatious because Disney has a big history of music ― what if they hate it? The reaction was, "These are great ― can you write a song for every episode?". Nearly every episode has a song so that they won't use it over and over for a different season.
The music on Phineas and Ferb goes from the whimsical to heavy metal. Composer Danny Jacob, along with Povenmire, Marsh, and story editor Martin Olson strive to include all genres of music, because they feel this variety enriches the animation experience and exposes kids to music they wouldn't otherwise have been aware of. Early in the show's production, Disney questioned this policy, but as Povenmire explains, "It's similar to when we realized that Bugs Bunny was using classical music. When I heard 'The Barber of Seville' for the first time after watching Bugs Bunny, I had a way of relating to it that made me think of it differently than if I had just heard it on the radio. You have a familiarity to it. Now, when kids hear a Frank Sinatra like a jazz tune, or a Busby Berkeley kind of tune, they'll have a frame of reference for it." They use good music so it can mix in and flow with the movie. This has been on for a while now, that they have used Phineas and Ferb movie to feature it to show that if you use jazz tunes and other music it will sound good with other things, not only with the same movie.
The show relies heavily on running gags. These gags are seen in most episodes, though sometimes they are humorously modified:
•Phineas and Ferb attempt to build something every day in order to avoid a boring summer. However, in "The Best Lazy Day Ever" and "Vanessassary Roughness", they don't do anything.
•An old woman tells a short old man "You can't just expect *insert item here* to just fall out of the sky," and then they do. (e.g. "You can't expect a bunch of rabbits to just fall out of the sky.")
•Candace tries to foil the boys' plans by yelling "Mom, Phineas and Ferb are...", but by the time their mom comes, Phineas and Ferb's projects are either gone or turned into something else. The only times Candace has succeeded in "busting" her brothers occur in Perry's dream ("Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!"), 20 years into the future ("Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo") and in "She's the Mayor" but time gets reversed by Doofenshmirtz's invention.
•Dr. Doofenshmirtz builds evil machines with names ending in -inator (e.g. "The Misbehavinator"), though, in one or two episodes, Doofenshmirtz gives his weapon a name not ending in -inator, explaining to Agent P that he has worn out the -inator name too much. He also puts -inator with words that have already have -inator suffixes or closely sounding suffixes (e.g. Acceleratorinator or Space Laser-inator). He usually gives a short pause before the -inator in these cases. In one case, Doofenshmirtz makes an -inator that makes an ice age, proclaiming, "My Gloominator 3000!...-inator," maybe meaning that he doesn't always want to call them -inators but he does it because all his inventions in the past have been -inators.
•Phineas and Ferb are asked (usually by Isabella) or ask someone else "What'cha doin'?". There have been a number of variations on it. (Ex. "What'cha eatin'?" ("Hail Doofania!", "Chez Platypus") and "What'cha watchin'?" ("Out of Toon"))
Phineas and Ferb: Created by Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh, Dan Povenmire. With Vincent Martella, Dan Povenmire, Ashley Tisdale, Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh. Phineas and Ferb invent, scheme, and stay one step ahead of their bratty sister.
