Somewhere, lost in the clouded annals of YouTube, lies a place that few have seen: The Over the Garden Wall anniversary stop-motion short.
It is a brief 3 minutes and 18 seconds, but it is anything but simple. For starters, claymation is fucking hard, even for a short like this. Which makes it all the more impressive, because there’s a sumptuous beauty and a thoughtful care woven throughout the clip: It’s a gorgeous piece of animation, full of details and texture and verve and Wirt, Greg, Beatrice, and Kitty George Washington Jason Funderburker.
So where did this come from? The “10-year anniversary” of Over the Garden Wall’s first episode on Nov. 3, is the occasion. But Garden Wall creator Patrick McHale told Inverse that his work on Guillermo Del Toro’s stop-motion Pinocchio movie certainly got the stop-motion bug in him. “I’ve always loved stop motion,” McHale said in the interview. “But seeing all those beautiful puppets for Pinocchio definitely made me yearn to, like, hold the OTGW characters in my hands and move their little arms and legs around!”
Sadly, McHale says this is the extent of the plans he has for the Over the Garden Wall universe, noting he “wouldn’t want to mess with it” by expanding the franchise. So wherever this clip exists in the canonical story of Garden Wall is the extent of new Greg and Wirt we’ll get (at least until maybe the 20th anniversary brings some new animated project, maybe).
It’s bittersweet but OK. After all, YouTube will helpfully suggest you hop into the Over the Garden Wall live stream marathon Cartoon Network is running on their channel. Yes, it’s after October, but now is actually the perfect time. Technically it always is; while Over the Garden Wall is best received as a harbinger of autumnal mood, and does, it must be said, climax in Halloween revelry, Over the Garden Wall is really a crisp breeze on any day, and a November like this one is no exception.
It’s no surprise that its tight runtime feels monumental, even 10 years later. Even through a brief montage of glimpses of Garden Wall’s many characters, the care and gentle uncanny comes through, wonderous and classical Americana. Drawing from the Hudson River School, the art evokes the early twilight hitting so many of us post-daylight savings switch over. It’s easy to go from the golden bath of sun in the stop-motion back into the stream of episodes. Now is the time. It’s always time.
Over the Garden Wall is now streaming on Hulu.
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