Gravity Falls Creator Hyped Incredible New Book And Explained Why Season 3 Isn't The Next Step In Exclusive Interview

Fans around the world have had new reason to celebrate the whimsical splendor of Gravity Falls thanks to the release of the magnificent new book The Art of Gravity Falls, a gloriously hefty behind-the-scenes journey from earliest concepts through the series finale. A feast for the eyeballs, the book puts the spotlight on the myriad talents responsible for bringing one of the best animated series ever to life. That definitely includes its brilliant authors, creator Alex Hirsch and producer Rob Renzetti.

I’m not just calling them brilliant because they talked to CinemaBlend at length about their first nonfiction book about Gravity Falls, though it absolutely helped. [Read the full interview below.] But also because this book finally turned my head around from “I need Season 3 immediately” fanaticism to truly understanding just how lucky we all are that the show was able to reach the heights it did in the first place, and how much work was required for it to stick its exquisite landing in a way that few TV shows did before or since.

Now, I'd still take a Gravity Falls movie without hesitation — and I love Hirsch's lofty idea for how to make it happen — but after reading the book and asking the duo for their thoughts about returning to that world, I think I am finally at peace. Or something. Here's how Hirsch explained it:

It's easy to hear that and think, "Well what about a one-off special or series of shorts?" But that falls back to the issue of how to open the Journal back up convincingly and in a way that seems necessary. Which Hirsch spoke to as he continued, saying:

To follow up on the madness of "Weirdmageddon," the story would need to be massively important for these characters, and in a truly authentic way. So it's perfectly understandable that no one involved wants to go through the wringer all over again for another 20-episode season of TV. But I choose to remain hopeful that these characters will return for a new adventure in some shape or form. Yes, even in the face of Rob Renzetti's wise older uncle logic, as seen below.

You can read even more of their thoughts about the show's potential future and more below in our full-length interview. (Edited for clarity and length.) But if you haven't already, BUY THE ART OF GRAVITY FALLS RIGHT NOW!

CinemaBlend's Full Interview With Gravity Fall's Alex Hirsch And Rob Renzetti

• CINEMABLEND: The book is... My God, it's so good.

ALEX HIRSCH: Well, thank you for enjoying it. We didn't know what the target audience was. We made it for nerds like ourselves, so it sounds like mission accomplished.

• CINEMABLEND: To start off with, any hopes of seeing Rumble McSkirmish in the Street Fighter movie?

ALEX HIRSCH: Oh, Rumble McSkirmish. I have a theory that Rumble McSkirmish and Giffany have found love and are now parents to a bunch of little space invader babies. I hope for great things for them.

• CINEMABLEND: I have so many questions about just the process of going back to the beginning and putting all that together. Can you talk about looking at some of the earliest like concept drawings, and if it felt like looking at baby pictures in a way?

ALEX HIRSCH: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we made the decision early on to include the embarrassing, ugly, earliest drawings I've ever done of these characters. I didn't want to see them again. I know I'm not going to get any praise for these things. But the hope was that we would maybe have the opportunity to show our fans that TV shows and movies -as big and complex and intimidating and impressive as they are - they ultimately start with rough, stupid ideas. Rough drafts. Messy, false starts. We wanted to demystify the process a little bit.

I've had so many fans come up to me and say, “How do I make my own show? Where do I get started? What's the process?” And with this book, it seemed like there was an opportunity to sort of look behind the curtain and say, “Look, if our goofy knucklehead asses could do it, you can certainly do it too.”

ROB RENZETTI: Part of the reason that I wanted to be involved with this book was, when I was a weird little kid growing up, I had no chance to see Disney animation on television. I'm old enough that Disney actually didn't show their cartoons on television. But I had a cousin who was a huge Disney fan. He's older than me. He was an artist. He just was a fan of Disney, so he had all these art books.

So when I would go over to his house, I would go into his room and look at his like Art of Walt Disney and the other books he had; he had like six or seven different books. They showed me Disney cartoons, and the only way I could see him was like still frames from a Mickey Mouse short presented like a comic strip. But then on the next page, it showed “Here's the original model sheet of the character you just saw from the finished cartoon, and here's a version of the prop, and here's the background about the characters in front of it. See the pegs down at the bottom.”

Basically I discovered how these cartoons were made and how they were created, that there was a bunch of artists that got together to do this to collaborate on, and those books are one of the reasons that I grew up to be in animation, to work in the industry that I saw depicted in those pages. So when we were doing our own Art of... book, I think it was both important to me and Alex that, you know, you could do a glossy book that just showed you a bunch of the finished backgrounds, or you could do a book that showed you the nuts and bolts, and the ugly, weird, crazy, abandoned part of the processes.

I think we wanted to basically show this is a show that was created by imperfect humans with imperfect ideas, and it was only through their collaboration together that the show turned out the way that it did, and that the show is as good as it is. And that it's something that you yourself are capable of, and that you yourself, if you get a bunch of your friends together, you too can create a show and have people love it.

ALEX HIRSCH: Yeah, I think it's so easy now to make things that look slick that people are scared of being cringe, and being stupid is the first step to being smart. So we we wanted to show our dumbest ideas and our dumbest drawings to demystify the process, so that people realize they could do it.

ROB RENZETTI: You don't have to be dumb in public. You can do all your dumb sketches to yourself and not put them on social media. You can just keep them in your desk until you're ready to to have something that you want to share with people.

ALEX HIRSCH: Right, but we're opening up our desk so you can see our dumbness.

ROB RENZETTI: Yeah, we're opening Alex's desk mostly, and showing all his dumb things. I wasn't around when the first sketches of Dipper and Mabel were were made. I came in when Joe Pitt was making the characters look like they look now. But still, I have my own crappy doodles from early crappy ideas that I have, and I keep them to myself. But we wanted to show these so that people could say like, "Those doodles you hate so much, they're the key ingredient to getting anything good off the ground."

• CINEMABLEND: Oh man, that's so inspirational to hear. I'm a huge 2 Stupid Dogs fan, too.

ROB RENZETTI: Oh well, I'm glad to hear it. That was the start of my Hollywood career was working on 2 Stupid Dogs, and so I'm very grateful to Donovan Cook, the creator of that show, for giving me and all the young artists that came along with me a chance. Because from that show came Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls, and my show, My Life as a Teenage Robot. All of us got our chance starting on 2 Stupid Dogs.

• CINEMABLEND: And they'd be two smart dogs now because that's the first step. It's all cyclical.

ALEX HIRSCH: Yeah, the dogs could do astrophysics now. You just need to give them some time.

ROB RENZETTI: That's right.

• CINEMABLEND: Neil deGrasse Tyson would be like, "That's not correct, dogs.'

ROB RENZETTI: Hey, but it's pretty good for dogs regardless.

• CINEMABLEND: I feel like all the background art should be screensavers on smart TVs. They're just so, so gorgeous. There's talk in the book that it would be gorgeous enough for a movie. I have to address this at some point, but are there any thoughts of making some sort of a feature-length return for Gravity Falls?

ALEX HIRSCH: If you can convince Walt Disney Corporation to give me $70 million and a theatrical release, you'll get your Gravity Falls movie, brother. So start making those phone calls. I'll say, we love these characters, we love this world, and whenever there's an opportunity to do something in this world that makes sense for us creatively and doesn't screw the whole thing up, we take it. That's why we did this book. That's why I did Book of Bill. But movies are expensive, so yeah, see what you could do next time you're at Disneyland shaking hands with Mickey Mouse. [Laughs.] Kidnap him, shake him down.

ROB RENZETTI: No, you put what he thinks is a $20 bill into his suit coat pocket, and it actually turns out to be Stan Bucks. and on the back you write a message about the Gravity Falls movie.

• CINEMABLEND: And I still have a string to get it back.

ROB RENZETTI: [Laughs.] Of course.

ALEX HIRSCH: You know what? We haven't tried that method. Going to a Hollywood producer, giving them $90 million attached to a string, and then just sneakily yoinking it as soon as the movie's made.

ROB RENZETTI: Yes, as soon as the final film is done.

ALEX HIRSCH: I think you're describing how crypto works, but that's a whole other ball game. [Laughs.]

• CINEMABLEND: I guess Stan getting into crypto would be a way into that.

ALEX HIRSCH: He can't operate a computer. His scams are a lot more nostalgic than today's scams.

• CINEMABLEND: He would just attach an e to the end of a dog and just be like, "That's Doge."

ALEX HIRSCH: [Laughs.] Yeah, exactly.

• CINEMABLEND: Well, can we talk about codes?

ALEX HIRSCH: Sure. Like, um, what's a code? Never heard of it.

• CINEMABLEND: I...don't even have an amusing response. Were there any worries, or non-worries, about including them in here, as far as what fans may read into with them?

ALEX HIRSCH: Yeah, you know, we made the controversial opinion to not include any codes, secrets, or mysteries whatsoever in this book. Unfortunately, we just didn't think it would be appropriate. So yeah, nothing to see here, folks! Don't get out your magnifying glasses. Don't look closely. It's just a regular Art Of... book.

• CINEMABLEND: Uh huh. Mm-hmm. Okayyy.

ALEX HIRSCH: That's my answer. I'm sticking to it.

• CINEMABLEND: Not in this book, then, but maybe in past ones. What is that process like? Was there less pressure in coming up with those for the books, without leading up to a big story?

ROB RENZETTI: The process for me is that I leave it to Alex. But when we're working on these books, we kind of do everything else first. And if there if there are any codes hidden in any book that we might produce, it's kind of the last thing that gets added in. One, it gives Alex more time to procrastinate and figure out exactly what he wants to do. And two, it only makes sense to layer it on top because it is kind of like the icing on the cake. It's not an essential ingredient. It's another layer of things that usually doesn't interact in any substantial way with the story we're telling in the books.

ALEX HIRSCH: Yes, it's 100% icing, and sometimes it feels a little bad because me and all of my fellow chefs will work very hard to make this cake. We'll sweat over it for a year, and then at the last second, I'll add three little dollops of frosting, and people say, "Wow, it's The Frosting Show! We love the frosting. You must have spent hours on that frosting!" And it's like, the frosting is only tasty because it's sitting on top of a delicious cake that has character and lore and story.

But that being said, I'm a motherfucker who loves frosting. [Laughs.] I have so much fun creating games and puzzles and ARGs and secrets and mysteries. It's one of my favorite things. For me, it's a little bit of a cat and mouse game with the fans. Since 2012, when the show came out, I've been hiding little secret things and waiting to see what happens. And every challenge I've ever created, the fans have risen to the challenge and, as a hive mind collectively, been smarter than any single human could be, and they seem to be able to crack anything.

So I'm always looking for ways to summon - like sleeper agents - all of those little conspiracy theorists and see what they can do. It's very, very fun, but it is the thing we put the least amount of time and effort into, even though it creates the most amount of YouTube theory videos. Which get a lot of clicks, so you know, I'm happy to be part of that world. But it's not as deep as it might seem.

• CINEMABLEND: When putting the book together and choosing the ephemera that shows up on the pages - the home photos and getting all of the artists involved - how did that process go? I realize there's probably not an easy answer, but how much access was there, and was it more of a cutting down process than scrambling to fill it?

ROB RENZETTI: Oh, it's always a cutting down. I mean, I'm sure Alex has about 20 times more stuff that could have been put into the book in his closet than ended up in it. I will say, and I'll I'll speak first here about one aspect of the book that was unusual and unique for me, which is that I was kind of filling your kind of role, Nick, in that we we kind of became journalists.

Because this is first nonfiction book I've worked on — I think Alex as well — we basically wanted to go back and talk to all the artists that we helped make the show with, some people that I haven't seen in years, and basically interview them and give them questions. Like, I didn't know how Sean Jimenez exactly was connected to Alex, and how he came to work on Gravity Falls. How did that all work? So I talked with Sean and asked him about that. I asked him why did he think that Gravity Falls is still enduring today. So like I basically became a little bit of a journalist for a while and interviewed people, including interviewing Alex Hirsch about his beginnings and how he started off.

A little behind-the-scenes here: the early chapters where there's this third authorial voice talking about how the show came to be and how Alex came up with the show, is basically me interviewing Alex, Alex giving me answers, me writing a version of that, Alex changing the version, and writing that. But all from this weird third-person perspective of a person who doesn't exist, and is just a conglomeration of the two of us writing the book. So even though there's lots of direct quotes in the book from artists and a lot from Alex and some from me, a lot of the writing where there is this third authorial voice is just kind of a weird amalgamation of the two of us writing back and forth and passing drafts back and forth.

So that whole process was very strange, and it took us a while to figure it out. I think it holds together pretty well at the end of the day, but it was definitely a different set of challenges that we had as writers to like write this kind of nonfiction book of a show that we were both there as as first-person participants, but write part of it at least in third person.

ALEX HIRSCH: Yeah, me and Rob had to sort of become historians of each other. I had to be the expert on Rob, and Rob had to be the expert on Alex, and then we did our best to sort of stick it together. In terms of getting all the material, I'm sort of a pack rat. I'm a really sort of nostalgic guy. My house is filled like the Mystery Shack is filled with strange curios and things that I've held onto. Right where I'm sitting right now, I can see a taxidermy duck that was signed by Weird Al, and a jar full of teeth, and a 3D-printed head of President Taft. So I just I never let go of anything.

ALEX HIRSCH: I just saved everything when the show was happening, I still have my sketches from third grade, and I've just kept everything in a crapload of boxes that just had been in my garage for many, many years. So all I had to do was go downstairs, chase the rats away, blow off the cobwebs, and start digging in. Rob is right, though. There was so much material.

I mean, between early sketches, alternate drafts of the show, and then reaching out to Disney and going through their archives, animatics, storyboards — you could have made 30 books easily out of the material we had. We did our best to try to get a representative sample, both of early versions of things that fans love that they're now seeing from a kind of different point of view, as well as cut ideas that never made it, as well as sort of beautiful finished art, but now on a big beautiful spread so you could see it, hoping to give a good sampling of the experience.

I'm glad to hear that you liked it. When you're working on a thing like this, you never really know what you got until people get it. So we've been getting good feedback and feeling good about it.

ROB RENZETTI: We wanted to make a coffee table book that you'd actually pick up off the coffee table and look through.

ALEX HIRSCH: That was the goal. It's also the size of a coffee table, so not easy to make.

• CINEMABLEND: And now I want a third author picture that's a The Thing-ish amalgamation of both your faces.

ROB RENZETTI: There was one. There was a point - I never showed this to Alex - but I started working on an image of like the scene from Ghost where Patrick Swayze is helping Demi Moore. They're making that pot together, and I put Alex's and my heads on those two characters, but I never finished it. Never sent it.

ALEX HIRSCH: [Laughs.] That is how me and Rob make everything. He's at a kiln, and I'm secretly behind him, tenderly cupping his arms romantically.

• CINEMABLEND: And then sometimes Whoopi Goldberg just appears.

ALEX HIRSCH: Oh yeah, she's a vital part of every process. You've got editors, you've got publishers, you gotta get the Whoopi, absolutely.

ROB RENZETTI: Whoopi Goldberg is, in any creative endeavor, the vital part.

• CINEMABLEND: To go for another hard-hitting one here: can you talk about finally giving fans a definitive answer to Pool Jail Kid's fate.

ALEX HIRSCH: You know, honestly, I think the answer to that question might be in the book itself. [Pulls out copy of the book.] Let me flip through this.

ROB RENZETTI: We know that now generations of his family exist in pool jail. I think that's the point, isn't it?

ALEX HIRSCH: I mean, this is what it says in the book: "I've probably had more people at conventions ask me what happened to Pool Jail Kid than any other question. Let me, for once, clear the air. No, Pool Jail Kid did not escape pool jail. Yes, he is a grown man now with a pool jail wife, and pool jail kids of his own." So that's my answer. I'm sticking to it.

ROB RENZETTI: But that is not a complete [explanation], because does that mean he gets visits from his wife in pool jail, and that he has kids that exist outside of pool jail and come visit him in pool jail? Or are they all in pool jail together?

ALEX HIRSCH: I stand by my statement, Rob. I think it's clear. [Laughs.]

ROB RENZETTI: See, see? There are more questions, though. There are questions yet to answer.

• CINEMABLEND: Is it a conjugal pool?

ROB RENZETTI: That's what I'm saying! Is it a conjugal pool visit, or is it like, is she in the next cell over? Or do they share a cell?

ALEX HIRSCH: I'm leaving that to the imagination of our incredible fans.

ROB RENZETTI: I think you're leaving it to the next Gravity Falls books, or series of books that we're going to write about Pool Jail.

ALEX HIRSCH: 50 SPF Shades of Gray is our Pool Jail book.

• CINEMABLEND: Another thing that I loved reading about, as far as silly insights go, were the differences in humor communication between American animators and Korean animators. The Beaver example was excellent. Were there any others that you can think of that weren't mentioned?

ALEX HIRSCH: We were so lucky to work with extraordinary overseas teams who do so much work and crafted those drawings, and we're so grateful to have worked with them. It is a strange and now kind of arcane process the way that we did this. It was traditional hand-drawn animation, even though it was colored digitally. We had stacks of drawings that were sent shipped literally on a boat to Korea, and digital files that were sent back and forth, and there were plenty of times where things would be lost in translation.

But I don't think that's because we spoke English and they spoke Korean. I think that's because I speak Alex, and Alex is kind of a mess. So I would say that usually, if there was a misunderstanding from any of our overseas teams, it's because I was asking them to draw something called a Multi-Bear, and who on earth knows what that looks like until you've seen it?

So I have nothing but praise for our teams. There were occasional miscommunications, and they were usually my fault. I'll say that.

ROB RENZETTI: I mean, I will say that yes, there are miscommunications. But having worked on many, many, many shows, I will just tell you that, like, it seems as a creator of something -when you're writing something or you're drawing something or whatever - it all seems so obvious to you what the answers to questions are. But when you bring one other person into the equation with their different mind, there are questions or interpretations that they're gonna have that you could never predict, and that you, in your own crazy mind, could never think that would that something would be interpreted that way.

I mean, I can give you an example. One of the famous examples from Dexter's Laboratory, which is there is an episode where they go to see a Chuck E. Cheese-type show, and at one point at the end of the show, the audience is supposed to stand up and clap and love it. I was the one responsible for timing that show, and in the exposure sheets, the timing instructions, I wrote 'The audience rises up,' or something like that. We got the take back from overseas, where instead of the audience just standing up, the audience flew up.

ALEX HIRSCH: It magically flies away.

ROB RENZETTI: Magically flew away off screen. We saw them in Take 1, and we all fell on the floor laughing and had to understand., 'What are we talking about?' I had to go back and look at the ex sheets and see what I'd written, and I'm like, "Oh my god, this WAS lost in translation." But we loved it so much that we left it in the show.

ALEX HIRSCH: Didn't you add like The Six Million Dollar Man sound effect? [Makes sound effect.]

ROB RENZETTI: Yeah, we added The Six Million Dollar Man sound effect to it, I believe. It was a complete mistake, and we're just like, 'This is comedy gold. Who knows if it'll make anybody else laugh? But it made us laugh, and we're keeping it in.'

ALEX HIRSCH: I was way too pedantic to keep any of the mistakes, and this is what makes Dexter's Lab a superior show. It's just like a spirit of playful anarchy, which I deeply respect.

• CINEMABLEND: In the years since, with fans wanting returns from the show, and you having pretty much given it the definitive ending that it needed with "Weirdmageddon," what are the pushes and pulls of you wanting to return to it? How much do these books feed into that and sate it?

ALEX HIRSCH: I think of myself like Grunkle Stan. I love to entertain an audience, and like Grunkle Stan, I'm very grateful for the fact that any lost souls have wandered their way up to my shack of amusements. So it's like, you know, we try to give back. It's amazing that fans continue to dress up and theorize and create, and that is a gift. And you know, I take it seriously. I don't take it for granted.

So things like these books are my way of sort of trying to continue to reward just all of that love and creativity that we feel so blessed by. That being said, books are relatively quick and cheap. Animation and movies are very, very long and expensive, and very difficult creatively. Stuff like that, you only make if you have a really clear, specific vision about how it's going to support the world. This is why I have never had any intention of making a Season 3 or something, because that ending was good. But when we have opportunities to do something that is creatively fulfilling and also seems like it is something fans will enjoy, we take those opportunities.

But I'm careful not to overpromise, because I'm sure there's a lot of fans who, if they had a magic wand, would make 20 more seasons of Gravity Falls and 10 Gravity Falls movies and every character would grow up and then have babies and then it would be like, "Here's Dipper's great-great-great-grandson, and he's solving mysteries in space." That's just, again, how I think about these things.

ROB RENZETTI: Another great idea. Very solid.

ALEX HIRSCH: All right, you know what? You've convinced me. We're getting J J Abrams to do Space Dipper. You heard it first. It's coming.

ROB RENZETTI: Here's what I'll say. Here's where I'll be the older disciplinarian uncle. The thing is, some people don't know what's best for them. Like, the show that you love, you think you want more of it, but you don't. What you want is another show to come along that gives you those same kinds of excited feelings - maybe in the same genre, maybe completely different - but gives you the same kind of 'I'm enthralled by the show, I'm loving the hell out of it, I want it to go on forever.'

But at the same time, if they give me a satisfying ending, I've got to have the maturity to say like, 'Wow, that was fantastic. What do I move on to next?' And it's still there. You can still start it again and watch it all again from beginning to end, and there'll be things that you remember, things that you forget. I come back to my favorite movies, my favorite books. Luckily, my memory is very faulty, and I'll forget even my most favorite stories. I'll forget huge details to it.

I just read Apt Pupil by Stephen King, which is probably my favorite Stephen King story; if not, it's probably in my top three. And I had forgotten most of that; I just listened to an audiobook version of it, and I loved it all over again. Does that mean I want to hear Apt Pupil 2, where Todd Bowden comes back from the dead to kill us all again? No, I don't want that.

ALEX HIRSCH: Somewhere, an Apple TV executive just got an erection. As soon as you add a sequel to something, it will get greenlit.

ROB RENZETTI: But I mean, again, like I'll say, no more sequels. Let's come to the original thing.

ALEX HIRSCH: Yeah, I think Rob is right. If you want a Season 3 of Gravity Falls, all you got to do is deeply inhale some industrial varnish, and you'll forget the show, and you'll be able to enjoy it all for the first time all over again.

I'm pretty sure I'll be nerding out until the end of time after having that conversation with two of the coolest and smartest gents in animation. And about one of the greatest books that's ever existed. After all, I don't see Apt Pupil or any other Stephen King novels including pull-outs highlighting every single colorful sweater that Mabel Pines wore throughout Gravity Falls' run. I mean, it would be weird if that showed up in any of King's books, but still.

So for now, the sweater rundown and tons of other exclusive details and visual flair can only be found in The Art of Gravity Falls. Read it while rewatching episodes via Disney+ subscription.