How did Aqua Teen develop once the pitch was accepted?
DAVE WILLIS: I think we did everything wrong in the beginning, but we believed in the idea, and they gave us enough rope to see if we could pull it off. MATT MAIELLARO: The first season was one show. It took an entire year to develop, animate and put one show together. And it aired like Dec. 31, at 1 a.m., so it would hit that year’s budget. We totally did it the wrong way. We had come from producing Space Ghost, so we figured, well, that’ll be an easy way to do this show, and of course it was exactly the wrong way to do it. We learned a lot of expensive lessons. DAVE WILLIS: We had already started the second one before the first one was done, to ensure that we got picked up. We took it upon ourselves to record number two, and I remember our boss Mike was like: “You did what?! I haven’t even seen number one yet!” MATT MAIELLARO: But they gave us the money to do it, so at the end of the day, they must have believed in it and believed in us. But it was really awkward. It called upon qual
