based the series' premise on his view of college.
Concept and creation The series was conceived as a web series on Adult Swim's defunct comedy website,
Super Deluxe, in 2008. Neely, who had produced
I Am Baby Cakes and
The Professor Brothers shorts for Super Deluxe in 2006, envisioned the characters in each series to coexist in the same
universe. With this relationship in mind, he produced a four-part online series entitled
China, IL, hand-drawn by him in his apartment in Austin, Texas. The series was published onto Super Deluxe in 2008. Weidenfeld explained the special "was great, and it was insane that they would have ever put that on TV, but that itself never would have worked as a show." Weidenfeld explained the plot outline for the short, consisting of three stories involving the four main characters; he explained in the interview that having to do "four beginning, middle and ends with one larger beginning, middle and end is the craziest sort of storytelling imaginable." Weidenfeld had previously stated in an interview with
MovieWeb that the combination of the shorts "isn't representative of what we've turned this show into. Or what the [original] shorts were, even." Shortly before Super Deluxe ceased operations, Weidenfeld moved to Los Angeles, while Neely started working as a
story consultant for
South Park in 2007, during the show's
eleventh season. Neely eventually got a deal to write another script for Adult Swim; Weidenfeld and his brother
Nick Weidenfeld, who oversaw development for the network encouraged him to use the existing characters in
China, IL. Neely stated that he had never done
third-person narrative stories for television before, but collaborated with the Weidenfelds anyway and produced a pilot for the network (unrelated to the Super Deluxe shorts); he jokingly stated that "nobody will ever see [it]."
Production Neely stated in an interview with
The A.V. Club that a major inspiration behind the premise of the series derives from his lack of college experiences: "I had this very small slice of an understanding of how college life is. To me, it's high school for adults, and I guess I'm depicting it that way. My sister is a professor. ... I'm around professors, but I'm kind of misinformed a bit. My information is broken and that's what makes
China wonky and interesting, because it's what's so fucking wrong about college." Similarly, in the series, Neely parodies
popular culture elements that he knows only through passing mentions. The season two episode, "The Diamond Castle", parodies the
Mad Men episode, "
The Other Woman", which Neely stated he had never watched before; he explained that "We do that often where we'll just take my ignorance and run with it." Neely stated that "I think we decided, in concert with the network, that it would benefit the show. The show kept growing, and our storytelling style and structure just needed more room. I didn't know what I was doing when I was writing in the 11-minute format; I was just cramming 22 minutes in there." Since season two, with the episodes being 22 minutes, the series employs six to eight writers per episode. while the series is rated
TV-14. When asked about the network's
Standards and Practices, Weidenfeld stated that "I find when something comes back that you can't say, we're able to skirt around it and make something funnier." The network issued to have the cigarette changed to a
lollipop for broadcast. Animation is done at
Titmouse, Inc. in Los Angeles. When asked about the
slideshow presentation of his animated shorts in an interview with
The College Hill Independent, Neely felt that the approach was not "an aesthetic choice, it was sort of the only thing I was able to do. I'm not an animator." He stated that, out of "ignorance and not having a whole lot of options", he hand-drew each frame on paper and
scanned them into a computer; he felt the restrictions "really paid off and I enjoyed the form. ... But, it never was something I felt I was needing to defend or stick to, or that it represented me artistically."
Jason Alexander According to Brooke, she got involved in the series after being recommended by her father, Hulk Hogan, who voiced the Dean. For the recurring cast:
Tommy Blacha plays The Mayor, the Dean's long-time nemesis;
Dave Coulier portrays Ronald Reagan;
Chelsea Peretti voices Crystal Peppers (and Kim among other various characters), Steve's competitor and a professor of Spanish and
History;
Jeffrey Tambor voices the father of Baby Cakes and professor of "super science", Leonard Cakes; Jason Walden plays Sammy Davis, a history professor, and
Gary Anthony Williams portrays Dr. Jack Falgot, who runs the campus health center. Neely stated in the
Huffington Post interview that over 50 songs had been planned for the second season throughout, though only 50 had been selected. In an interview with
Comic Book Resources, Neely and Weidenfeld have stated their intentions on doing a
musical episode (which they did, the third season's finale). Weidenfeld stated that producing one "would be a difficult thing to write up front, but a
Music Man style episode would just be incredible to do. And Brad could do it." ==Episodes==