June 18 - Alex Hirsch

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On this day, in 1985, Alexander Robert Hirsch was born in Piedmont, California. As a junior at Piedmont High School, Alex had his first brush with fame when he won the school's infamous Bird Calling Contest and got to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman. After graduation, he went to CalArts. He spent the summer after that junior year working on a stop motion animation film for Laika (of Coraline fame) ended up in the dust bin. Alex's first job after graduating in 2007 was with the Cartoon Network as a storyboard artist and writer for The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. His writing partner on that gig was Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time.

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Following the end of Flapjack's run, Alex teamed up with Maxwell Atoms and Justin Rolland (the creator of Rick and Morty) to develop Fish Hooks, an animated series that aired on the Disney Channel for three seasons. He also served as the modest hit's creative director during its run. It was his next project, also for the Disney Channel, that struck gold.

While at CalArts, Alex started developing a series about twin kids who get sent to spend the summer with their great-uncle in a mysterious town in the American Northwest. It was semi-autobiographical, based on vacations with his own twin sister to visit his grandfather. He even created a low budget, low quality 11 pilot of sorts. Somehow he knew that the property was just right for Disney. He even turned down an offer from Dreamworks. When he showed his film to executives at the Disney Channel, as Fish Hooks was winding down, they loved it, bought it and put it into production. On June 15, 2012, Gravity Falls made its debut, pulling in rave reviews and better than average Disney Channel ratings. The quirky, endearing show, bolstered by the performance of Kristen Schaal as Mabel Pines (the female twin), became a cult classic almost right out of the gate. Alex not only oversaw its production but provided several voices for the show as well, including Gruncle Stan, Soos and Bill Cipher.

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Gravity Falls slowly aired it's first season of shows over a couple of years on the Disney Channel before moving to Disney XD for its second season. After just 40 episodes, Alex announced that the series would be wrapping up in order to do right by the characters by not overstaying their welcome. Over the course of its run, Gravity Falls was nominated for numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, and won several Annie Awards. A few months after the final episode aired in February 2016, Alex announced a world wide treasure hunt based on the series. The goal was to find a statue of Alex's character, Bill Cipher. It was discovered in Reedsport, Oregon and the celebration of the end of the hunt mysteriously coincided with a release party of a Gravity Falls book. The book was a hit and spent almost a year on the best seller list.

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Since the end of Gravity Falls, Alex has kept busy. He lent his voice to the Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb. He co-wrote Detective Pikachu, the Pokemon movie starring Ryan Reynolds. He contributed story bits to the Academy Award winning Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse. In February 2018, he released a Gravity Falls graphic novel that was considered a continuation of the recurring plot threads from the series. Since August of last year, he has been under a multi-year contract with Netflix to develop content for the streaming giant. There hasn't been any word yet on what he's cooking up, but we can assume it will be delightfully weird and look forward to binge watching all of it. Happy birthday, Alex!