China, IL

China, IL began as a four-part web series hand-drawn by creator Brad Neely in his apartment in Austin, Texas, published on Adult Swim's now-defunct comedy site Super Deluxe in 2008.

Neely envisioned the characters from his earlier Super Deluxe shorts I Am Baby Cakes and The Professor Brothers as coexisting in the same universe as China, IL.

An 11-minute TV special called 'China, IL: The Funeral', combining the original four web shorts, aired on Adult Swim on May 25, 2008, but executive producer Daniel Weidenfeld said it 'never would have worked as a show' on its own.

Before developing the TV series, Neely produced an unrelated pilot for Adult Swim that was never aired, which he jokingly said 'nobody will ever see'.

Neely said the show's premise was inspired by his lack of real college experience and by his upbringing in Arkansas, including an episode about wild boar infestations based on real overpopulation problems in the southern United States.

Brooke Hogan joined the voice cast after being recommended by her father Hulk Hogan, who voices the Dean.

The show's animation is produced at Titmouse, Inc. in Los Angeles, and each episode takes about a year to complete, with six or seven episodes often in production simultaneously at different stages.

Neely originally hand-drew each frame of his shorts on paper and scanned them into a computer, a technique he adopted out of necessity rather than as an artistic choice since he considered himself not a trained animator.

Animation director Mike L. Mayfield added pupils to the characters' eyes for the TV series, a change that upset some fans of Neely's original 'Orphan Annie' blank-eyed style from his shorts.

Adult Swim's Standards and Practices forced the show to change a character's habit of smoking a cigarette in every scene to sucking a lollipop instead.

Over 50 original songs were planned for the second season, and the creators later produced a musical episode as the third season finale, inspired by the idea of a 'Music Man style' episode.

The series premiere was watched by 888,000 viewers, and the second-season premiere grew to 1.285 million viewers, a double-digit percentage increase.