TV SERIES · 1999–present · USA
Futurama
- Created by
- Matt Groening
- Network
- FOX, Comedy Central, Hulu
- Seasons
- 11
- Episodes
- 164
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox Television, The Curiosity Company, 20th Television Animation
47 archived facts 5 topics 3 sources Last reviewed Sep 2026
The adventures of a late-20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry, who, after being unwittingly cryogenically frozen for one thousand years, finds employment at Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company in the retro-futuristic 31st century.
Summary: TMDB
12 Facts From Behind the Scenes of Futurama
- #011
Matt Groening said that when Fox tried to give him notes on Futurama, he insisted on working the same way he had on The Simpsons, and that this was the only way he did business.
- #020
Producing an episode of Futurama takes roughly six to nine months, a long production time that means several episodes are worked on at once.
- #023
After the table read on Futurama, the writers rewrote the script together before it went to the animation team, and voice recording began as the script left the writers' hands.
- #025
Series writer Patric M. Verrone described the Futurama writing staff as "easily the most overeducated cartoon writers in history."
- #040
Futurama's animation was handled by Rough Draft Studios, which operated in Glendale, California and South Korea.
- #041
For Futurama, Rough Draft Studios received a completed episode script and built a storyboard of over 100 drawings.
- #042
Rough Draft Studios then made a pencil-drawn animatic of 1,000 frames for each Futurama episode.
- #043
The finished Futurama episode, running 30,000 frames, was rendered by Rough Draft's sister studio in Korea.
- #044
Futurama's animation was produced by Rough Draft Studios, which combined traditional cartoon drawing with CGI for fast or complex shots such as spaceship movement, explosions, nebulae, large crowds and snow scenes.
- #045
Futurama's opening sequence was rendered entirely in CGI.
- #046
For Futurama, CGI was rendered at 24 frames per second while hand-drawn animation was often done at 12 frames per second, and the absence of artifacts gave the animation a smooth, fluid look.
- #047
Futurama's CGI characters appeared slightly different because hand-drawn characters were spatially "cheated" through slight out-of-proportion or off-perspective features that emphasized facial and bodily traits and improved expression legibility; PowerAnimator and Maya were used for the comic-like CGI, while Toonz handled digital ink and paint and compositing.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Futurama — Wikipedia
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