So I'm pretty sure indie animation is bigger than ever with digital circus coming to Netflix next Friday. And I want to know how to make a slapstick cartoon and still have a happy medium of adult themes like language etc. and still not make it kiddy.

One big piece of advice I can think of is don't overdo on the adult language. Cursing can be funny if it's well-timed and appropriately placed, but if there's an F-bomb every other sentence it just becomes annoying. Hazbin Hotel is an infamous example of this.

im definitely not going to pull a hazbin hotel because whener I hear the f word more than five times each sentence I turn it off

Gotcha

Pretty much, don't over-rely on adult language, sex and violence. Just because you can't do it in a kids cartoon doesn't mean you have to do it in an adult cartoon. So many mediocre adult cartoons just use raunchy language and content without actually making good stories. Most of them are either forgotten or remembered for negative reviews on YouTube.

Take Santa Inc for example. From the moment it was released, everybody hated it because its writing checked off nearly every cliche seen in modern adult animation and offered nothing new and refreshing to make it worth watching. In contrast, Smiling Friends is loved for its unique style of humor, while only using vulgarity and violence in moderation.

To sum it up, adult cartoons have fewer limits over kids cartoons, but a good writer knows how to keep limits on themselves. Explicit content is what separates children and adult fiction. A good story would use such content in moderation, and prioritize a story that is engaging to adults.

Be prepared to manage outside input. Final space had a rough time dealing with executive meddling wanting more low brow humor and refusing to be deep. This happens often in group projects and sometimes there are compromises.

little to no sex jokes, total absurdity is required, no adult swim slop, fast pacing, enticing writing, every character (even the background ones) should be explored and executed well, stay to the purpose (no unnecessary plots that lead nowhere to the point of the whole cartoon, but some references to older episodes are fine). and one important thing, no cliffhanger in the finale. i know its a cartoon and cliffhangers happen a lot in them but you got to admit its unacceptable. thats what i learned from Superjail! at least.

I like animations will all kinds of themes, some more tame and others more heavy, regardless of it's target demographic, so I guess I could say that an adult cartoon would just be something that dealt with more mature topics, giving details that you wouldn't find in other cartoons due to censorship.

In regards to heavy use of obscene language and violence, I don't have many problems with it. It didn't bothered me that much when I watched Hazbin Hotel nor any other series like Family Guy or South Park, 'cause sometimes that's what makes it funny.

But I think it's perceptible when it's funny and absurd in Happy Tree Friends and when it's just annoying with all the "fuck everyone" kind of atittude in Santa Inc. that sucks out any sort of enjoyment from you.

1. Watch family guy consistently.
2. Take notes on how the writing is typically done.
3. Make sure to keep the notes to remind you how to NOT make an adult animation.

I love family guy so that won’t be a problem

You're 14, what do you know about adult cartoons or animation?

lenient dad and a good ear

alright ill wait another 3 years

>14 year old wants to make adult show

lol

A guy can dream

People here are making really good points about not overly relying on adult themes (sex, language, what have you). Some really good examples I can think of include King of the Hill and early seasons of Archer. No matter what your target demographic is, you're gonna get no where if you don't respect the audience's intelligence/maturity.

-King of the Hill: It's patient, down to earth, and a lot of the humor is rooted in what is familiar to rural Americans so it helps to know your audience. But KotH isn't exclusive to Texans in it's relatability which is how it became so popular as a TV show. There are so many characters who are written to be distinct from one another instead of everyone just being a hillbilly/redneck stereotype.

-Archer: Definitely more satirical, especially in the way it touches on movie tropes. The harsh language is handled sparingly and humor comes more from a comedy of errors; not to mention the witty banter between characters. It's not a show that leans balls to the wall on shock value. It established early on what kind of humor it was going to involve and sticking to that motif really helped. I'd say it's around the the post-CIA episodes when Archer really falls off in quality.

KOTH is that rare adult cartoon written by adults for adults.

Beyond being an adult in the first place (work on that), it's more important to know your audience than it is with younger media. Think of a tree branching out from a singular trunk - that's how the media environment looks. There are like three shows for babies at a time that dominate the entire market, shows tend to divvy themselves up by gender around the 6-13 demo (but often have some crossover appeal these days), but by the time you hit Young Adult, you need to start settling on themes and vibes that you know will only capture a sliver of the overall market. Kids are starting to discover what's unique about themselves, and that's why so much of the media centers around finding their place in the world, yadda yadda.

Adults go a step further. Each have a complex series of preferences and experiences that form their personalities, and those traits will be more nuanced and less transient. Because they've been around longer, they tend to know their interests at a deeper level, making them more perceptive to when something is full of shit. They're going to sniff out a childish or insincere interpretation of their interests, so if you're going to go niche, you better know what the hell you're talking about and present it in a way that rises above pandering and doesn't retread all the same territory as media that came before it. If you go for a broad audience, you better not just understand what most people have in common, but what makes that interesting.

I don't know many adults that are capable of good storytelling for other adults, and I know zero children that are good at it, so my main two bits of advice are "do what you know" and "you don't know this."

Best adult show I've ever seen, even though the familiarity only goes as far as some of the typical American values. It's also popular with the Japanese. They even got a dub, but it unfortunately changes his "bwaa" to an "ehhh."

Do...do they consider it anime?

When you have your milestone moment and want the audience to not think the moment is a joke or look deeper to the joke do not go back like it did not happen at least not without consequence.  Maturity may mean that tragedy does not go away that easily but there is still impact no matter how small would be big for someone. 

If anime means foreign anime-tion to them as well then I suppose so.

I remember seeing a video, a back and forth between these two dudes in Japan arguing which is the better western 'anime'-South Park or Family Guy. Something like that

South Park, without a doubt.

Dick figures is interesting to write about

The saying time and place still in effect. Countries may have different barriers and obstacles that may be easy in one but harsh on another. Especially if some tragedy can make using situation too soon. Other times it can be remove by someone that is the reason it needs to be talk about. Expect to make hard choices, even when it just plain silly.

Ons of the best examples of what not to do is Ren and Stimpy Adult Party. Compare it to the original show and you’ll see what I mean!

GENERAL TIPS:

Adult cartoons should touch adult topics.

Adult cartoons are not about edgy/sex jokes.

Adult cartoon requires you to take your audience seriously.

Every part of the adult cartoon needs to work in harmony with eachother to produce a meaningful result.

If you want to write a good adult cartoon you need to have a:

-INTERESTING WORLD SETTING.

Most people watch cartoons to escape reality and prefer to see something special instead of nigh 1:1 copy of our world, take advantage of that by spicing up your world to make it feel more unique.

First of all you need to choose in which era your plot is set in and go off that, then you can move on to more important things.

You can replace humans with Anthropomorpic or Zoomorphic characters.

You can add magic, or mutants, or something else, there are tons of possibilities and they are limited only by your imaginations and laziness.

-CHARACTERS THAT AREN'T CARDBOARD CUTOUTS.

They are the the back bone of your plot and are the ones who move it forward, your job as a writter is to make them feel alive.

Like in the real world, people are different, they have different interests, they strive for different things, they have different habits, they have secrets, they can have flaws, they have different traits that make them who they are, they can change, same aplies to your characters.

It doesn't matter if it's a villan or a main/side character, people love seeing a thoughtout characters that persue their own goals, think for themselves and develop over the course of the story, that's called a character arc.

Remember your characters are not perfect, flawed characters are more interesting to watch than bland and perfect ones.

Be causeous when following a common character tropes it's a double edge sword that either make your character feel awesome and flashed out, or make them unbearable and cliché.

-CAPTIVATING PLOT.

Second most important thing is the plot, what exactly drives your characters to do things they do.

Most of the time plot starts with a simple goal that grows larger over the course of the story, there could be many reasons for the plot to start, but YOU MUST go past the simple goal of doing or finding (something) and switch to more and more complex things. It can be for example character development and relationships, those two affect the plot drastically and can dictate the decisions characters make, which means more deviation from the main goal and thus more captivating plot.

-ALL ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, BOTH GOOD AND BAD.

Speaks for itself.

Your characters actions should not exist in a bubble, it's pretty simular to Newton's third law in a sense that if your characters do something bad it can result in something even worse both for them and a world around them.

Same thing vice versa, characters can do something good which will reflect both on them and the world around them.

Some actions can mix both, for example character can perform something horrible which will reflect badly on him but will make world around him better.

-BALANCE BETWEEN HUMOR AND SERIOUSNESS.

It's REALLY important to choose which one has more weight on the scales, but usually your plot and targeted audience dictates that.

You need those two things to make your cartoon bearable, people love good character development, yes, but that doesn't mean they want to watch only that, same with jokes, people love jokes, but they also want to see something more serious and meaningful. A good show usually mixes both.

For the love of god don't think that because you have an "adult cartoon" it means you can joke about sex, almost if not all people hate that and will actively try to avoid it.

You should base your jokes around context, or make it so your character references something funny, important to note you should focus more on old times humor, simply because humor nowdays just sucks, and making references to whatever kids like nowdays is generally a bad idea.

I am touching a tip of the barrel here, there is just too many things to keep in mind, but you will develop a writters sense on your own and will be able to see which things fit and how to do them

Be up front on the show being adult cartoon. Executives will hardly notice the cover. Bunny Maloney was thought as a kids show until one of employees told them what was in the show. 

My personal take on this is that swearing is a tool for comedy, usually to emphasize something. It doesn't really work on its own as a joke, you gotta get a little creative with it.