List of South Park Characters - Creation and Inception

Creation and Inception

Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone met during a film class as students at the University of Colorado, and in 1992, they came with an idea for a show that would eventually become South Park. The two discussed filming a three-minute short film involving a boy who befriended a talking stool (feces) named Mr. Hankey. Instead, Parker and Stone created two Christmas-related animated short films called Jesus vs. Frosty and Jesus vs. Santa, which served as precursors to the South Park series. The low-budget, crudely made Jesus vs. Frosty film featured prototypes of the main characters of South Park, including characters resembling Cartman, Stan, and Kyle. Fox Broadcasting Company executive Brian Graden saw the film and in 1995 commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short film that he could send to his friends as a video Christmas card. Titled Jesus vs. Santa, it resembled the style of the later series more closely.

The video was popular and was widely shared, and when it began to generate interest for a possible television series, Parker and Stone originally conceived the idea of a South Park-like show with four children characters, but with a talking stool named Mr. Hankey as the show's main protagonist; they planned to call it The Mr. Hankey Show. Eventually, Parker and Stone adapted their original idea into a show revolving around the South Park town and four children without Mr. Hankey as a protagonist, but as a minor supporting role in a future episode. Comedy Central later expressed interest in the series, and picked it up. The premiere episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", debuted on Comedy Central on August 13, 1997, as Mr. Hankey would debut in the tenth episode, "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo".

In tradition with the show's cutout animation style, the characters are composed of simple geometrical shapes and uninflected patches of predominantly primary colors. They are not offered the same free range of motion associated with hand-drawn characters, as they are mostly shown from only one angle, and their movements are animated in an intentionally jerky fashion. Ever since the show's second episode, "Weight Gain 4000", all the characters on the show have been animated with computer software, though they are portrayed to give the impression that the show still utilizes the original technique of cutout animation.