Rebecca Sugar

Rebecca Rea Sugar (born July 9, 1987) is an American animator and screenwriter. She[lower-alpha 1] is best known for being the creator of the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe, making her the first non-binary person to independently create a series for the network;[1] prior to coming out as non-binary, Sugar was described as the first woman to do so.[2] Until 2013, Sugar was a writer and storyboard artist on the animated television series Adventure Time. Her work on the two series has earned her seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations.[3] Sugar is bisexual, non-binary, and genderqueer,[4] using both she/her and they/them pronouns.[5] Sugar's queerness has served as the inspiration for her to stress the importance of LGBT representation in the arts, especially in children's entertainment.[6]

Rebecca Sugar
Sugar at the 2014 New York Comic Con
Born
Rebecca Rea Sugar

(1987-07-09) July 9, 1987
Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.
Alma materSchool of Visual Arts
Occupations
  • Animator
  • storyboard artist
  • director
  • writer
  • producer
  • singer
Years active2007−present
Known forSteven Universe
Spouse
​
(m. 2019)​

Early life

Sugar was raised in the Sligo Park Hills area of Silver Spring, Maryland. She simultaneously attended Montgomery Blair High School and the Visual Arts Center at Albert Einstein High School[7] (where she was an arts semifinalist in the Presidential Scholar competition,[8] and won Montgomery County's prestigious Ida F. Haimovicz Visual Arts Award),[9] both of which are located in Maryland. While at Blair, she drew several comics (called "The Strip" for the school's newspaper, Silver Chips) which won first place for comics in the Newspaper Individual Writing and Editing Contest. "The Strip" ran a comic challenging MCPS's new grading policy from 2005.[10] She went on to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York.[11]

According to Sugar's father Rob, Rebecca Sugar and her younger brother Steven were raised with what he called "Jewish sensibilities", and both siblings observe the lighting of Hanukkah candles with their parents via Skype.[12]

Career

Early work

During her time at the School of Visual Arts, Sugar directed short animated films, including Johnny Noodleneck (2008).[13] In 2009, she wrote and animated Singles, in which frequent collaborator Ian Jones-Quartey acted as an assistant animator, assistant inker and voice actor on the project, while Sugar's brother Steven Sugar acted as an assistant colorist.[14] Sugar completed this film as her thesis.[14]

Sugar also played an important role in the creation of nockFORCE, a cartoon series created by Ian Jones-Quartey and Jim Gisriel and launched in 2007 on YouTube. In particular, she contributed to the cartoon's backgrounds and characters.[15]

In 2010, Sugar published her first graphic novel, Pug Davis, featuring an astronaut dog and his gay sidekick Blouse.[16]

She is also known for her comic "Don't Cry for Me, I'm Already Dead", a story about two brothers whose shared love of The Simpsons takes a tragic turn.[13]

Television

Sugar first joined the crew of Adventure Time as a storyboard revisionist during the show's first season.[17] Due to the quality of her work, within a month of being hired she was promoted to a storyboard artist, making her debut during the production of the second season.[12] Her first episode was "It Came from the Nightosphere".[18] While working on the show, she was encouraged by the creative team to put her "own life experiences into the character of Marceline".[19] As she put it in an interview with Paper Magazine, she connected with indie and underground comic artists who worked on the show, like Pendleton Ward, Patrick McHale and Adam Muto, who told her to do what she would do when drawing comics and to not hold anything back. She stated that some of the changes in animation for years to come were inspired by what the show was able to do by being "very artist-driven", by independent comic artists like herself.[20]

Production for Steven Universe began while Sugar was still working on Adventure Time. She continued working on Adventure Time until the show's fifth season, whereupon she left in order to focus on Steven Universe. Her last episode for Adventure Time was "Simon & Marcy"; following that episode, working on both series simultaneously "became impossible to do". She had also previously encountered difficulty in the production of the Adventure Time episode "Bad Little Boy".[21] Sugar returned temporarily to write the song "Everything Stays" for the seventh season miniseries Stakes, and the song "Time Adventure" for the series finale, Come Along with Me.[22][23][24]

She was an executive producer for Steven Universe for its entire run, and a storyboard artist for several of its episodes; the series premiered on November 4, 2013 and concluded on January 21, 2019. She directed the full-length television movie taking place after the fifth season of Steven Universe, called Steven Universe: The Movie, which premiered on September 2, 2019 on Cartoon Network.[25] The movie was followed by an epilogue limited series titled Steven Universe Future, also with Sugar as executive producer, which premiered on December 7, 2019[26] and concluded on March 27, 2020.

Themes

Sugar has discussed the importance of creating LGBT representation and content, especially in children's entertainment. On Cameron Esposito's podcast QUEERY, Sugar stated "I want to champion LGBTQIA, all of it, content ... in G-Rated, family entertainment. I want to do that forever".[6] She also explained how Steven Universe has helped her come to terms with her own identity as bisexual and non-binary. She believes that early and positive exposure to the LGBT community can help queer identifying children avoid experiencing shame in their own identities.[27][28]

Other work

Sugar designed the album cover of True Romance for Estelle, the voice of Garnet on Steven Universe.[29]

In December 2016, comic book publisher Youth in Decline featured Sugar's sketches and story notes for her unpublished comic Margo in Bed as issue #14 of the art/comics anthology series Frontier.[30][31]

In 2018, Sugar was featured on Gallant's 2018 R&B/Soul track TOOGOODTOBETRUE, along with Sufjan Stevens.[32]

In April 2020, Sugar narrated a video titled Let My People Go, a video created by the organization Never Again Action. The video talks about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees and the poor living conditions they are experiencing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.[33]

Between October 2020 and April 2021, the anti-racism PSAs "Don't Deny It, Defy It", "Tell the Whole Story", "See Color", and "Be An Ally", that she worked on with Ian Jones-Quartey, featuring characters from Steven Universe, were released on the Cartoon Network YouTube channel.[34][35]

In the "Froggy Little Christmas" episode of Amphibia, a 22-minute Christmas special which aired on November 27, 2021, Sugar voiced a street performer who sang a musical number which Sugar had written. Sugar was not credited for her contribution to the episode.[36][37] Matt Braly, the creator of Amphibia, praised her song as "really amazing" and saying that it had been stuck in his head and that of the crew for months.[38]

On September 17, 2023, Sugar announced on social media that her first personal music album, Spiral Bound, would be released in November 2023.[39][40]

Personal life

In February 2016, Ian Jones-Quartey confirmed via Twitter that he and Sugar were in a romantic relationship; at the time of the tweet, the two had been together for eight years.[41] He added that they met when Sugar was at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They were married on December 4, 2019.[42]

In July 2016, Sugar said at a San Diego Comic-Con panel that the LGBT themes in Steven Universe are in large part based on her own experience as a bisexual woman.[43] In a July 2018 interview on NPR,[44] Sugar said that she created the series' Gems as non-binary women in order to express herself, as a non-binary woman, through them.[5][45] In August 2020, she said she "didn't identify as a woman" but had felt pressure to conceal that fact because of her reputation as the first woman to create a Cartoon Network series.[20] In October 2020, in the final art book for Steven Universe, Sugar said that she loved being able to place her experiences in a different context "through a nonbinary lens" when writing characters for the show.[46] As of 2022, Sugar goes by both "she/her" and "they/them" pronouns.[47]

In March 2020, Sugar expressed support for Senator Bernie Sanders's second presidential bid.[48]

Accolades
Sugar at the 2019 Peabody Awards

Adventure Time

Rebecca Sugar's work on Adventure Time gained Primetime Emmy Award for Short-format Animation nominations for the episode "It Came from the Nightosphere" in 2011 and for the episode "Simon & Marcy" in 2013.[49] The show also earned multiple Annie Award nominations. These included, Best Storyboarding in a Television Production in 2012[50] and Story-boarding in an Animated Television Production in 2013.[51]

Steven Universe
Main article: Steven Universe § Awards and nominations

For Steven Universe, Sugar has been nominated for several media industry awards, including six Primetime Emmy Awards. She and the series have received, among others, the 2018 Peabody Award for Children's & Youth Programming and the 2019 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Program; in 2015 the series was named to the James Tiptree Jr. Award Honor List.

Honors

In 2012, Forbes magazine included her on its "30 Under 30 in Entertainment" list, noting that she was responsible for writing "many of the best episodes" of Adventure Time.[2]

Variety included Sugar in "Hollywood's New Leaders 2016: The Creatives", a list celebrating upcoming filmmakers, show-runners and creators in both traditional and digital media.[52]

Filmography
Year Title Role Notes
2009 Singles Director, story writer, animator and composer[14] Short film
2010–13; 2015, 2018 Adventure Time Story writer, storyboard artist, songwriter, storyboard revisionist Television series
Voice role: Marceline's mother
2012 Hotel Transylvania Storyboard artist[53] Film
2013–19 Steven Universe Creator, executive producer, storyline writer, storyboard artist, songwriter Television series
2017–19 OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Writer and performer of end titles Television series
2019 Steven Universe: The Movie Creator, director, executive producer, writer, storyboard artist, composer, songwriter Television film
2019–20 Steven Universe Future Creator, executive producer Limited television series
2021 Amphibia Songwriter ("Our Special Time of Year", uncredited)[54] Episode: "Froggy Little Christmas"
Voice role: street performer "Becka Salt" (uncredited)[54]
2023 Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake Songwriter Episode: "Simon Petrikov"

Notes
  1. Sugar uses she/her and they/them pronouns. This article uses feminine pronouns for consistency.

References
  1. Thomas, Paul (2020). Exploring the Land of Ooo: An Unofficial Overview and Production History of Cartoon Network's "Adventure Time". Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Libraries. p. 154, note 112. ISBN 9781936153190. Retrieved July 14, 2021.
  2. "Rebecca Sugar – 30 Under 30: Hollywood". Forbes. December 17, 2012. Archived from the original on January 2, 2022. Retrieved April 21, 2013.
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  5. Pulliam-Moore, Charles (July 16, 2018). "Steven Universe's Rebecca Sugar on How She Expresses Her Identity Through the Non-binary Crystal Gems". io9. Archived from the original on July 17, 2018. Retrieved July 17, 2018.
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  29. Sugar, Rebecca [@rebeccasugar] (February 20, 2015). "Ahh!!! Completely surreal experience of seeing my album artwork for Estelle's new album True Romance… instagram.com/p/zWX0QRqBox/" (Tweet). Archived from the original on December 16, 2022. Retrieved December 27, 2019 – via Twitter.
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  33. Hughes, William (April 8, 2020). "Steven Universe's Rebecca Sugar narrates video calling for closure of ICE camps". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on August 16, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
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  37. Braly, Matt [@Radrappy] (November 27, 2021). "Happy holidays you guys! Thanks for watching the show and we'll see you next year for the roller coaster that is #amphibia s3b! That @rebeccasugar song has been stuck in my head for half a year now" (Tweet). Archived from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved November 27, 2021 – via Twitter.
  38. Braly, Matt (October 3, 2021). "Amphibia: Matt Braly Talks Season 3, New Shoes, and That Wild Season 2 Finale". ComicBook (Interview). Interviewed by Rollin Bishop. Archived from the original on October 9, 2021. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  39. Sugar, Rebecca [@rebeccasugar] (September 17, 2023). "Spiral Bound - My first personal album, coming this November" (Tweet). Archived from the original on September 18, 2023. Retrieved September 18, 2023 – via Twitter.
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  42. Jones-Quartey, Ian [@ianjq] (December 5, 2019). "Hey so @rebeccasugar and I have been a couple for 12 years ... and yesterday we got married! To each other!" (Tweet). Archived from the original on August 16, 2022. Retrieved December 27, 2019 – via Twitter.
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  53. Sugar, Rebecca (November 25, 2012). "I did some storyboards for Hotel Transylvania!". Tumblr. Archived from the original on November 22, 2022. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  54. Colás, Adam; Matthew, Braly; Sukiman, Catharina (2022). Marcy's Journal - A Guide to Amphibia. Disney Manga. p. 148. ISBN 978-1427871527. ...I met a VERY nice street performer named Becka Salt the other day, and they were singing this lovely song - a holiday original.
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