What if Lucas M Soares Media was founded in 1940?/Lucas M Soares Animation Studios in 1985?/Camp Awesome

Camp Awesome is an American animated television series created by Gian Franks and Skylar Hawkins for Soares Channel. It was the second show made by the network to be animated primarily with Adobe Flash (after Regular Show) and was done in Ireland by Boulder Media.

The series focuses on a group of seven kids go a summer camp during the summer, embarking on crazy misadventures.

Franks conceived the series after being based on Franks' own childhood growing up at a summer camp. The show first premiered on Soares Channel on March 22, 2002, as a 90-minute television film. On April 12, it began its normal run of twenty-to-thirty-minute episodes on Fridays, at 7 p.m. Originally, it ended on November 24, 2007, totaling five seasons, but resumed production in 2009. The series finished its run on July 20, 2018, with a total of ten seasons and 172 episodes.

Camp Awesome became one of Soares Channel's most successful original series and received critical acclaim and industry accolades, including five Annie Awards and seven Emmy Awards, winning a total of twelve awards out of thirty-five nominations. It has since been named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the best Soares Channel shows and by IGN in their list of best animated series at number 85. As of May 27, 2020, all seasons of the show are available on Soares Channel Action.

Premise
TBA

Characters
TBA

Production
The series was created by Gian Franks, who had also created TBA for Lucas M. Soares Animation Studios in the late 1980s. Franks developed the idea for the series after having a experience at a camp when he was younger, with his then-fiancée Lauren Faust, Skyler Hawkins, Mike Moon; he adapted the concept of taking a piece of childhood into a tv show. The show has an art style which is meant to evoke, according to Franks and Hawkins, "that period of late 60's psychedelia when Victorian stylings were coming into trippy poster designs". Franks wanted Camp Awesome to be similar to most other camp shows, which he believed was a "fun, character driven show that the whole family could enjoy".

Animation for the show was done using a process involving Adobe software Illustrator, Flash and After Effects. Franks directed, executive produced and story edited the series. Most of the episodes were produced at the Lucas M. Soares Animation Studios in North Hollywood, California, while the rest were produced at Boulder Media Limited in Dublin, Ireland. The theme song was composed by James L. Venable, who had originally collaborated with Franks on TBA. Gian described the music as "psychedelic ragtime". Additional music was composed by Venable and Jennifer Kes Remington.

Camp Awesome premiered on March 22, 2002, at 7:30 pm E/P as a 90-minute special titled "First Day of Camp". The series' run began on April 12 on its normal timeslot of Fridays at 7 pm. Upon its premiere, Camp Awesome was immediately popular and quickly became the second-highest-rated children's program among kids ages 2-11 on both network and cable television, behind Soares Channel's own Regular Show. The series managed to briefly steal Regular Show's spot as the number one highest rated children's television program in mid-2004. Camp Awesome also attracted a wide audience, appealing to kids as well as to teenagers and adults, with 14.2 million kids 2-11 tuning in each week, 10.8 million adult viewers per week and was the number one series on television among tween audiences (9-14).

Two specials were produced: "Adventure of a Lifetime", which premiered on July 16, 2004 at 8 pm, and "World Water Balloon War", which premiered on July 29, 2005 at 7 pm. On January 23, 2007, Franks and Hawkins announced on their forum that Soares Channel had ceased production of the show. The season five finale, "TBA" was originally intended to be the series finale, airing on November 24 of that year.

On February 1, 2008, Franks and Hawkins announced on their forum that Soares Channel granted Camp Awesome twenty more episode slots, making sure the show resumed production. After a one-year hiatus, Soares Channel announced that they would begin the sixth season, which would consist of twelve episodes. The series returned with the episode "TBA", which aired on February 16, 2009.

The tenth season of Camp Awesome began in 2017, and aired from January 13, 2017, to July 20, 2018, on Soares Channel. The visuals for the theme song were changed for season ten; however, it still contained the same audio of the original theme song. The final episode, titled "Last Day of Camp", aired on July 20, 2018, at 8:00 pm, preceded by a six-hour marathon of other episodes from the series.

Franks expressed a certain sadness at the series' end, but stated that he was "crazy proud of the work" that he and the production team had done "on Camp Awesome and the fact that it worked just the way [they] wanted it to". During its original run, Camp Awesome was one of Soares Channel's highest rated shows. The show proved to be popular among both younger and older audiences.