The season follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and size at will.

After the original short became a viral hit on the internet, Cartoon Network picked it up for a full-length series that previewed on March 11, 2010, and officially premiered on April 5, 2010.

The season was storyboarded and written by Adam Muto, Elizabeth Ito, Pendleton Ward, Sean Jimenez, Patrick McHale, Luther McLaurin, Kent Osborne, Pete Browngardt, Niki Yang, Armen Mirzaian, J. G. Quintel, Cole Sanchez, Tom Herpich, Bert Youn, and Ako Castuera.

In 2010, the Adventure Time episode "My Two Favorite People" was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short-format Animated Program, although the series did not win.

[1] Common storylines revolve around: Finn and Jake discovering strange creatures, rescuing princesses from the Ice King, and battling monsters in order to help others.

[1][2] According to series creator Pendleton Ward, the show's style was influenced by his time attending the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and his experiences working as a writer and storyboard artist on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

In an interview with Animation World Network, Ward said he strives to combine the series' subversive humor with "beautiful" moments, using Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro as inspiration.

[3] Ward has also named Home Movies and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist as influences, largely because both shows are "relaxing" and feature "conversational dialogue that feels natural [and] not over the top [nor] cartoony and shrill".

"[5] Executive producer Fred Seibert compared the show's animation style to that of Felix the Cat and various Max Fleischer cartoons, but said that its world is also equally inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and video games.

[3] Ward's college friends Patrick McHale and Adam Muto helped him produce a rough storyboard that featured Finn and Princess Bubblegum going on a spaghetti-supper date.

"[7] As such, Ward soon assembled a storyboarding team for the series, which was largely composed of "younger, inexperienced people" who had been found using the Internet.

[14] However, Cartoon Network, worrying about the status of the show and the inexperience of its production members, hired three veteran animators who had worked on SpongeBob SquarePants to help guide Ward and his team: Derek Drymon (who served as executive producer for the first season of Adventure Time), Merriwether Williams (who served as head story editors for the show's first and second seasons), and Nick Jennings (who became the series' long-serving art director).

[15] Thurop Van Orman, the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, was also hired on as a supervising producer, providing guidance for the series' first two seasons.

[17][20] The storyboards for "Brothers in Insomnia" and "The Glorriors" and the outline for "The Helmet of Thorogon" were later released on Fred Seibert's official Scribd page.

[26][27][28] The season was storyboarded and written by Muto, Elizabeth Ito, Ward, Sean Jimenez, McHale, Luther McLaurin, Armen Mirzaian, Kent Osborne, Pete Browngardt, Niki Yang, Cole Sanchez, Tom Herpich, Bert Youn, Ako Castuera, and J. G.

[a] Quintel, who would later go on to create the popular Cartoon Network series Regular Show, co-wrote and boarded the episode "Ocean of Fear" after asking Ward if he wanted any freelance help for Adventure Time.

[29] The voice actors for the season include: Jeremy Shada (Finn the Human), John DiMaggio (Jake the Dog), Tom Kenny (The Ice King), Hynden Walch (Princess Bubblegum), and Olivia Olson (Marceline the Vampire Queen).

Former storyboard artist Niki Yang voices the sentient video game console BMO, as well as Jake's girlfriend Lady Rainicorn in Korean.

Hamill reappears in the episode "Ocean of Fear", which also features opening and closing narration courtesy of Clancy Brown.

Television critic Robert Lloyd, in an article for the LA Times, said it "strikes [him] as a kind of companion piece to the network's [then] currently airing Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

Each takes place in a fantastical land peopled with strange, somewhat disturbing characters and has at its center a young male person or person-like thing making his way in that world with the help of unusual, not always reliable, mentors.

He called the show a "rare treat", but was critical of the release's packaging, noting that "a few too many episodes are crammed onto the discs, leaving little room for these transfers to breathe" and that the video compression left something to be desired.

[44] Tyler Foster of DVD Talk "highly recommended" the set, and wrote that the series is "bursting with imagination, sweetness, and a ridiculous sense of humor".

[47] Warner Home Video released multiple DVD volumes, such as My Two Favorite People, It Came from the Nightosphere, Jake vs. Me-Mow, The Suitor, Frost & Fire, and The Enchiridion which contain episodes from the first season.