Seth MacFarlane’s College Major Helped Him Land ‘Family Guy’
Seth MacFarlane has created some of the most influential comedy shows and movies. He started his career in animation. Now, he’s done it all. MacFarlane writes, animates, voices, and acts all kinds of characters. MacFarlane has become a voice-acting master, meaning each of his characters is totally unique.
MacFarlane is known for voicing four characters on Family Guy, a show he created. He’s also the voice of everyone’s favorite inappropriate stuffed animal, Ted, star of Ted and Ted 2. However, MacFarlane is much more than just a voice guy. He actually designed the characters on Family Guy and made the original drawings. According to a video from Wired, MacFarlane was an animator before becoming a voice actor and writer.
Seth MacFarlane majored in animation at the Rhode Island School of Design
Before becoming a household name, Seth MacFarlane was like every other college student. He attended the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, known as RISD. There, MacFarlane studied animation. According to his Wired interview, he loved his time there and the education he received. However, MacFarlane went to college with more experience than the average student. He had already managed to build a career as a cartoonist.
MacFarlane worked as a cartoon artist for his town’s paper starting at just nine years old. After drawing a cartoon, MacFarlane decided to send it into the paper. They liked it so much that they gave him a job. According to IMDb, MacFarlane was born in Kent, Connecticut. Now, the town has a population of just over 2,000 people, according to Connecticut Demographics. MacFarlane once joked that the town had only 600 people or so, and that’s why he was able to land the job of cartoon artist for the Kent paper.
MacFarlane is no longer animating ‘Family Guy’
After graduating from RISD, Seth MacFarlane got a job on Johnny Bravo, a Cartoon Network show popular in the 1990s. It wasn’t long before MacFarlane impressed enough people to get his own show made. The first episode of Family Guy came out in 1999, just two years after Cartoon Network hired MacFarlane.
However, MacFarlane is now no longer animating on Family Guy. In fact, he doesn’t have much to do with the show at all. MacFarlane told Wired that he stopped working on the show around 2011. He credits the team with the show’s success and even says that the animators improved his original character designs for the show. He still voices Peter, Stewie, Brian, and Quagmire on the show. He also does Stan and Roger on his second animated success story, American Dad. That show came out in 2005 after Family Guy became a huge hit. Now, MacFarlane is working on other projects.
What is Seth MacFarlane doing now?
According to the Wired interview, Seth MacFarlane is working on The Orville. According to IMDb, the show is a comedy-drama set in outer space. MacFarlane is credited as the creator, but he also plays one of the main characters. It’s been going strong since 2017, with its third season moving from Fox to Hulu, but MacFarlane likes to keep more than one project on his plate.
He’s also working on a new show about Ted, based on the Ted movies. The new show will be on Peacock. MacFarlane is creating it, but he’ll also likely play the voice of Ted himself, as he did in the films.
