Page "Hey Arnold!" Paragraph 4

After the meeting, the group began developing Arnold, creating his personality and evolving him from claymation to cel animation.

Bartlett stated: " We did a lot of talking about who Arnold is.

We came up with a reluctant hero who keeps finding himself responsible for solving something, making the right choices, doing the right thing.

" After creating ideas for Arnold, Bartlett began work on the supporting characters, drawing influence from his childhood: " A lot of the characters are an amalgam of people I knew when I was a kid.

The girls in Hey Arnold!

are girls that either liked or didn't like me when I was in school.

" He created the first episode of Hey Arnold!

in his living room, and showed it to producers at Nickelodeon.

A year later, the network decided to begin work on the series.

The character was previously featured in a trilogy of clay animation shorts from 1988 to 1991, Arnold Escapes from Church ( 1988 ), The Arnold Waltz ( 1990 ) and Arnold Rides a Chair ( 1991 ), a latter having been aired as a filler short on Sesame Street in 1991, as well as an eight-minute short, titled Arnold ( 1996 ), shown in theaters before Nickelodeon's first feature-length film, Harriet the Spy.