"To spend that extra energy and time you don't have, to make something that's worth making, to make it awesome, wears you out," he says. A backward red cap hides the top of his head; a checkered shirt buttoned to the top conceals his plump body; and on his face, there is not so much a beard but a hair force field, keeping anything from penetrating the world he's created for himself. "It's a beast of a show. And the more popular it gets, the more the ancillary things like the merchandise and games and everything keep getting bigger."
And so, Ward confesses, one day during Season Five, unbeknownst to his fans, "I quit because it was driving me nuts."
He says this not with sadness or frustration, but with relief. "For me, having quality of life outweighed the need to control this project and make it great all the time." So he stepped down from running Adventure Time to become simply one of the show's writers and storyboard artists.
