At the start of the first episode of The Owl House, created by SVA alumnus Dana Terrace (BFA 2013 Animation), the spunky protagonist Luz is an average, if exceptionally imaginative, teenager. She’s bright and self-assured, but isolated and routinely chastised by her school principal and caring, concerned mother for being overly enthusiastic and getting a little too caught up in favorite fantasy stories. "Your fantasy world is holding you back," her mom chides, sending Luz to "Reality Check" summer camp in hopes of tempering her daughter’s excessively creative spirit. "No more weirdness!" Luz promises.

By the end, after missing the bus to camp and stumbling upon a magic portal, Luz is apprenticed to a witch named Eda and shares a room with an adorably tiny warrior named King ... but no spoilers. You need to tune in to find out more. Check out the series premiere, which airs tonight, Friday, January 10, at 8:30pm, on Disney Channel and is also available on the DisneyNOW app.

The much-anticipated animated fantasy-comedy series is Terrace’s first experience as showrunner, the person tasked with driving the creative direction of a show. Still, she honed her skills previously as a storyboard artist on the Disney series Gravity Falls and later, as a director for Disney’s DuckTales reboot. Finding herself between jobs a couple of years ago, Owl House came out of a desire to create something entirely her own.

"When I first came up with the idea for the show—a young girl goes to another world and learns magic from an older witch—I started gathering all my artistic influences," Terrace says. "All the stuff that got me jazzed to draw and write in the first place—Hieronymus Bosch paintings, Remedios Varo paintings, John Bauer—and thinking, what would this kind of stuff look like as a kids’ cartoon?" The scenery and inhabitants of Boiling Isles, where Owl House is set, are indeed straight out of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, both goofy and grotesque; it’s a kind of Medieval bestiary meets the Addams Family, with many-eyed, winged and hybrid creatures and enchanted objects run amok.