Genndy Tartakovsky
Tartakovsky is a Russian-American animator, director, producer, screenwriter, storyboard artist, comic book writer and artist. He is the creator of the animated television series Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, ', and Primal on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.
He co-created Sym-Bionic Titan and directing the animated Hotel Transylvania film trilogy. Additionally, Tartakovsky was a pivotal crew member of The Powerpuff Girls and worked on other series such as 2 Stupid Dogs and '.
Early life
Tartakovsky was born Gennady Borisovich Tartakovsky on 17 January 1970, in Moscow, to Jewish parents. His father, Boris, worked as a dentist for government officials and the Soviet Union national ice hockey team. Genndy felt that his father was a very strict and old-fashioned man, but they had a close relationship. His mother, Miriam, was an assistant principal at a school. He has a brother, Alexander, who is two years older and a computer consultant in Chicago. Before coming to the United States, his family moved to Italy. There, Tartakovsky was first drawn to art, inspired by a neighbor's daughter. Tartakovsky later commented, "I remember, I was horrible at it. For the life of me, I couldn't draw a circle".Tartakovsky's family moved to the United States when he was seven due to concerns about the effect of antisemitism on their children's lives. The family originally settled in Columbus, Ohio and later moved to Chicago. He was greatly influenced by the comics he found there; his first purchase was an issue of Super Friends. Tartakovsky began attending Chicago's Eugene Field Elementary School in the third grade. School was difficult because he was seen as a foreigner. He went on to attend Chicago's prestigious Lane Technical College Prep High School and says he did not fit in until his sophomore year. When he was 16, his father died of a heart attack. Afterwards, Genndy and his family moved to government-funded housing, and he began working while still attending high school.
To satisfy his ambitious family, which was encouraging him to be a businessman, Tartakovsky tried to take an advertising class, but signed up late and thereby had little choice over his classes. He was assigned to take an animation class and this led to his study of film at Columbia College Chicago before moving to Los Angeles to study animation at the California Institute of the Arts with his friend Rob Renzetti. There he met Craig McCracken. At CalArts, Tartakovsky directed and animated two student films, one of which became the basis for Dexter's Laboratory. After two years at CalArts, Tartakovsky got a job at Lapiz Azul Productions in Spain on . There, "he learned the trials of TV animation, labor intensive and cranking it out". While he was in Spain, his mother died of cancer.
Career
Craig McCracken acquired an art director job at Hanna-Barbera for the show 2 Stupid Dogs and recommended hiring Rob Renzetti and Tartakovsky as well. This was a major turning point in Tartakovsky's career. Hanna-Barbera let Tartakovsky, McCracken, Renzetti and Paul Rudish work in a trailer in the parking lot of the studio, and there Tartakovsky started creating his best-known works. Dexter's Laboratory grew out of a student film with the same title that he produced while at the California Institute of the Arts. Tartakovsky co-wrote and pencilled the 25th issue of the Dexter's Laboratory comic book series, titled "Stubble Trouble", as well as several stories which are collected in the Dexter's Laboratory Classics trade paperback. Additionally, he helped produce The Powerpuff Girls, co-directed several episodes and served as the animation director and a cinematographer for The Powerpuff Girls Movie; he co-wrote one of the franchise's comics. Both Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls were nominated repeatedly for Emmy Awards.Tartakovsky created the action-adventures series Samurai Jack, which premiered in 2001; he also wrote comics for the franchise. The series won him an Emmy in the category of "Outstanding Animated Program " in 2004. Star Wars creator George Lucas hired Tartakovsky to direct Star Wars: Clone Wars, an animated series taking place between ' and '. The series won three Emmy awards: two for "Outstanding Animated Program " in 2004 and 2005, and another for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation". Tartakovsky was not involved in the.
In 2005, Tartakovsky was appointed creative president of Orphanage Animation Studios. In 2006, he was chosen as the director for a sequel to The Dark Crystal, but was replaced and the film was later scrapped. Tartakovsky served as animation director on the pilot episode of Korgoth of Barbaria, which aired on Adult Swim in 2006 but was not picked up as a series. He also directed a series of anti-smoking advertisements, one for Nicorette in 2006 and two for Niquitin in 2008. In 2009, Tartakovsky created a pilot entitled Maruined for Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute program, which was not picked up.
In 2009, it was announced that Tartakovsky would write and direct a Samurai Jack film from Fred Seibert's Frederator Studios and J. J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions. In June 2012, Tartakovsky said that he had a story to conclude the series and title character's story, but the project had been shelved after Abrams moved on to direct Star Trek. In 2010, Tartakovsky created storyboards for Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2. He created a new series for Cartoon Network, Sym-Bionic Titan, between 2010 and 2011. He had hoped to expand on the initial season, but it was not renewed. On 7 April 2011, an animated prologue by Tartakovsky for the horror film Priest premiered online.
In early 2011, Tartakovsky moved to Sony Pictures Animation, where he made his feature film directing debut with Hotel Transylvania. In July 2012, he signed a long-term deal with Sony to develop and direct his own original projects. In June 2012, Sony announced that Tartakovsky was slated to direct a computer-animated Popeye feature. On 18 September 2014, Tartakovsky revealed an "animation test". In March 2015, Tartakovsky announced that despite the well-received test footage, he was no longer working on the project. He moved onto directing original story Can You Imagine?, announced in 2014, but it was cancelled.
Tartakovsky directed Hotel Transylvania 2, the sequel to Hotel Transylvania, released in 2015. In December 2015, Adult Swim announced that Tartakovsky would return for a final season of Samurai Jack, during which he stepped away from Sony Pictures Animation. When the series finished airing in 2017, Tartakovsky returned to Sony and directed '. After its financial success, two original projects were announced: an R-rated comedy called Fixed and an action-adventure film entitled Black Knight.
In May 2019, it was announced that Adult Swim had commissioned a new series from Tartakovsky entitled Primal, which is about "a caveman at the dawn of evolution... dinosaur on the brink of extinction". It aired on 7 October 2019.
On 11 May 2020, it was announced that the Popeye film would start production again from scratch with Tartakovsky returned to direct but this time under King Features and a new writer, T. J. Fixman.
Tartakovsky was involved in the development process of the upcoming video game ', which is set to release in mid-2020.