Genndy Tartakovsky is a Russian-American animator, born in 1970 who got into the animation industry in 1991, working an assistant animator on Tiny Toons Adventures. He did animation on several more projects before creating his first television series for Cartoon Network in 1996, Dexter’s Laboratory, and would go on to create more series for the network. Genndy Tartakovsky is one of the most acclaimed directors in animation and has influenced many future directors and animators for his art style, character design and cinematography, but who influenced Genndy Tartakovsky?
When Genndy started his animation course, his designs were criticized for lacking form, but his professor taught him how to utilize shapes in his design work, which helped with the form of characters and allowed them to show off their personality through both shape and posing. You can use the use of shapes in his first show, Dexter’s Lab. The character shape of Dexter is a small rigid square, so through his shape and posing, you can tell he is a stern and uptight character, while with his sister, Dee Dee, a more carefree character, her design is more curved and allows for more exaggerated, looser posing.
The art of the show took major influence from the various works of the United Productions of America (UPA) such as Gerald McBoingBoing. This is shown through the use of thick, black linework and geometric background design. Dexter’s Lab came out in a period of animation where this style was making a resurgence with shows such as Van Partible’s Johnny Bravo and Craig McCracken’s The Powerpuff Girls coming out within the next couple of years for Cartoon Network with a similar aesthetic sense coming out.
Genndy’s next project would be a departure from Dexter by straying away from comedy and instead going for a more cinematic, story-based style for his new show, Samurai Jack. It follows a samurai traversing a futuristic landscape so he can return to his original time. Genndy took a number of influences from various things he liked. The plot of the series was inspired by Frank Miller’s comic book, Ronin, which also featured a samurai getting thrusted into the future.
Genndy took inspiration for his directing style of the series from classic Hollywood films such as Ben-Hur, Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia, as well as the filmography of Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa. The art direction for the series was inspired by the 1963 anime film, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon directed by Yūgo Serikawa, which features a similar aesthetic sense to Jack through the use of shape, colors, and geometric backgrounds. You can also still see the UPA influence through the character designs, even without the thick linework, which Jack foregoes.
After Samurai Jack ended, Genndy created Star Wars: Clone Wars, an animated spinoff of the sci-fi film series, where he would use similar animation techniques to Samurai Jack but using iconography from the Star Wars franchise. The character designs were caricatures of the actors who portrayed the characters of the film, but in Genndy’s style.
Genndy’s next original program released would be Sym-Bionic Titan, a series following 3 alien who come to earth to escape their war-torn planet. The 3 combine to form the robot, Sym-Bionic Titan.
The main influence of the series would be the mecha genre seen in Japanese media, which features giant manually controlled robots getting into battles. Mecha has been a staple of Japanese media for decades, but a big influence comes from the manga of Dynamic Productions, in particular Go Nagai’s Mazinger Z and Ken Ishikawa’s Getter Robo, as those manga started many of the tropes associated with the genre.
SBT featured prominent use of CGI throughout the show with use of the titular robot. The CGI in the series is stylized to look consistent with the art style in the show. CGI would be the animation used for Genndy’s next project.
Hotel Transylvania is a film series produced by Sony Pictures Animation and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (his first project not created for Cartoon Network). It is a series with 3 films, with the fourth in production. It is Genndy’s first work that is entirely in CGI. It is about Dracula running a hotel where the inhabitants are mainly monsters, based on either creatures from folklore of various cultures or characters from the classic Universal Pictures horror films.
Genndy’s approach to the animation of the movies was different from how many contemporary CGI animated films approach the animation. While the films of Pixar and Dreamwork usually go for a more naturalistic style of movement, the animation style for Hotel Transylvania went for pure stylization, inspired by the cartoons of Looney Tunes director and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck creator, Tex Avery. Genndy incorporates techniques seen in 2d animation from the movement to the posing. The framing of many of the shots invoke the look of 2d animation.
One technique that Genndy uses in the series is smear frames, which is a technique in 2d animation where an animator draws an abstract in between frame for an animation that simulates movement. Genndy does this by creating distorting the models in bizarre ways.
His next 2 projects would be with Adult Swim, a sister channel to Cartoon Network that features more mature content. He created a 5th season of Samurai Jack that was created, 12 years after the conclusion of the 4th season. It continued the story and look of the previous season. The other show created for Adult Swim was “Primal”, an action series set in the prehistoric era.
Genndy’s influence is seen in the animation industry, through his own work and his help developing projects with creators like Rebecca Sugar (animation direction on the Steven Universe pilot) and Arron Springer (animation direction on Korgoth of Barbaria). The work he was inspired by was integral for the shows and movies he has made and those in turn helped inspire his peers in the animation field and creators that were inspired by him.