Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538315
FALL 2025 25 FALL 2025 25 Double-edged Swords Tartakovsky's student film about the boxy little boy named Dexter landed him a job as a Storyboard Artist on Hanna-Barbera's 2 Stupid Dogs. "But the producer hated my storyboarding," he says. "It was really hard on me. I have a very strong point of view, and here's your boss telling you that what you're doing is wrong." While this criticism made him question his artistic sensibility, it didn't slow him down. He left the show to work as an Animation Timer on The Critic around the same time Cartoon Network was starting its "What a Cartoon!" animated shorts series. Meanwhile, Larry Huber, a different producer from 2 Stupid Dogs, showed the Dexter student film to Cartoon Network. They asked Tartakovsky to work up a seven-minute pilot. He explains that in the shorts program, "you live and die by your own sword. [They're] not going to give you notes. You just do what you do, and it's either going to be good or not." He was only 24 and didn't know anyone his age running thinking differently. "I was very critical of the things that I liked, what was bad, what was good," he says. "That's when I really started to form an idea—if I had a chance to work on something I would like, what would that be?" The answer began to emerge with Changes, his second-year student film. He'd been drawing a tall, skinny girl, and he loved animating her dancing. He wanted to use her in some way. He was interested in the contrast of characters, and he asked himself: What's the opposite of this girl? "A little box of a brother who's a scientist," he says. "She can come in and play with his inventions and try to ruin him. That's literally how it happened. It all started from movement." Changes contained seeds of elements that are now signature Tartakovsky. Friend and fellow CalArts' student, Craig McCracken—who was working on his own project that would eventually become The PowerPuff Girls—says they were driven by a shared love of visual storytelling, bold design, and iconic characters. "Genndy is a master animation director and visual storyteller," he adds. "He breaks down every aspect of his cartoons into rhythmic, musical beats. Every cut and camera move, down to each gesture or eye blink, is precisely timed... To me this visual musicality is what sets his shows apart from others."