Tuesday 21 May 2013

Animator: Genndy Tartakovsky

This man is without a doubt one of the most influencial animators on me, having grown up with the Hanna-Barbera cartoons he had a role in; Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and he also produced many others; The Powerpuff Girls, and he was a storyboard artist for Iron Man 2, and director/ writer for Hotel Transylvania.

It was definitely his work on Samurai Jack that grabbed my interest in animation, though. I love the choreography, the art style, dialogue, and just about everything about it. It sort of set a high standard for the 2D animation I'd watch for the rest of my life, now that I knew what was capable of it.


Having also storyboarded and written it, Genndy's influence behind this series was more noticeable than anyone else's. I still haven't watched Hotel Transylvania, but I'll be keeping an eye out for how he draws his notable 2D animation characteristics into the 3D medium.

I learned a lot about the principles of animation through observing Jack, and it generated my interest in crossing fighting and martial arts with animation. Whilst this isn't so prominent in the earlier episodes, the fight scenes in the later episodes are amazing. I also came to appreciate the music and sound involved - who I have also since looked up.



This episode has a much darker theme but it still demonstrates the potential of 2D animation as an artistic medium; usually the bad guys in this show are replaced with robots and it only occurred to me years later that the wires seen running through their bodies represented veins and the oil that spilled of them after was blood. Looking back it was rather grim, but an inventive way to secure a lower age rating.

As a practitioner, I have learned a lot from Genndy, particularly about generating my own artstyle that I want to use in my animation so it can be my own distinctive creation, just as Genndy's animations are.

Here's an animation in which the creators do a commentary which I found very interesting; taking influence from Spartacus and Ben-hur.



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