When he was 7, Genndy Tartakovsky moved from Russia to Chicago with his family. He was interested in comic books and animation which led him to study animation at CalArts in Los Angeles. He produced two student films while he was there, of them was the iconic Dexter’s Laboratory (1996). The animation was about an arrogant boy with a funny accent and the adventures of his older sister Dee-Dee would constantly get on his nerves. With DeDe’s character being inspired by his older brother.
Dexter’s Laboratory was a show I loved growing up, but I realized now that I didn’t experienced his thick accent which is a key part of his character because I watched it on Cartoon Network Arabic (example). Later when the show appeared on Cartoon Network some changes were made to the characters “redesigning dexter himself to look more diminutive makes his arrogance all the more funnier” (source). The camera angles and framing style however wasn’t changed.
Genndy Tartakovsky later turned the show to another director and worked as a producer on The Powerpuff Girls (1998). This is when he began one of his most celebrated works that I love and the reason why I’m writing about him specifically, Samurai Jack (2001) . The storyline revolves around a samurai sent back through time to fight an evil demon and tries to find a way to return home and save the world.
His art style in the show depended on using little to no outlines, using extremely precise levels of color contrast, and by the difference in lighting hue and saturation he was able to differentiate between characters and their backgrounds. This gave the animation more depth compared to other shows he’s worked on such as Dexter’s Laboratory.
“By taking such a minimalist approach more attention is drawn to the visuals … combined with all the meticulously designed action choreography, camera composition, clear character poses, holding shots longer to create anticipation, splitting the frame into panels and these cinematic shifts between aspect ratios marks the first time where we really start to see genndy tartakovsky emerge as a director who intentionally prioritizes visual storytelling” – Source
In 2003 he stopped working on the series when George Lucas hired Tartakovsky to work on producing Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003). The movie was a perfect fit for the creator of Samurai Jack, both creators were influenced by Akira Kurosawa movies, lightsabers are basically magical swords and many other similarities that Tartakovsky was a expert at animating. When looking at Clone Wars, color depth is even more detailed though more outlines were used to tie 2D with 3D elements. This carried out into his other animations such as the dynamic TV series Sym-Bionic Titan (2010).
Then in 2012 came Tartakovsky’s first feature on Hotel Transylvania, a huge production that incorporated 2D techniques to 3D animation. One technique they used was squash and stretch that created more expressive animation. They also removed motion blur to give action poses more clarity.
Finally some of Genndy Tartakovsky’s other works included Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015), his first film with creative control over the entire production. And Samurai Jack (2017) when he conclude the story on Adult Swim.
References
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0850733/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm