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Genndy Tartakovsky (Russian: Геннадий Тартаковский (Gyennadiy Tartakovskiy), born January 17, 1970) is an Emmy Award-winning Russian animator. His work is influenced heavily by American comic books, pop culture, and Japanese anime. He is best known for the television series Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 1.1 Education 2 Early career 2.1 Tartakovsky's work at Hanna-Barbera 3 Major works 4 Orphanage studios 5 Future projects 6 References 7 External links

Genndy Tartakovsky was born in January 1970, in Moscow, USSR to Jewish parents.^[2] His father worked as a dentist for high level government officers and his mother was an assistant principal at a school. They moved to the United States when he was seven because his father wanted a better life for his children. Before coming to the United States, however, his family first moved to Italy, where he lived next to a German family. There, he says he 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."

Later, after he and his family moved to the United States, he was greatly influenced by the comics he found there. The first book he bought was a Super Friends comic at his first job, working at a 7-Eleven.

Genndy began attending Chicago's Eugene Field School in the third grade. School was hard for him because he felt that everyone recognized him as a foreigner. He says he never fit in until he was a sophomore in high school. When he was 16, his father died. He felt that his father was very strict and was an old fashioned man, but Genndy's relationship with his father was very special to him. After the death of his father, Genndy and his family moved to government-funded housing, and he began working while still attending high school. Genndy was introduced to television at this time, which left a deep impact upon his later career.

To satisfy his ambitious family, Genndy tried to take an advertising class, because they were pushing him to be a businessman. However, he signed up late, and therefore did not have any choice over his classes. He was assigned to take an animation class, and this led to his studying animation at Chicago's Columbia College. He worked in a frenzy, trying to build his profile as an animator. Around 1991, he made a three-minute short film by himself. This was the beginning of a prolific career, and from this, along with a shoebox full of flipbooks, he managed to get into the California Institute of the Arts with his friend, Robert Renzetti.

He came up with the idea of "Dexter's Laboratory" in college; inspired by a drawing of a ballerina. He developed another short film in his second year.

Tartakovsky's early animation career consisted of in-betweening for various animated television shows, such as Batman: The Animated Series and The Critic. Later, Tartakovsky worked at Hanna-Barbera, drawing storyboards for the show 2 Stupid Dogs.

Craig McCracken showed his portfolio to Hanna-Barbera and got the job art directing for the show 2 Stupid Dogs. They asked him if he knew anyone else, and he responded, saying that he knew that Robert Renzetti and Genndy Tartakovsky would be right for the job. This was the major turning-point in Tartakovsky's life. Hanna-Barbera let Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Robert Renzetti, and Paul Rudish work in a trailer in the parking lot of the studio, and there, Genndy Tartakovsky started creating his best known works.

Tartakovsky is most well known for creating, writing, and directing the animated series Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack. Dexter's Laboratory grew out of a student film with the same title that he produced while at the California Institute of the Arts. Additionally, he helped produce The Powerpuff Girls and has directed many episodes, serving as the animation director for The Powerpuff Girls Movie. All three projects were nominated repeatedly for Emmy Awards, with Samurai Jack finally winning "Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour)" in 2004 (the same year he would win in the category for One Hour or More for Star Wars: Clone Wars)

George Lucas so admired Samurai Jack that he contacted Tartakovsky and the resulting project was Star Wars: Clone Wars, a successful miniseries of animation shorts depicting the Clone War events taking place between Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The series has won three Emmy awards, 2 for " Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or More)" (in 2004 and 2005) and another for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation" (for Justin Thompson in 2005). Tartakovsky has no plans to work on future Star Wars projects.^[3]

To date, Tartakovsky has amassed 12 nominations for Emmys and three wins. While thus far being nominated four times for Annie Awards, he has never won.

Recently, Tartakovsky has been made creative president of The Orphanage, an animation studio fabricated of Lucasfilm veterans. The company hopes to one day rival animation giant Pixar, and believes that Tartakovsky can get them there. Their first feature will be the sequel to the 1982 classic The Dark Crystal. It will be directed by Tartakovsky and is titled Power of the Dark Crystal, with a release date set for early-to-mid 2008.

He has also been pitching a cartoon series of Stephen King's The Dark Tower to HBO. It is unknown how the upcoming 2007 Dark Tower comics will affect the possibility of this projected series becoming a reality - whether the foray into an illustrated medium will pave the way for Genndy's animation, or if it will prove to be enough for King and the Grant publishing company. He has also been connected to the long-standing Astro Boy movie project.

Genndy recently helped create and directed animation on a new series for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. The series, which is titled Korgoth of Barbaria, is set for a complete first season which will air in spring of 2007.

He has also expressed his desire to bring an animated Samurai Jack film to the big screen.^[3]

Genndy's Scrapbook (Samurai Jack Season 2, Disk 2)

• CartoonNetwork.com, Animator Profile: GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY.
• Genndy Tartakovsky at the Internet Movie Database
• Just What Made Him The Cartoon Genius He Is Today by Paul Senior
• StarWars.com Biography
• The JewishJournal.com, The Way of the Samarai