Genndy Tartakovsky took to Twitter on Tuesday to reply customers’ questions on animation fundamentals and a number of other of his most iconic creations.
Within the video, produced and uploaded by Wired, Tartakovsky touches on a variety of matters, some critical and others foolish, akin to why so many cartoon characters don’t put on pants, the distinction between animation and a cartoon, the historic significance of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the restrictions – or lack thereof – of animation.
Tartakovsky is an knowledgeable communicator, and even seasoned trade vets are prone to discover lots to get pleasure from within the video. Generally, it’s useful to listen to easy ideas defined in a brand new manner, even when we’re already intimately conversant in them. It’s additionally simply quite a lot of enjoyable to see Tartakovsky sketch his manner by way of among the rules of animation.
Not solely is Tartakovsky a wonderful communicator, however he has a wonderful reminiscence as effectively. A number of questions are requested concerning the reveals and movies he’s helmed over time, and never solely is he capable of keep in mind particular particulars to reply these questions however he even busts out his pencil and paper and sketches examples of the rules he discusses. There are nice anecdotes from Star Wars: Clone Wars, Dexter’s Laboratory, Resort Transylvania, and extra.
Requested to elucidate what an animation director does, Tartakovsky advised a narrative about an epiphany he had on Dexter’s Lab:
It’s all about having a viewpoint. Once I was doing Dexter’s Lab, an artist would draw the storyboard. We’d pin all of it up, after which they might pitch it. We had one storyboard artist, when he pitched the storyboard it was in, like, this humorous voice. And so, Dexter come over right here. After which there’s Dee Dee. And so, the entire room was crying laughing. After he completed I used to be like, Nicely, how the hell am I presupposed to switch this efficiency into this episode? ‘Trigger he doesn’t sound just like the characters in any respect. They don’t speak like that. However there was one thing about it that labored. And so, I spotted, Oh proper, that’s my job. My job is now to take this efficiency and translate it into one thing entertaining. And it was like a very huge epiphany in my profession. Like, Oh proper, that’s really what I do.
One of many questions that appeared to actually get Tartakovsky pondering was: “Writers usually give animation notes. The place do animators get to submit notes for the writers?” The filmmaker took a second to gather his ideas earlier than answering:
That’s a giant query… Artists and storyboard artists are a proud bunch. And we all know what we’re doing, however typically we don’t. And so, we’ll neglect the writing, we’ll throw it away, after which we’ll do it on our personal. And it equally doesn’t work. So often, the healthiest relationships are [when] the author and the animator are each collectively they usually’re a unified group. That’s why I at all times write my very own stuff, for essentially the most half, as a result of I need to have twin energy. However yeah, often animation of us don’t get an opportunity to offer writers critiques. We simply complain about it at our desks for 3 years.
The 15-minute video is loaded with attention-grabbing tales and knowledge and is effectively price watching in its entirety.
