"What a Cartoon" and Genndy Tartakovsky Interview by John Kricfalusi

This is the second part of an article about "What a Cartoon" by John K and features an interview with Genndy Tartakovsky.

To read part one, click here.

A caricature of Genndy by Craig Kellman in the What a Cartoon short "Lost Control"

 Animation Magazine - Issue #37 September 1995

Click each image to enlarge. Text version included below.

Text Version:

In the second part of this article inspired by Hanna-Barbera's shorts' program, John K. takes a closer look at Dexter's Laboratory and speaks with the cartoon's creator, Genndy Tartakovsky.

    When I looked at the individual elements that make up the film, I found various degrees of craft.

Craig McCracken's character designs are flat, like the current fashion, yet they seem fresher than what's around. He combines Jay Ward, the Cal Arts Character Animation school style, Japanese cartoons and then something original.

    The character Dee Dee is especially appealing. She's not just cute, but cute with character. Her look suggests her personality. This is rare in cartoons. In his own film, McCracken's Power Puff Girls are extremely cute and appealing but a little colder.

    Despite the name of the cartoon, Dee Dee is really the star. She is a typical big sister who drives her little brother insane. This fact is inherent in the story, but it comes across not simply because of the plot. Her design, her expressions and even the movement itself tells us about her character.

    Genndy explains: 'I made her a ballerina, so whenever she acts, she acts in a very exaggerated way. And she always tries to strike a pose, like she's pretending she's a ballerina. So that would simplify the

process, instead of trying to find out a way of acting that's broad.'

    Some of the animation of these ballet movements is very clever. I freeze-framed her pirouettes and leaps, and discovered drawings where Dee Dee grew extra legs to help the flow of the actions. There is a kind of sweet sarcasm to her movements and expressions which makes her a very real and convincing character. This is not anything that could be written into a script. Only an artist can do this.

    Genndy believes strongly in the law of contrasts. He juxtaposed Dee Dee's movement and look with her brother Dexter. She is tall and thin. He is short and squat. She is lively and graceful. He is subdued and mechanical.

    I didn't notice when I first saw the cartoon, but as I was home dissecting it, I was surprised to see the seemingly unsophisticated color styling. The backgrounds are completely painted in primary and secondary colors. There isn't a muted or neutral color in the whole picture. Everything is orange, purple, yellow, blue and pink. Colors right out of the paint tubes. This isn't unusual for modern cartoons. Most Saturday morning cartoons, and even Disney features, are painted in primitive garish colors. The idea I think is, 'Cartoons are juvenile; therefore paint them with blunt ignorance.'

    These modern cartoons remind me of Denny's menus. You've seen those blue-purple-orange sunsets, I'm sure. Well, normally this kind of coloring distracts me from any story or action in the cartoons, but somehow in this case, it wasn't so bad. At least the artists didn't put every color in every scene. They usually limited the palette to two or three colors and did manage to compose the colors around the actions, rather than compete with them.

    The timing in the cartoon is very slick and careful. If you look at each individual action alone, you might think, 'This is good, but not untypical of a Cal Arts' graduate.' More impressive than the timing is the pacing. Pacing is a bigger concept than timing. It is the wide view of all the actions and how they relate to each other. This is a concept of timing that was totally missing from every other cartoon in the 'What A Cartoon' program (at the Academy preview). It's a tool that just isn't used anymore in cartoons... period. Do you ever wonder why the old cartoons, just sort of 'feel good'? Why they seem to flow so well? Why they seem to have rhythm? It's because they have rhythm. Classic cartoons were timed to musical tempos. Modern cartoons are timed straight ahead, action by action. Where the accents fall in relation to each other is now accidental. That's why modern cartoons feel jerky.

    In music, tempos vary; slow then fast, the rhythms weave in and out of each other and build moods in the listener. When this is well done, it sweeps you away in emotional bliss. No words can describe the feelings that good music invokes, not the way the music itself does. Have you ever got a chill listening to a piece of music? Cartoons have this power, if the cartoonist is aware of the tools and skilled in the arranging of them. Because of this rhythmic quality of cartoons, I find the cartoon to be an art much closer to music than to literature. Sure, music can tell a story, but if the music isn't enjoyable for its own sake, who will care about the story? Music doesn't need story at all to be great art. It definitely needs melody and rhythm. Harmony, syncopation, structure, movements are all variations and arrangements of the melody and rhythm. These tools pace and refine the vital elements of music.

    Cartoons substitute pictures for melody and use rhythm to regulate the flow of the pictures. Without rhythm and pacing, a cartoon doesn't deliver its maximum potential. Try singing a song out of tempo. It's so hard to do, and so alien that it seems unquestionably, instinctively wrong. Many modern cartoons, even if the art and animation is wonderful are wrong and unsettling in this way.

    It took me a few years of trial and error and bad timing/pacing, and studying cartoons to discover this missing vital element in the modern stuff. I eventually interviewed some old animators who explained how they did it. They timed to beats and bars, rather than sums of individual frames. Bill Hanna physically showed me how he did it. It was so simple, so right, that I had to ask him, 'Why don't you teach your timing directors this?' He said, 'Oh, everybody knows this.' I guess he hasn't watched any Hanna-Barbera cartoons in a few decades.

    Genndy figured this out completely on his own. How? By being paid to do it the wrong way first and seeing the unsatisfactory results. 'When I was working at The Critic, they would go in and put extra feet — two feet, an extra second, in between the slugs. And I would ask, 'What's this for?' And they'd say, 'For the laughter.' And I'd say 'Oh, okay.'

    The Critic actually made me organize my timing... indirectly. It was a really great experience because their timing is very formulaic. Just a 4-frame head bob up, 4-frame head bob down. Totally even. You go to a pose, you overshoot... that's all it is. Twelve-frame walk cycle, 8-frame run. Just put in the arcs, plot it down. It's all dialogue driven. There's no hand gestures. They just stand there and talk. Blink blink blink. Accent, accent, accent. That's probably 60 percent of the timing. I made $300 more than I made at [Two Stupid] Dogs. That's a lot. I mean, I got sick of it after a couple of weeks.

    'I had a revelation on Two Stupid Dogs. I finally figured out that it's all beats. I retimed one of the scenes that I already timed with the Dogs, to beats [in a sketchbook]. And I go, 'Oh, now it makes sense to me.' I didn't shoot it, but it made sense. It felt good when you did it on paper. And then when I did the arcs [on an exposure sheet], I went 'Oh, this looks cool, this works.' You have a nice long arc, and then a real short one, and then a long one, or whatever. Even though some people say that's real stupid, if you look at a piece of paper and you look at the different sizes of the arcs, the action, if you can see the contrast on the sheets, that means there's good contrast in the timing. And most of the sheets that I saw for Dogs, or if you pick up any Hanna-Barbera old show, not like 'old-old', but recently, they don't have that [the contrasts].'

    In Dexter's Laboratory, Genndy used beats and contrasted actions and sequences, or pacing, to help put over the feelings he wanted the audience to experience. He alternated slow scenes with fast scenes, dialogue scenes with action scenes and gave each sequence its own tempo. On top of that, the rhythmic wave of the whole picture gradually rises to a climax. This is pretty sophisticated for someone's first film.

    I asked Genndy what he thought was more important, story or pacing. 'I think they're one and the same. The way the story flows along is the way the music flows along which is the pacing. When you have a chase, it's a fast thing, so you write it fast. I mean, you can't physically write it fast, but that's why you don't write it. You [story]board it fast, thinking in real time. You just do scribbles that work. Then I think the question is, Do you want to have one or two things that are really good, or do you want to have a really good overall feel to it?'

    Genndy uses his storyboards to work out the flow and pacing and to find rough spots in the story. 'When I first started doing storyboards on Dogs, I would do a sequence and I would act it out, play it out. When I came to an uncomfortable moment, an uncomfortable scene or sequence, I would feel there's something wrong, and I mentally made a note, that I knew there was something wrong with it, but I wouldn't fix it, I would just let it go, and I don't know why I did that. You're flowing along, you're acting it out, and then you have to do something unnatural, when you're acting you feel it. You really, really feel it. There's something not working there. So, now I've got to rework it.'

    I asked him if he could do this from a script. 'Not from a script. From a storyboard. I think it's got to be visually represented so you know where the cuts are, where the angles are, where the camera direction is, how it's flowing. From a script, you're reading a line, you're reading a set-up, and what you're thinking might be something different than what someone else thinks.'

    How does one keep track of these story glitches? 

    'Well, I put a post-it on the board, and I may pitch it to some friends, but sometimes they don't really understand what I'm saying. It works mechanically, it works as part of the story, but it just doesn't work no matter how good the gag is.

    'People say 'Oh, that will work in animation.' But it's got to work in the board, before anything goes to animation. You can pitch the whole thing and if you go through the whole thing without stopping, without feeling a problem, you've got a good cartoon.'

    The experience of Dexter's Laboratory taught Genndy to use simple methodical tools to structure his stories before going to the storyboard stage. 'On the first one, there's really no explanation how it [the story] came. But on the second one, I had all these vignettes that I wanted to do, that the characters fit really well into. I had to connect them with a story, so I figured out a way of connecting them, and then I just started doing thumbnails. When you're doing the thumbnails, things just start happening, it just starts working. It's like a machine, you know? It's like, okay, this works, this is cool.

    'But before I even start the storyboard, I have, not an objective list, but it's more of a motivation list for the overall picture, and I go: 'Set-up, Motivation, Reaction, Conflict, Conclusion... 

    'What's the set-up?' And I write: Set-up: Dexter makes chocolate chip cookies that Dee wants. Conflict: Dee Dee grabs cookie, Dexter doesn't want her to eat it. Result: Dee Dee eats the cookie, she grows to be 100 feet tall. Conflict: Dee Dee goes to city and messes with it. Resolution: Dexter is happy that Dee Dee left the house so he can be alone. That's the first two minutes of the cartoon. That was an outline. And when I'm doing the storyboard, then I add all the gags, the acting, the lines of dialogue, and it works.'

    I could go on about each other creative element in Dexter's Laboratory, Paul Rudish's dramatic layouts, the little animation touches that only an artist who has creative control over his story could do, the music and sound effects, but I would be delaying the point I want to make.

    The great thing about this cartoon is not that each individual element is clever, pretty, well-written, it's that each creative element is used to tell the story. Nothing is arbitrary. We've all seen cartoons where we can say, 'Aren't these cute characters,' or 'That was a funny gag,' or 'Isn't the color nice?' or 'Look at the cool backgrounds.' This cartoon has a story that inherently invites the artists to create fun things to look at. But all the visuals, all the cinematic touches are placed in a firm framework and completely organized and controlled by a methodically-thinking mind.

    Genndy is not only an artist. He is a scientist. He isolates and defines problems, then systematically finds solutions and composes or choreographs his creative elements to achieve their maximum effect. He doesn't just take a bunch of ideas and throw them in the air, and where they fall, that's where they stay. Now all this may sound like high-falutin' double-talk, but to my mind, this combination of creativity and mechanical problem-solving ability is neither completely new nor too much to expect. It's what directors do. Tex Avery did it. Chuck Jones. Clampett. Hanna and Barbera. All these guys were more than just artists with wacky ideas. They had the ability to get their ideas across. Good live-action directors are problem solvers. Choreographers, symphony orchestra conductors. Different mediums. Similar minds.

    Betty Cohen states The Cartoon Network's and Hanna Barbera's basic philosophical and business goal, 'Using the short form as a means of creative exploration, an amazing array of both veteran and new directors will bring to life their very personal, very original vision. Real characters will be creating real, memorable characters.'

    Genndy Tartakovsky is evidence that this is possible when someone who has a vision is given the opportunity to try. Unfortunately, not all artists do have this potential. While some of the other cartoonists in the program show much promise, notably Pat Ventura, Dave Feiss and Eddie Fitzgerald, it seems that there may be some problem with the program's selection process.

    Some of the artists who premiered their shorts at the Academy didn't seem to take advantage of the once in a lifetime opportunity they've been awarded. In a program that declares itself a 'return to the Golden Age of Cartoons,' I was amazed to see many cartoons that looked like they were right out of the worst period of animation history: 1970s' Saturday Morning Cartoons.

    It was bizarre to see Ruby Spears' style characters doing Tex Avery takes. And these weren't just from the older directors. Guys in their twenties and thirties are making Saturday Morning cartoon-style shorts at higher budgets. It doesn't look like one mind is choosing the directors who will make the roster, which is too bad for the program.

    I hope the actual, promising directors get the chance to do a few shorts each. I hope they are allowed the luxury to make their mistakes and learn from them as Tex Avery and Walt Disney did. I hope that the directors are able to find artists to support them and not compete with them. Every artist in the animation business needs this program to succeed. If it works, there will be more cartoonist created cartoons. If it fails, we could all find ourselves back in the dark ages of animation, slaves to ignorant lords who have no love for the art, no respect for the talent they need so desperately to feed off of.

    In a day when huge corporations are in a gluttonous manner, battling over who gets to own the top artists; who gets to monopolize the control over our industry by anesthetizing our brains and creative drive with big bucks so we'll neglect to notice that we have no say in the content and future of our art; under the massive approaching black storm cloud of self-destruction, Fred and Betty's program is a small ray of hope. Is it possible to regain some pride and self respect in who we are and what we can do for the audience?

John K. is the president of Spumco. He is currently developing The Goddam George Liquor Program (working title).

The viewpoints expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the editor, staff or owner of Animation Magazine.