Creative Influences

My creative influence

My favorite artist is Genndy Tartakovsky, most notably for his endeavors in the animation business. He is a Soviet born Jewish-American who earlier got into the career by scripting an animation, which laid basis for Dexter’s Laboratory. His most successful works are Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, all which are noticeably stylized 2D and relatively flat animations; however, this gives leeway to Tartakovsky’s amazing perspectives, movements, and superior linework. Most of his works are simplistic in terms of detail, which allows Mr. Tartakovsky to animate more fluidly. My artwork strikes a similar style, which is why I have much interest in Genndy. In some of his works, he gives the illusion of animating with doing less work, thanks to his blend of technical techniques and traditional animation techniques. He also keeps a great consistency in all of his art in episodic animations, which is impressive, since most cartoons tend to re-use loops and shorten episodes during the end of an episode or the end of a series. Genndy puts an equal amount of time and effort into his masterpieces.

One of his first notable pieces was an animated series called, “Two Stupid Dogs” which began in the early 90’s when he was still in college. This early example of his work demonstrated his storytelling abilities, which also served as an anchor for his more in-depth work.

            His best work, personally, is Samurai Jack. Samurai Jack is a lone samurai warrior who longs to return to his homeworld, banished by Aku while Aku torments his timeline. This serves as the basis of all of Samurai Jack; he gets close to a portal, and he fails. However, integrated with an amazing storyline, climatic battles, mid-violent realizations, eloquent vectorized artwork and backgrounds, and attaching characters, you begin to share the realities the main character, Jack, is going through. Overall, if you are into cartoons, Samurai Jack is possibly the greatest piece of artwork that Genndy has ever embarked on.

            Dexter’s Laboratory was an animation that spawned in the early 1990s. Genndy’s art style was more organic in this work, as he uses sharper outlining and more pointed bone structure. What I find compelling about this work is the comical relationship between two characters: Dexter, a boy genius, and Dee-Dee, his older-but-not-so-smart sister, who seems to destroy as much as Dexter creates. It is truly an original cartoon that  (I’m pretty sure) influenced other cartoons like Jimmy Neutron.

            Overall, Genndy Tartakovsky is my favorite artist mainly because of his resemblance in style to mine. His simple but effective storyline is what I want to achieve in my animations.