Genndy Tartakovsky (born January 17 1970) is a leading modern animator. Born in Russia, he moved to the United States when he was seven.

Tartakovsky studied film at both Chicago's Columbia College and at the California Institute of the Arts. His work is influenced heavily by American comic books, anime, and pop culture.

Tartakovsky has mastered the art of timing. His work often shows a very careful, deliberate pace that one would expect from Sergio Leone. Tartakovsky uses this timing with great skill to build extreme tension, drawing the viewer into the world he has created.

His sense of timing allows him to use a good number of still shots, a form of limited animation. This allows Tartakovsky the freedom to spend more money on his action sequences, imbuing them with more life and vitality than the typical television animation budget would otherwise allow.

Tartakovsky is most well known for creating, writing, and directing the animated series Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack. Dexter's Lab 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: The Movie.

He also directed a successful miniseries set in the Star Wars universe depicting the Clone Wars. This series was a change of pace for Tartakovsky. Instead of the usual ten or twenty minutes that Tartakovsky usually had for an episode of Dexter's Lab or Samurai Jack, the Clone Wars episodes are only three minutes long. Tartakovsky's usual slow, deliberate pace was sped up, with action sequences being much closer together. Tartakovsky rose to the occasion, and Clone Wars is filled with tension and high energy action sequences.

His early animation career consisted of in-betweening for various animated television shows, such as Batman: The Animated Series and The Critic. He later got work drawing storyboards for Hanna-Barbera's 2 Stupid Dogs.

External link

• Just What Made Him The Cartoon Genius He Is Today by Paul Senior
• Biography at StarWars.com