The famed ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ and ‘Samurai Jack’ creator shares candid thoughts on the current animation industry slump, hope for indie animation projects, Season 3 of ‘Primal,’ and his R-rated ‘Fixed’ animated feature.
The animation industry has always seen its highs and lows regarding content creation but, according to Emmy and Annie Award-winning creator Genndy Tartakovsky, the current state of the business is “the darkest I’ve ever seen.”
“I've never seen the friends I've worked with in this business out of work, until now,” says Tartakovsky. “But, if I was a student coming up in the industry right now, I’d be making short film after short film. Ever since YouTube came on the scene, you can make your own show without any interference, get an audience and make money using free tools. And there are these stories of Amazon or Netflix buying those successful YouTube shows. Back in the day, when my friends and I were 24 and 25, none of us would have had our own show. It wasn’t even a dream.”
Tartakovsky – the creative mind behind Cartoon Network’s iconic Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, who has worked professionally in animation since the 90s - attended this year’s SCAD AnimationFest to teach a Master Class to the university’s current students and receive the Award of Excellence, honoring him for creative contributions to the animation and entertainment industries.
Alongside Tartakovsky, Adult Swim and Cartoon Network president Michael Ouweleen received SCAD’s Impact Award at the festival and had his own thoughts on the industry’s big slump.
“Cable was a great business model,” he noted during a panel discussion with other executives from DreamWorks and Awesome Inc. “You could count on it for three years at a time and plan content for three years ahead. That’s where you get great films like Samurai Jack. But then, Netflix came out and everyone lost their minds. They threw out the business model and now I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more solo creators for animation.”
In Tartakovsky’s opinion, the dip has less to do with streaming versus cable and is, in his words, “specific to some specific studios that have issues.” He adds, “It's a money business scenario.”
Whatever the case, both Ouweleen and Tartakovsky agree that independent creation is the future of animation. Adult Swim’s development program, Adult Swim SMALLS, launched in 2018, aims to discover new talent and creative ideas by working with up-and-coming animators on digital shorts that run on YouTube and sometimes on linear as part of the showcase.
“Adult Swim is built on independent films and filmmaking,” says Tartakovsky. “And they're extremely successful.”
Between 1996 and 2010, Tartakovsky created Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, developed and directed Star Wars: Clone Wars and co-created Sym-Bionic Titan. But in the last 10 years, Tartakovsky has had not one, not two, but four projects either canceled, not picked up, or shelved. Despite the immense success of his latest creations, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal and Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, Tartakovsky is cautiously navigating the streamer storms as a series of successful animated hits no longer guarantees trust from investors.
“It's very turbulent waters right now,” notes Tartakovsky, who is currently working on the 10-episode third season of Primal. “When Netflix first started, it was a Gold Rush. I've never seen everybody have so much work and have their own shows as much as at that time. I couldn't even find people to work on my own shows because everyone was so busy. Now, there's been a big correction that swung way too far outside and now, all of a sudden, everybody's afraid to do stuff. It’s bad. So many people are out of work. There was COVID, and the writers’ strike as well. There was a lot that contributed. Now they’re trying to find a new balance between streaming and linear and all that kind of stuff.”
But the hopeful spirit of that young boy, who grew up in Moscow, Russia (in the former Soviet Union), moved to the U.S. and decided to become an animator after seeing Wolfgang Reitherman’s The Jungle Book in theaters, is still alive and well in Tartakovsky. After a presentation encompassing the highs and lows of his career following the award ceremony, Tartakovsky enthusiastically shared never-before-seen clips and artwork for his projects Black Night, a samurai-inspired 3DCG adventure, and Fixed, an R-rated animated comedy about a dog’s final days of fertility. In August 2024, Warner Bros. and New Line dropped out of the Fixed film as part of cost-saving measures by Warner Bros. Discovery.
“It's not written off,” says Tartakovsky. “It’s just a stray dog trying to find its home. And it's taking longer because the distribution world is made up of live-action people. And, for live-action people, animation is usually something like Pixar or Disney, a CG film geared toward families. All of a sudden, here comes this low-budget, 2D animated, raunchy, R-rated animation. And they go, ‘What do we do with this?’ When something doesn't have a box to get put into, that's where we get in trouble.”
The slogan from all the speakers at this year’s SCAD AnimationFest was “Stay curious and stay passionate.” And it’s a sentiment Tartakovsky shares and encourages all animation students, like those at SCAD, to take to heart and remember that, sometimes, out of the toughest situations are born the toughest animators.
And that’s coming from someone who entered California Institute of the Arts with very little artistic experience with his tuition paid on a hope and a prayer. Then, his student film about a science geek became one of Cartoon Network's most successful original series and helped launch the careers of animators Craig McCracken (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends), Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy), Butch Hartman (The Fairly OddParents) and Rob Renzetti (My Life as a Teenage Robot).
“One of the fondest memories I have from my career is when we were all young and making Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls,” says Tartakovsky. “There was no pressure. We were all young, no one was married or had kids and there were no responsibilities outside of having fun making these series. We didn’t have to go home so we worked until 10 or 11 o’clock, goofing around and being creative. That was the early days of Cartoon Network, the golden days. We were doing things differently and doing them our own way. No matter what’s going on in the world, that’s how the best stuff gets made, with honesty and sincerity.”
Speaking about the upcoming season of Primal, Tartakovsky couldn’t share much except one sentence: “I just finished the last storyboard and it's going to blow people's socks off.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
