Originally published at: Animation Legend Genndy Tartakovsky has a new project | Boing Boing
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Odd how his Hotel Transylvania films weren’t mentioned. 
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They’re not great cinema, but he does stuff with. 3D CGI that no one else was really doing, approaching it like a 2D animator. It’s a shame his Popeye passion project never got off the ground.
I wouldn’t call him the “(Russian-)American Miyazaki” by a long shot, but he’s deffo one of the few folks in American commercial animation trying to do somewhat interesting things with the medium.
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“young ancient” ?
only saw the first one, but i thought it was different, beautifully animated and quite funny.
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He hasn’t really gotten to do his own animated feature of any kind. He’s kind of a hired gun on Hotel Transylvania, some one else created it and wrote all the entries. Designed the characters and aesthetic.
In his own stuff there’s definitely a Miyazaki-ish sort of feel. In the lush backgrounds, space he gives everything, the pacing. His love of a wide shot.
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To be fair, I didn’t mention Sym-Bionic Titan either.
And that’s not not because I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s not one of his “greatest hits” which is more along the lines of what I was aiming for this piece. I wanted to give a brief rundown of his hits to provide context to this new project.
If you wanna chop it up about his resume in the comments, I’m more than game. Its’s always cool to mest a fellow fan.
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I don’t read Miyazaki at all, in terms of aesthetics, approach, or concept. Tartakovsky is a formalist, and his stuff usually experiments (in interesting ways!) with superficial stylistic stuff, while sticking conceptually to pretty simple or stock genre narratives and ideas, often drawing from the popular culture he has a deep love for. He’s also more interested in how moving shapes can abstractly convey things from the (natural and manufactured) world than in carefully observing and recreating that world. His most personal project has been Samurai Jack, and that’s (for better and for worse) basically “style over substance: the animation.”
Miyazaki, on the other hand, is much more enamored with observing and representing the natural world, draws less from stock concepts and narratives of popular culture (which he seems pretty contemptuous of), and seems to give more attention to layered themes and emotions in his work. He’s not above spectacle, though, obviously.
I’d say Tartakovsky doesn’t come near the level of craft and consideration of Miyazaki, but also that he was never really given the chance to. And, that, honestly their work is so disparate that it’s probably not useful comparing them. Miyazaki is likewise no Yuri Norstein, but they operate in such different spheres and with such different aims, that it’s hard to compare them, too.
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This is great news! Tartakovsky gets better with each new project. Primal is now a top favorite of mine.
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I was kinda joking, as I agree it’s not his best work, though ironically it’s probably gotten the most publicity.
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