The 90s and early 00s were a new golden era for TV animationA time when exhibitions could not come from managers and boardrooms, but from people with a unique creative vision. Nickelodeon exploded to the stage with “Doug”, “Rugrats” and “The Ren & Stimpy Show” before Cartoon network Answered a few years later with their first original cartoons that started with “Dexter’s Laboratory.”
That show helped establish Cartoon Network as an incubator for talent and ideas, an incubator that would later become a studio when Cartoon Network Studios was founded correctly as a separate unit from Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. Animation 25 years ago. Continuing the spirit of experiments and creatively driven projects from the early days of the network was the studio’s first show unlike something else at that time, a genre -bending action show with little dialogue, born of complaints from its creator, Genny Tartakovsky.
“I had complained about action shows since I was a kid,” Tartakovsky told IndieWire during a sincere discussion with other Cartoon Network -Creator Craig McCracken (“The Powerpuff Girls”), Rebecca Sugar (“Steven Universe”), Pendleton (“Adventure (” Adventure (“Adventure (” Adventure (“Adventu Fion “and Cake”) and JG -QUINT (“Regular Show”. “Both anime show and even American show would have 20 minutes of talk and then two minutes with good action. They didn’t give me enough, I wanted more. And I wanted a break from the dialogue to ‘Dexter’ and ‘Powerpuff’, so the driving factor was that I wanted to have that I wanted to have that I wanted to have something that I wanted to have something.
“It was just the breath in Cartoon Network,” McCraken added. “I asked what I wanted to do next after” powerpuff “, and that could be what I wanted. I just came up with what would be fun and different than I had done before.”
The early days of Cartoon Network, back when the studio was just a division of Hanna-Barbera, was a blessing for the animation media. “Dexter’s Laboratory” started the careers for several animators who would continue to find success in their own shows, such as “fairly Oddparents” creator Butch Hartman and “Family Guy” creator Seth Macfarlane. For those who stayed in the studio, it created even more opportunities. “The more cartoons made, the more cartoons,” McCracken said enthusiastically for smiles across the room. “If someone else sells a show that works, Cartoon Network will want to do more shows with us.”
“I was more competitive. It is difficult because we all cared for and we all got better together, and if everyone starts going elsewhere to become directors, you have to replace them and replenish your crew, which becomes more difficult. Then you become selfish, and you start to go ‘no! Everyone stays down.” Tartakovsky told big laughs from the other animators.
Sure, the fast and early success for Cartoon Network was not without problems. People would start working on the network, change how they drew, then take the new art style and sell a show elsewhere with the CN style. “It happened and that I didn’t like,” McCracken said. Even Cartoon Network, even though he had no house style during the first few days, began show that would see for as exhibitions as they had done before, almost establish a formula.
In 2008, despite its origin, Cartoon Network, despite its origin in embracing strangeness, had changed strategies and decided to stay away from everything strange, such as “Flapjack” creator Thurop van Orman reminded Buzzfeed Already in 2014. Fewer shows became greenlit, and fewer still made an impact. For Craig McCracken, who had found great success and not only helped to establish cartoon networks as a house for originality, but was extremely influential during the very early days of establishing the studio itself (down to choosing the studio’s headquarters with Tartakovsky), worked in the cartoon network development. ”
“Nothing was done and everything was over -analyzed and talked about at meetings,” McCracken said. “I could only see this crazy talent in the studio that they didn’t let anything. They didn’t get a chance, and it was a big wall that they had to fight through. I wanted Catron Network to continue, and I hated to look at them. I felt they destroyed this thing that I helped build.”
At the end of the 2000s, McCracken began working with the Cartoon Institute, essentially a spiritual successor to “What a cartoon!” Shorts programs that gave birth to “Dexter’s Laboratory” a decade earlier. Through that project, McCracken pushed for new, younger votes to host original shows, including a young JG Quintel, who eventually got “regular show” Greenlit.
“It was a completely different show than was on cartoon networks at that time,” Quintel recalled. “My storyboards were more talkative and I can draw like Disney, but they made people laugh.”
It was a transitional period for Cartoon Network, a time with a lot of pressure on the creators to do hits and nothing else. Pendleton Ward and Adam Muto reminded how torture the first few days of doing “adventure time” was, despite how big the show was. Take the show’s attitude to world -building and serialization, which happened at a time when Serialization in cartoons began to be embraced, but encouraged. For the “Adventure Time” team, the Serialization did not come as a creative choice from the beginning, but as a response to relentless studio notes to have a “lesson of the day” in each section. “We knew we couldn’t have Finn to not remember what he learned the previous section,” Muto said. Although there was a lot of review in the beginning, Ward added that the network was ambivalent to the show. “But after six or seven seasons, we started circling back to some of the previous ideas we had.”
“It makes you crazy that you have to be terrorized for two seasons until they are finally successful, and then they start letting go,” added Tartakovsky. It shouldn’t be so. When you arrived, everyone knew what they were doing, so it was less boldness and the changed dynamics. I wanted to be a bodyguard and fight for you, but I was also beaten. ”
Nevertheless, the new generation gave back a sense of boldness, creativity to cartoon networks reminiscent of the earliest days, from the serialization of “adventure time”, the wild visuals in “regular show” and the representation in “Steven Universe.” One thing that makes Cartoon Network Studios special is how much of a sense of inheritance or progression there is in the history of the studio. You can track a line from “Dexter” that goes all the way to “Steven Universe” and then. Not only in the case of the old guard who affected the new, but how much overlap was in animators – “Flapjack” creator Thurop van Orman got his start as trainee at Tartakovsky’s “Powerpuff Girls” before creating his show, where both ward worked before he continued to create “adventure, then “Steven.”
The cartoon was based on what came earlier and used part of the series of “adventure time” and explicitly did the queerness that “adventure time” had to do implicitly. “I had started beating Bubblegum and Marceline before I realized that there were these walls and roofs on how much we could actually show,” Sugar explained. “At my next thing, I could build on it a little at a time and press what I knew was possible to get it for the next thing.”
These are dark times for Cartoon Network, from the continuous attacks on animation over Warner Bros. Discovery to the suspension of Cartoon Network Studios Burbank Building last year. Still, if there was a clear takeaway from both the 25th anniversary panel and the conversation with the creators is that new people with bold ideas will always happen; It is up to the responsible people to give them a chance and let them do their thing.
“The more successful you become, the bigger you become and you start to get a formula,” Tartakovsky said. “But the key is to just leave them in peace, leave the creators to do their things. If it works, well. If it doesn’t, good. The secret of filmmaking is no one knows.”
