There's a lot of comic book inspiration and stuff I do that people probably won't recognize. I grew up in the '70s, so there's a lot of little things, like 'Three's Company' and 'Gilligan's Island.' Those shows were the foundation of my comedy in a way.
— Genndy Tartakovsky
The funny thing is, I was not a fan of horror when I was a kid. I was scared to watch scary movies. And then along came 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,' and 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.' And I like those films because they made scary funny, and it was kind of ironic that I ended up doing the 'Hotel' movies.
I try not to be in my head too much, I just try to do what feels right.
TV is great, and I love it, but to watch somebody's hand-crafted drawings on the big screen is an experience that we've forgotten as an audience, how much fun 2D can be.
'Samurai' is not an animated show like you would normally watch on TV. We tell the stories from a different perspective - backward, very nonlinear. It treats it more seriously as an art form.
If you have a character who wins all the time - well, if you have a character that loses and wins, it makes him more alive. Bugs Bunny, for example, didn't always win.
I've done a lot of dance sequences because I like them; I like to animate dancing because it's fun and visual.
Humor is the hardest thing to do. Action is so much easier, because you're just trying to establish the mood, and a pacing, and a rhythm, and an energy. Where, in humor, comedy is so subjective.
I read comics because of the art.
The computer tends to equalize everything, all the movies are slowly blending together, the way they look.
I love to have contrast.
I love the way the long scenes feel - one of the characteristics of '70s filmmaking is that you don't cut around a lot; you let things play out. I did that on 'Samurai Jack,' and it carried over into 'Clone Wars.'
Everything that I've ever made in my life is from my instinct.
There was a show I loved as a kid: 'The Blue Falcon & Dynomutt.'
The magic of 'Jack' is that it's unique, there's not a lot of stuff like it.
I don't like darkness in everything. I like my superheroes in primary colors, and fun.
Boarding for me, like in the days of 'Dexter,' was really hard, because I couldn't draw as well, and I had people around me who drew really well, so it was hard.
My goal is to always try to make you feel something, whether that's humor or sadness or excitement, and to try to manipulate screen space.
For me, I'm not a great wordsmith, and so maybe from lack of great dialogue writing, I thought it's easier and better to express a story through visuals.
I'm super comfortable with TV, especially in my situation where I pretty much have 100% freedom. That's the ideal, and I've been fortunate in TV to have pretty much everything I've done be at least somewhat successful.
For me, I rarely go and see 3D movies because I feel like, when you're wearing glasses, you're aware that you're in the theatre. And the whole thing for me with the movie experience is to be lost in the movie.
A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff - like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war - and then the overall character appeal.
I was really fortunate in my career where I always had executives who were very like-minded.
The whole style of 'Hotel Transylvania' isn't really goofy. Their castle, it's not super tall; it's almost normal sized.
The last thing you want to do is blend in. You want to stand out, and hopefully in a good way.
I'm not sure comics sustain mortgage, and the house, and three kids.
I really loved that old UPA stuff, like 'Gerald McBoing-Boing' and 'Mr. Magoo.' They were simple yet effective 'toons that talked to everyone, not just kids.
I've always felt that kids are a lot smarter than we've given them credit for, but we've never given them a chance to figure things out as they're watching television.
Akira Kurosawa, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock were the main inspirations for 'Samurai Jack,' along with a lot of '70s cinema.
I watching this Disney documentary, and I'm not Disney, but I was thinking about Mickey Mouse and he became an icon. Walt moved onto other things but he made him exist. I was thinking, 'Wow, is 'Samurai Jack' my 'Mickey Mouse?' Am I stupid to stop working on it?'
I think the fate of 'Star Wars' is everlasting, which is great.
I love 'Jack' as one of my creations and would never want to change it from what it was supposed to be. There was no reason to reinvent.
Jack' came from... I had the same dream since I was 10, about the world being destroyed and run by mutants. I'd find a samurai sword, pick up the girl I had a crush on, and we'd go through the land, surviving. That was the initial spark to 'Samurai Jack.'
I always felt like as the director, I gotta be the best at everything.
Through the years, I've developed a style or a language that I like, even when it applies to action. All my action principles are very similar to my cartoony principles, because all the poses want to be really strong.
Well I grew up following most of the major titles like 'Fantastic Four,' 'Spider-Man,' 'Avengers,' etc. But I had also a lot of love for the smaller titles like 'Master of Kung Fu,' 'Black Panther,' 'The Defenders,' 'Inhumans,' and of course Power-Man and Iron Fist.'
I feel like animation's stagnant. There's not much that's trying to push the artform, and so, for me, I'm way too critical about it.
For me, CG tends to feel watered down and it becomes cold because it's so perfect.
Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else.
Jim Gaffigan is someone I've always been a fan of.
And there is no finer moment, when I sit in a screening, and the parents and the kids are all laughing at the same gag.
Besides kind of like the Wes Anderson, or, of course, a lot of the European movies, most everybody in the States, the big studios, make pretty much the same film. And we're kind of held to Pixar standards, or Disney standards, as it's kind of always been in the animation industry.
There's nothing like watching hand-drawn animation on the big screen.
I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have something that is your own idea get produced and then become successful.
There are so many sitcoms, especially in animation, that we've almost forgotten what animation was about - movement and visuals.
You can't have a beauty scene for beauty's sake.
To me, the best of 'Jack' is when we have a very good, but small idea, executed to the nines.
With features, you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on production and marketing, so everybody's panicked because you literally have an opening weekend to succeed.
I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s, loving comic books, and they were much cartoonier. And then everything became super dark and muscular and airbrushed, and I stopped collecting comics.
I used to work until two in the morning every night, then still get up at six. Now, I have to help my daughter with her homework, spend time with my wife.
