Life and Career
McCracken got involved in drawing at an early age. After he graduated from California High School in Whittier, he attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he honed his animation skills and met his classmate Genndy Tartakovsky, with whom he would occasionally collaborate throughout his career. During his freshman year, he created a series of short cartoons featuring a character named No Neck Joe, which were picked up by Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. While at CalArts, he also created a short entitled Whoopass Stew!, which would become the basis for The Powerpuff Girls. In 1993, McCracken was tapped by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons to work as art director on 2 Stupid Dogs, as well as Tartakovsky's Dexter's Laboratory, both of which aired primarily on Cartoon Network in the United States. He began producing The Powerpuff Girls, which premiered as a short in 1995 on studio president Fred Seibert's animation incubator What a Cartoon!, and full half-hour episodes in 1998. The show has won both Emmy and Annie awards. In 2004, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends began airing on Cartoon Network. This series also won Emmy and Annie awards. In April 2008, he became executive producer of a new Cartoon Network showcase project called Cartoonstitute. After 15 years of employment, he left his job at Cartoon Network when the network switched to reality programing, developed a live action/animation project at Sony Pictures Animation, and, as of 2012, is developing Wander Over Yonder for Disney Television Animation.
Read more about this topic: Craig McCracken
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)