Biography
Genndy Tartakovsky was born January 17, 1970 in Moscow to Jewish parents. His father, Boris, worked as a dentist for government officials and a Russian hockey team. His mother, Miriam, was an assistant principal at a school. He also has a brother, Alexander, who is two years older and currently a computer consultant in Chicago. Before coming to the United States, his family first moved to Italy, where he lived next to a German family. There, Tartakovsky says he was first drawn to art, inspired by a neighbor's daughter. Tartakovsky later commented, "I remember, I was horrible at it. For the life of me, I couldn't draw a circle."
Tartakovsky's family moved to the United States when he was seven due to concerns about the effect of anti-Semitism on their children's lives. The family originally settled in Columbus, Ohio and later moved to Chicago. He was greatly influenced by the comics he found there; his first purchase was an issue of the Super Friends. Tartakovsky began attending Chicago's Eugene Field Elementary School in the third grade. School was hard for him because he felt that everyone recognized him as a foreigner. He went on to attend Chicago's prestigious Lane Technical College Prep High School, and says he never felt he fit in until he was a sophomore there. When he was 16, his father died of a heart attack. He felt that his father was very strict and was an old fashioned man, but Genndy's relationship with his father was very special to him. After the death of his father, Genndy and his family moved to government-funded housing, and he began working while still attending high school.
To satisfy his ambitious family, Tartakovsky tried to take an advertising class, because they were encouraging him to be a businessman. However, he signed up late and had little choice over his classes. He was assigned to take an animation class, and this led to his study of film at Columbia College Chicago before moving to Los Angeles to study animation at the California Institute of the Arts (with his friend Rob Renzetti) and there he also met Craig McCracken. At CalArts, Tartakovsky directed and animated two student films, one of which became the basis for Dexter's Laboratory. Reportedly, after two years at CalArts, Tartakovsky got a job in Spain on Batman: The Animated Series and The Critic. There, "he learned the trials of TV animation, labor intensive and cranking it out." While he was in Spain, his mother died of cancer.
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