Craig McCracken
Craig McCracken
Craig McCrackenis an American animator, director and producer. He is best known for creating the Emmy-winning animated series The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends for Cartoon Network, as well as writing and storyboarding for Oscar's Oasis and Dexter's Laboratory in Kids' WB. His newest series, Wander Over Yonder, premiered on Disney Channel on August 16, 2013. He has been married to fellow animator Lauren Faust since 2004...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAnimator
Date of Birth31 March 1971
CityCharleroi, PA
CountryUnited States of America
The shows are either 11 or 22 minutes and they move pretty quickly, and that's part of the charm of them - so it was just trying to keep that in mind and keep the energy of the story moving, even though we were dealing with a longer format.
So what I do is supervise the boarding process trying to get the shows the way I'd like them to be. And in some cases I've completely redone a board myself even though I'm not credited for it.
Theres a lot you can do without words.
Im always thinking about what I might want to do next, but theres still things I want to do with Powerpuff - so I can keep going with this one for awhile.
First, there was 2 Stupid Dogs. Then, Dexters Laboratory. And now, Powerpuff Girls. There were a lot of little things in between, but those were the main ones.
I'm a geeky toy collector, and to have toys of your own characters is unbelievably cool.
Well, for one thing, the executives in charge at Cartoon Network are cartoon fans. I mean, these are people who grew up loving animation and loving cartoons, and the only difference between them and me is they don't know how to draw.
Basicly what I had to do was do a 7 minute board and pitch it to a room of big wigs from the network and based on that they determined if I would get a short or not.
Anything you see on the screen was at one point approved by me.
Basicly I'm in charge of all creative aspects of the show.
But to me what seems to be missing in a lot of portfolios is Cartooning.
I started working at Hanna-Barbera in '92 on 2 Stupid Dogs.
I've been drawing since I was about 3 and I come from a family of artists.
For a long time I wanted to be a comic strip artist but when I started doing them in my teens they were getting really elaborate with tons of poses and a lot of information.