Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal | Adult Swim

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Now, that's the kind of good news I want to hear. With Raised By Wolves dropping this week as well as the first three episodes of The Boys Season 2 on top of the Umbrella Academy news this year is actually starting to look bright again in terms of tv show content.

There is so much to look forward to this fall and I'm completely ready for it.
 
KaijuDude1992 said:
Now, that's the kind of good news I want to hear. With Raised By Wolves dropping this week as well as the first three episodes of The Boys Season 2 on top of the Umbrella Academy news this year is actually starting to look bright again in terms of tv show content.

There is so much to look forward to this fall and I'm completely ready for it.
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Indeed!
 
Emmy Awards 2020 Juried Winners List: ‘Primal’, ‘Zoey’ Choreographer, ‘HitRecord’ – Deadline

Juried award for the 72nd Emmy Awards were revealed Tuesday, with honors in the categories of animation, choreography, interactive programming and motion design going to the likes of animator Genndy Tartakovsky for Primal, Mandy Moore for her choreography on NBC’s Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and the team from Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord.

The categories require all entrants to be screened by a panel of professionals in peer groups; unlike the typical Emmy categories, there are no nominees but instead a one-step evaluation and voting procedure.

The juried awards will be presented during the Creative Arts Awards ceremony on Thursday, September 17, which is streaming on Emmys.com. The Creative Arts will stream across five shows, consecutively September 14-17 online and September 19 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on FXX. Nicole Byer will host.

Tartakovsky picked up his fourth Emmy, Moore her third and HitRecord its second for this year’s wins. Here’s the full list of juried winners:

Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation

Archer • Road Trip • FX Networks • FX Productions
Jill Dykxhoorn, Lead Background Artist

Cosmos: Possible Worlds • Vavilov • National Geographic • Possible Worlds LLC in association with Fox
Dan MacKenzie, Character Animator

Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal • Spear and Fang • Adult Swim • Cartoon Network Studios
Genndy Tartakovsky, Storyboard Artist

Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal • Spear and Fang • Adult Swim • Cartoon Network Studios
Scott Wills, Art Director

Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal • A Cold Death • Adult Swim • Cartoon Network Studios
Stephen DeStefano, Character Designer
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Not frothing at the mouth for this, but those ceratopsians don't look too bad; might be my favorite creature design in this show so far. Interested in seeing where S2 goes after all this supernatural stuff that it looks like the show's doubling down on.
 
I'm excited for more episodes of this but I would love to see Genndy push himself a little a try doing a series with a female lead. I love Genndy and all his shows but it's an area he rarely pushes himself to and would love to see him push himself more.
 
Genndy Tartakovsky sets the stage for game-changing Primal stories, and explains a Samurai Jack surprise

SYFY WIRE recently caught up with Tartakovsky regarding the return of Primal and he shared that the Emmy wins were unexpected validation for what is an admittedly "out there" premise for an animated series. “It always feels good to get recognized for something that not only did we believe in, but we love and we put our everything in it. But even from the early days of Dexter's Laboratory through Samurai Jack and Sym-Bionic Titan, I never know what anybody's really going to think, or like,” he admits. “I always believe that if you do something sincerely and with quality, you'll get an audience. And Primal is exactly what I love and what I want to see.”

The series is also one-of-a-kind in the current animation landscape, with its hard-R depiction of violence, a traditional animation look, and an utter lack of dialogue in every episode. You’d be hard-pressed to find anything even slightly similar going back all the way to animator Ralph Bakshi’s work in the late '70s.

“There was no adult market,” Tartakovsky confirms. “And now the comedy/adult market is explosive, right? Probably one of the hottest things that everybody wants, where you even build a network around it. But we're still very much taking our baby steps right now.”

Luckily, Tartakovsky and company are doing it largely unimpeded, with Adult Swim so supportive of their output that the series has remained very much his pure vision. "It's pretty much myself, and then [executive producer and former EVP of Adult Swim Programming] Mike Lazzo, who kind of approves it, and that's about it. You know, I'm from 2D and my goal was to be an animator. And so, to do 2D animation of this quality and this subject matter for adults is an achievement and a dream come true, really.”

With production on Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal Season 2 currently happening, we got Tartakovsky to delve into the rest of Season 1, where he’s taking Season 2, and even explain how an alternative ending for Samurai Jack Season 5 ended up in the recently released Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time video game.
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You left audiences with a massive Primal cliffhanger. Was Season 1 constructed knowing there would be a long break?

We never planned for there to be a break in between episodes five and six. We thought it was going to be like a week break. But because the show takes a long time to produce, Adult Swim didn't want to wait until all the episodes were done. They wanted to show it last year, so we decided to split it at five. And then, the end of five was that cliffhanger. It just worked out naturally that way. But it wasn't the big plan to screw with the audience to that degree. [Laughs.]

The series literally pulls no punches when it comes to the depiction of brutal violence. But in a TV reality where The Walking Deadhas been pushing live-action horror boundaries for a decade, how does animation allow you to set your own benchmarks?

Actually, I'm not into gore, or horror, or grossness, or any of those things. And so for me, it was about the connection emotionally with these characters, right? If the violence raises the stakes of their relationship and frames it in a more intense way, that's why we would do it. Not because we're like, "Yeah, let's kill a bunch of people." It was always driven by story and by character relationships. And as we're storyboarding it, that's when it really comes out. And us staying focused on the goal, which is their relationship; building them up and breaking them down. How do we make the [audience] care without dialogue? How can we feel?

And that's the biggest difference of what I do now to what I used to do. I'm trying to get a feeling from you, and whether it's happy, sad, gross, or something else, it's get a response. Because the worst thing is when I watch TV and it's just dead. I don't feel anything.

You’re always working on multiple projects at one time, like developing theatrical films at Sony. But on Primal, you’re actually storyboarding some sequences of this show, like an old-school animator. What has it taught you as a storyteller, or reinstilled in you?

I've been trying to look at older films to see how they get away with something. In animation, we usually do grand gestures. It's funny because I know it's going to be weird to compare Primal to Chuck Jones or Bugs Bunny, but it very much has those sensibilities where a look, and the right drawing and the right expression, can go far. And then, I look at Sergio Leone, when he has a camera on a closeup of Clint Eastwood, you can sit there for 10, 15 seconds and just read into his soul and what he's dealing with. I really love the feeling of those movies, and that they really connect with me. And I love how much I get to read into it.

And so now, I ask can I do that in animation? Can I linger on an expression long enough to suck you in? That's the whole goal. I want to suck the audience into this further than I've ever done before. That was one of the big things. And the big shift for this show was with my timing. It's very purposeful and I want to open it up to let it breathe, to give room for the music to do its part, and the effects. All of it then sucks the audience in so you get lost in what you're watching, and you start to think what the characters are thinking. Live-action has the advantage that you can just point a camera at a good actor, and they'll take you through it. With animation, we have to draw that, and so you have to have patience. And I see the beginnings of me trying to do it in the early days of Samurai Jack. But now this is a completely different level.

One of the new episodes, “Plague of Madness,” deals with a plague that turns the most docile dinosaurs into putrid rage machines. It sure hits harder with COVID-19.

We obviously had no clue. And it’s not specifically this [pandemic] story, but certainly, it was very relatable. And yeah, it was just such a fun episode, and intense. When I was working on Clone Wars with George Lucas, one day we had lunch and he said, basically, "Look, all people want to see is a puppy thrown into traffic." And it was then I understood, "Oh right. A puppy is something iconic that everybody loves; cute and innocent. And you throw it into the most horrific situation that you can imagine, and that's familiar." And that's kind of what we were doing here. The [dinosaurs] are peaceful and nice. It has an innocent death. And that's why, at the very end, even though the creature was trying to kill Spear and Fang, they both understood that it was just a victim. It's not just a monster chase. There's a little bit more underneath it all.

Is there an episode in Season 1 that you particularly invested yourself in most?

There's an episode called the "Covenant of the Damned." It is the most complex story that we've told. The most emotional. It's the precursor to the next level of what we're doing going into more episodes. I can't wait for people to watch it, because it turned out really great. And it's shocking where it goes.

Going into Season 2, do you see Spear and Fang remaining your focus, or do you want to hand the baton off to new characters?

We're taking huge steps to get you invested with these characters. And at the end of the day, no matter how sexy we can make something look, if you don't like the characters it's going to be wasted. It's such a simple thing, but it takes you 25 years to realize that's what storytelling is about. It's about the characters. And so now, we've built them up for 10 episodes, and they're still the center of it, for sure.

But where it goes in the next 10 is completely crazy. It's pushing storytelling to a place I haven't done yet. And I'm trying new things, really challenging myself, and you guys, to see if you can stay on board and get through this next 10. It's going to be something. The first season is the groundwork of us figuring everything out and building this. And then the second season is like, "Oh shirt, this is getting crazy!”
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'Primal' Creator Genndy Tartakovsky on the Adult Swim Show & the Status of His Next Movies

Since the last time we talked, they have announced a second batch of episodes for next year. Have you been working on those? Were all 20 episodes being worked on at once? Or how did that sort of go about?

TARTAKOVSKY: Let’s see. They green-lit the real second season, the ones that are airing in October, that’s the second half of the first season, as we call it … They green-lit the second season months ago, so we’ve been working on it since last year.

There’s was no reason to talk about it so early on. I think I’m on the sixth and seventh storyboards out of the next 10. We’re starting to see animation on the first episode already. We’re well on our way.
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And how has it been working on these in quarantine?

TARTAKOVSKY: Strangely, it’s been fine. I’ve been actually working at home since October. So when the thing hit, it was just all of a sudden the kids are home and my son’s back from college, and everybody’s home. Otherwise, I have a comfortable home office. We had such a small crew on Primal anyways, that it was strangely almost normal just to do it from home. And then just the meetings, I didn’t have to go anywhere anymore. Meetings became just like this and I’ve been really productive, and I’m very motivated. Plus, it’s my own show and it’s something that I really love, so I haven’t had any really difficulties in that way.
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I’ve only watched sixth and seventh, yes.

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah. So where it goes from here is even further and further getting pushed and pushed and more complex stories. And then for the second season, it goes to a whole new stratosphere.


In what way?

TARTAKOVSKY: In a surprising way. And I don’t want to give anything away because it’s so early, but it’s the most excited I’ve been about the stories that we’re telling. And kind of one hit that it is… You know, in standard filmmaking or storytelling, there’s always the bad guy. And I think one of the exciting things that we hit upon with Primal is that, there kind of is no bad guy. Everybody is trying to survive in their own way.

I mean, the perfect example is the elephant episode, where it’s just the circle of life and somebody’s got to die for another person to live. And I love that the juxtaposition in that drama that creates, because you want to cheer for everybody, you want to cheer for the old mammoth, you want to cheer for Fang. And even though we have the evil monkeys, obviously those are pretty evil. But as we go further, if seemingly something is bad, we build a sincerity for it and an empathy for it. And I love that. I think the next evolution of Primal is leaning into that. You think something is bad, but then we have a different perspective on it. And all of a sudden it makes you care.
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The mammoth and sauropod ones are definitely the best in this regard. Not really sure if I felt quite that way about most of the other episodes we've seen so far, including this newest one that I just finished watching, "Scent of Prey". That said, it was still on the better side. I think Ep. 7 is the sauropod one so I'm not sure if they're gonna re-air that (I kinda don't feel like seeing it again) but I'm waiting see what further adventures they bring.
 
Melpardus said:
The mammoth and sauropod ones are definitely the best in this regard. Not really sure if I felt quite that way about most of the other episodes we've seen so far, including this newest one that I just finished watching, "Scent of Prey". That said, it was still on the better side. I think Ep. 7 is the sauropod one so I'm not sure if they're gonna re-air that (I kinda don't feel like seeing it again) but I'm waiting see what further adventures they bring.
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Yeah, next week is re-airing that episode.
 
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