We just started throwing around ideas and yeah, I think that was literally 20 years ago.” The next morning, he just showed me this sketchbook full of images he drew and told me about this rough idea he had about warriors who are repeatedly reincarnated throughout time. We were sitting in his office and he was just doodling this early version of Copernicus, just something he had in his head when he went home that night. “We both thought there was something amazing about that Victorian style world. “He had just shown me Howl’s Moving Castle, which had just come out, and he loves Castle in the Sky,” Bachman told Polygon. The experience of working on that film fed directly into Tartakovsky’s thought process on Unicorn: Warriors Eternal.ĭarrick Bachman, the head writer for Unicorn: Warriors Eternal and a long-time collaborator of Tartakovsky’s, has his own recollections as to when the series was first conceived. I wanted to do something more volumetric.” Around the same time, Tartakovsky was tapped to write and direct an unproduced animated feature based on Astro Boy, Osamu Tezuka’s iconic sci-fi boy robot. I wanted to break away from the graphic look that very flat, stylized aesthetic of Dexter, PowerPuff Girls, and Samurai Jack. “I was thinking about what’s next for me. “It started around the end of Jack and Clone Wars,” Tartakovsky says. The production of Unicorn: Warriors Eternal dates back as early as Tartakovsky’s time working on Samurai Jack at Cartoon Network Studios, over 20 years ago. Image: Cartoon Network Studios/Williams Street “It took awhile, but by the time we got here and somebody finally bought it, I felt like Oh, now it’s fate it’s destiny because I never gave up on it.” “With every project I’ve learned more and with every project I hope I’m getting better at telling stories,” Tartakovsky says. While Tartakovsky has established a reputation for creating animation that’s as conceptually ambitious as it is visually idiosyncratic, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal represents a new challenge for the veteran director through its emphasis on emotional storytelling. “It’s everything that I’ve kind of trained for throughout the years, doing all these different shows, culminating into this one thing.” “For me, it’s a new type of storytelling,” Tartakovsky told Polygon over Zoom. Even Tartakovsky feels like it’s a small miracle it’s finally here. In an era defined by sequels and reboots, spin-offs and reimaginings, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal is that all too precious rarity: a genuinely original animated series with no ties to any existing franchise, a passion project conceived by one of the most preeminent creators working in American animation today. Watching Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, the latest creation from acclaimed animator-director Genndy Tartakovsky ( Samurai Jack, Primal), in the media landscape of 2023 feels about as miraculous as seeing an actual unicorn grazing in a parking lot.
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