Butch Hartman

"“Timmy’s a ten year old all-American boy who just so happens to wear a pink baseball cap. He’s the star of our show. The nucleus. The center. Without him, the Godparents wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t have any fun now, would we?”"

"“When you have a character like Superman -a guy that can do anything- you have to give him some sort of limitation. That’s the only way to make the stories interesting. That’s where Kryptonite comes in. And Superman’s been around for sixty years. Cosmo and Wanda have Da Rules. Da Rules is a book of rules that the Godparents have to follow. It’s their how-to manual and part of the whole Godparent package. It’s a text that dictates their every move and severely limits them in the way that Kryptonite limits Superman.”"

"“Drawing is telling a story with pictures. Writing is telling a story with words.”"

"“I don’t care how talented you are: be nice to the people you work with. The person you’re rude to today could be your boss tomorrow”."

"“My real name is Elmer. I looked it up. It’s a German name. It means “please make fun of me my entire life.”"

"“My mother Carol, really nice lady, lived in Las Vegas, my mom worked at a hotel called the Rio. Was a big casino where, it was a big fancy hotel. Really nice. And, after you lost all of your money there, you could just feel nice about being in a nice hotel. But then you would get kicked out of the hotel because you didn’t have any money. And she was tired of living in Las Vegas. She wanted to come live with me and I live in California with my wife and two daughters. So, I flew up to Las Vegas, you know with a cape and boots, and I landed next to her house. So we packed up all of her stuff in a moving van and proceeded to drive back from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Now, the drive is about four hours. If you’re in a moving van, it’s about eight hours. We’re, you know, talking and stuff. We pass the world’s biggest thermometer … we’re driving along and I knew that Nickelodeon was looking for a boys’ action show because that was, kind of, the talk around the studio at the time … and I thought “what would I do?” What would I call it? And I really realized that if I could call it something cool and have a great title that would be step one. ‘Cause I used to watch a show called Johnny Quest and I thought if I could come up with a show name that was just as cool as Johnny Quest, that’s half the battle. So I’m trying to think of really cool words that can be in the name like, you know, power or thunder or lightning or McDonalds… I finally settled on the word phantom. And I thought ‘phantom’, that’s a cool name… And I needed a first name. I thought, okay, Billy Phantom, Jimmy Phantom, by the time I was driving into Los Angeles, I had come upon the name Danny Phantom. And, then I started thinking ‘what could the show Danny Phantom be about?’. … It could be a show about a kid who does something with ghosts. Maybe, he catches ghosts, right? So I thought, like a Ghostbusters type of show first. I originally thought like a Scooby Doo-ish type of show. Danny Phantom and the Spector Detectors. Him and his friends would go around and look up ghost mysteries and they would catch ghosts and things like that. None of them were superpowered. And I thought no. That has been done, obviously with Scooby Doo. I really wanted to give Danny a white owl named Spooky … and when I was developing the owl, the movie Harry Potter was coming out. And there was an owl in the movie and everyone said no, you can’t do the owl because Harry Potter has an owl … I really wanted to make Danny Phantom kind of a comic book character because I love superheroes … and so I decided to give Danny ghost powers… he could walk through walls, disappear and fly. He was much more unique than the other guys… and one day, I finally drew this drawing. I was gonna colour his hair in last and I coloured his whole outfit black, white boots, white gloves, and I got to the hair and I left the hair white. And I thought, that’s really cool. His hair can be white when he turns into a ghost. And that was the look for me … and finally when the head of Nickelodeon took me out to dinner, the following year, and was gonna pick up more Fairly OddParents, he said ‘hey, do you have anything else?’… and I said to him ‘well, I’ve got this show called Danny Phantom. It’s about a kid with ghost powers. And the first thing he said to me was,’can you have it done by March?’ And I thought ‘wow, that’s exciting. He was ready to give me a brand new show right there and I was ready with a show idea.”"

"“Whenever you put yourself out there to do anything, there’s always someone who’s going to, like, try and bring you down ‘cause they’ve never done anything on their own. And so if someone doesn’t do anything and they want to like, you know, criticize, I have no time for them.”"

"If you guys can't do it yourselves, you shouldn't criticise anybody else. You shouldn't do it. Now another cartoonist wants to have a problem with me, that's a different story."

"“People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re a cartoonist. I thought computers did all that now. I say ‘right, like we just press a button and Pinocchio happens.”"

"March 30, 2016 was the 15th birthday of Butch Hartman’s The Fairly OddParents. It’s not like I use the term “cartoon superstar” lightly. Let that sink in for a minute. Friends was 10 seasons, Mad Men was seven, The Sopranos was seven too. FOP is right up there with The Simpsons, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, and Spongebob Squarepants. An amazing, uncommon, accomplishment."

"Fred Seibert, May 15th 2016, 7 Questions for Butch Hartman Cartoon Superstar. https://medium.com/@fredseibert/7-questions-for-butch-hartman-cartoon-superstar-9a77815094cc"

"But, not so astonishing if you’ve ever met Señor Hartman. A man of deep faith, he’s an artist and writer (and director and producer), talented, confident, funny, motivated, Butch might be one of the hardest working men in show business."

"One of the traits I’ve most admired in Butch is his ability to keep learning, and as he says in the interview, to never give up. It’s something I stress to many of the young folk who come by, but rarely heeded. Keep learning, never give up. Butch Hartman, in a nutshell."

"TV fans will, more often than not, pay close attention to cancellations and renewals happening with long-lasting broadcast series or hugely popular cable shows, not giving much consideration for how that process works for more niche fare, such as animated programming. I recently spoke with The Fairly OddParents creator Butch Hartman at Comic-Con, and he floored me by saying just how many times the beloved series had been cancelled by Nickelodeon over the years."

"Thankfully, Nickelodeon's sporadic decisions don't seem to have Hartman pessimistic about The Fairly OddParents' future on the network."

""Dear Butch Hartman,"

"Justin Cummings, An Open Thank You to Butch Hartman, February 8th, 2018. https://www.overlyanimated.com/2018/02/08/an-open-thank-you-to-butch-hartman/"

"Hartman's cartoons are instantly recognizable: visually, his character designs tend to be angular and have thick outlines. Most notable is that his are the few characters in TV animation to have colored eyes rather than black circles. Writing wise, expect the characters to be so self-aware that you might be asking them if they are holding up the fourth wall, as well as including a healthy dose of pop culture references, both modern and not so modern."

"Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hartman is admittedly one of the few who isn't at all interested in creating cartoons for adults, and has often expressed his disappointment in other animators for implying that there is anything wrong with cartoons that are exclusively for children. He even has a pet project Noog Network, an app which hosted exclusively "kid safe" shows. Regardless of one's agreement with him, it is clear that the career path he has chosen suits him."