A different type of family tree: Applying family history concepts to animation

"Modern Cartoon Family Tree 2.0" by AlexB9598w

This family tree is unlike any other tree I've seen before. I thought I'd do a fun one this week. It's not focused on a specific character or on the draw of family, the latter which I wrote about before. Instead, this shows the connection between people and their different shows. It all starts out with Donovan Cook and moves down from there. I think this tree is interesting in that it shows the connection between these shows. However it is also, you could say, limiting. I say that because it doesn't exactly focus on the interconnection between people. I know that, for instance, that Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey are married, but this chart only shows them as writers. Similarly, I know about the controversy which enveloped Twelve Forever, leading to the end of the show, and Shadi Petosky, a trans woman, becoming the executive producer of the show and having her own project on the way. Since I don't know most of these shows, I'm narrowing it down to the shows I do know and working back from there. Let's start with one of my favorite shows, Cleopatra in Space, and focusing on the executive producer of that show, Doug Langdale.

Reprinted from my Genealogy in Popular Culture WordPress blog. Originally published on August 28, 2020.

I then expanded this by looking at the companies behind each one of these productions, and it starts to look more like a bit of a tree, showing the parent companies and production companies. Keep in mind that Sony Pictures Television, as of 2002, owns both Columbia divisions, so the chart would look a little different now. Additionally, DreamWorks is now owned by Universal Pictures, a division of NBC Universal, which is, itself, owned by Comcast. So, the chart would look different today.

Now, I wanted to expand this a little more, so I originally wanted to look at all those who have been listed as being on the Cleopatra in Space crew (herein called Cleo Crew), apart from Doug Langdale. Since that was 40 people, I narrowed it down to storyboarders, which consisted of 18 people in total: Aaron Brewer,  Abigail Davies, Adam Temple, Andrew Marshel, Bob Suarez, Chris Ybarra, Derek Thompson, Eugene Huang, Gary Ye, Ingrid Kan, Kevin Slawinski, Laurianne Uy, Samantha Suyi Lee, Scooter Tidwell, Thalia Tomlinson, Topher Parnell, and Wei Li. From there, I broke it down by the overlapping shows that they had worked on. [1] I ended up narrowing it down mainly to DreamWorks shows, as you'll see in the chart below:

We learn a lot from this. For one, Chris Ybarra and Bob Suarez had worked together and/or on two of the same shows: Big Mouth and Turbo Fast. Additionally, Adam Temple and Wei Li had both worked on Carmen Sandiego, while Abigail "Abby" Davies and Laur Uy had worked on Spirit Riding Free. We also find that Bob Suarez and Laur Uy worked on the same show too. Even more fascinating is the fact that ALL of these productions were on Netflix and most, apart from Carmen Sandiego, were tied to DreamWorks. We can conclude that many of the storyboarders probably knew each other and/or had worked with one another in the past. If we combine this with the information about Doug Langdale I showed earlier, it would mean that Langdale worked on the same team as Bob Suarez and Laur Uy on The Adventures of Puss and Boots. These connections were likely part of the reason they were hired in the first place.

In sum, this is a unique family tree of sorts, which shows connections between those in the animation industry. You can see who the "parents" (like DreamWorks and Houghton Mifflin) are and who the "children" (like Bob Suarez and Laur Uy) are as well. This sort of analysis is much better than the "modern cartoon family tree" shown at the beginning of that post. That post almost treats the connections between individuals as static. I may do another one about LGBTQ animations or something else. We'll see what happens! As always, comments are welcome, as I'm deeply unsure about what I'll write about next.

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Notes

[1] I also found that Aaron Brewer and Eugene Huang storyboarded Little Big Awesome, which was produced by Amazon Studios and Titmouse, Inc., and that Aaron Brewer and Bob Suarez storyboarded Niko and the Sword of Light, produced by the same groups. Additionally, Frank Squillace directed Jackie Chan Adventures, while Scooter Tidwell was a storyboarder. At the same time, Bob Suarez, Frank Squillace, and Scooter Tidwell storyboarded The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Furthermore, Abigail Davies worked on Cartoon Network's Ben 10, with Scooter Tidwell as a sequence director. Finally, Frank Squillace directed Transformers: Rescue Bots while Thalia Tomlinson worked as an animator for the same show.