Upon arrival in Hollywood, things turned bad almost immediately.  The car that Segal and Tucker were driving was burglarized and ransacked leaving the pair no materials with which to find  jobs in mainstream animation.  Tucker ordered new prints of his student films and hastily started drawing to rebuild his portfolio.  His luck changed when the town's biggest animation employer, Filmation Studios offered to test him for the position of assistant animator.  He passed and started working on some of the worst shows ever animated.  He Man and She Ra were the studio's staples and Tucker drew enough scantily clad heroes and heroines to last several lifetimes.  The silver lining in this schlocky cloud was that animation was about to experience a renaissance, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Filmation went under in 1988 at about the same time that Disney Features started aggressively making new movies.  The little Mermaid was a perfect place to jump ship for, and Tucker found himself employed as an assistant animator in the studio of his dreams.  The only problem was that the studio was top heavy with talent.  People like Andreas Deja and Glen Keane were animators getting million dollar salaries, but weren't going anywhere, leaving Tucker little room to grow.

In comes The Simpsons.  Once again Tucker would hopscotch  to another production.  It was there, working for his friend, director Mark Kirkland, that Tucker learned most of his craft as an animation  artist.  The job meant drawing all of the character acting for the shows numerous personalities.  The only problem was that animators had very little to say about the content of the script driven show.  With this in mind, Tucker jumped ship again.

Ren and Stimpy was gaining fame in the animation world at this time.  The show's enigmatic and often explosive tempered creator was John Kricfalusi.  John was puttting together a team that would decide their own ideas from top to bottom without being a slave to scripts.  It was like working in a 60's style commune.  People openly smoked and drank at their desks, and did a lot of other stuff we shouldn't go into.  We made great cartoons, but the show's freakish stile and even freakier employees made Nickelodeon Animation a very nervous.  On top of that, we were habitually late delivering shows.  It was a hard job and people were brutally honest with their criticisms of each others' work.  This meant that we created some very powerful stuff.  Unfortunately, it came at too high of a price for Nickelodeon.  Ren and Stimpy was scuttled, leaving the artists scrambling for work.  Luckily, Nickelodeon would be also the savior of some of these people.

Around 1995, Tucker was contacted by an aquaintance, Craig Bartlett.  Craig was working on a pilot for Nickelodeon called Hey Arnold.  He needed a director and Tucker jumped at the chance.  Upon completion of the  pilot, the studio ordered a season's worth of episodes.  Tucker would first direct on these episodes, and then later serve as the show's supervising director, and ultimately go on to direct the feature film. Hey Arnold, The Movie.

While at Nickelodeon, Tucker would also work on AHH! Real Monsters and the Rugrats series.  Later around 2001, he served as creative consultant for the Jimmy Neutron Show until being tapped to do animation for the SpongeBob Movie.  From there he directed another animated movie for Cartoon Network, a western themed film called Partywagon.  Then he directed two more pilots, one for Cartoon Network and one for Nickelodeon Studios.  Soon after this, around 2005, he landed a job as staff writer on the SpongeBob Squarepants series where he now serves as Supervising Storyboard Director.  It's been here that he has been happiest, working with top writing and drawing  professionals who really know their craft.  The artists are not bound by scripts and are encouraged to think on their feet, which is the best possible environment for creating funny cartoons. back to CINEviews page

Recently, Jennifer Gauthier, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Randolph College interviewed the 2009 Cineviews special guest, Tuck Tucker, supervising storyboard director for SpongeBob Square Pants.

JG: What are some of your favorite cartoons? What did you grow up watching?
TT: I loved old MGM, Warner Brothers, and Disney Cartoons as a child.  Sometimes, my dad would actually sit down and watch a couple with us on Saturday mornings.  I think, however, the first character that I tried to draw was AstroBoy. Later I started getting more into Disney features.  I loved the craft that they showed.  When Don Bluth came along with The Secret of NIMH (1982), I had just finished high school.  I thought, now there’s somebody I could work for.  That was not to be, and I was later glad.  When I moved to LA in ‘84, I started transitioning away from my interest in features and started to work in television.  It was far more vibrant and clever than any features being done at the time.  The Simpsons and Ren and Stimpy were showing the world what animation could do for entertainment, and the talent started migrating towards these shows.  In the last ten years or so, I’ve become a fan of Miyazaki’s feature films.  I loved every one of them that I’ve seen

JG: What training did you have for getting into the animation field? How did you get started in the business?
TT: I was taking classes at VCU in the early 80s with two guys who had a studio in Richmond.  They had a small studio called Candy Apple, and I worked there in the summer between semesters.  The head of the studio was Steve Segal.  As it just so happened, he decided to go to LA when I graduated and went with him.  In spite of having my student films and portfolio stolen from our car the day we arrived in Hollywood, we were both able to get work easily.  He eventually ended up at Pixar before going back to teaching.

JG: What was your first big break?
TT: There were a lot of first big breaks.  I think the very first one was working for Segal, before I ever went to LA.

JG: SpongeBob is reminiscent of the the Looney Tunes cartoons – why is this do you think?  How is the animation process for SpongeBob different from other contemporary animated television shows?
TT: It’s true we do owe a lot to what was being done in the 30s and 40s, namely that content is decided by people who draw, not by writers in the usual sense of the word.  No two ways about it.  Animation by animators is better.  It’s physical, funny, and springs from a far less hackneyed braintrust than animation from scripts.

JG: Who is your favorite character on the show? Why?
 TT: I like the characters that channel adult feelings and insecurities.  Mr Krabs, Plankton, and Squidward spring to mind.  Also, there are people writing for the show who do a better job of getting into character for SpongeBob and Patrick than I do.

JG: Do you have any reminiscences of Lynchburg that have influenced you in your career?
TT: It’s funny, I’ve always enjoyed the reputation of farm boy on whatever show I’m on.  Even by 1979 Lynchburg standards I was considered a bit of a hick.  Probably because my closest friends were either involved with farming or hunting and fishing.  Getting back to your question, I’ve been given assignments because of my familiarity with things “country” or “southern”.  I think that these things influence my work honestly and in the very best sense.  Take for instance the character Stinky on Hey Arnold.  He was a rube from top to bottom.  There are definitely aspects of growing up in the ‘burg that informed Stinky’s behavior.  On another occasion, I was given the gas station hicks in the SpongeBob Movie for the same reason.  Steve Hillenberg thought I would do a better job on that sort of thing and he was right.  I don’t flinch from these sorts of assignments, I court them.   If there’s anything from my past that might help inform a character or joke, I jump at the chance to let those influences inform the work.