Craig Bartlett

Career

His first job, after graduating from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was at Will Vinton Studios in Portland, Oregon, where he learned the art of stop-motion animation, working on movies such as The Adventures of Mark Twain. Bartlett moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to animate the "Penny" cartoons, with assistance from Nick Park for Pee-wee's Playhouse on CBS. He later made an animated ID for NBC with Klasky Csupo. In 1994 he made an animated music video for "Jurassic Park" by Weird Al Yankovic, from the studio album Alapalooza.

He later worked at BRC Imagination Arts directing projects such as Postcards and Mystery Lodge for Knott's Berry Farm.

Bartlett met the Nickelodeon execs while story editing Rugrats in its first seasons. He pitched Hey Arnold! to them in fall of 1993, produced a pilot in spring of 1994, and the series was greenlit in January 1995. Hey Arnold! was in production continuously from 1995 to 2001, made by Bartlett's own production company, Snee-Oosh, Inc, which he founded in 1986. The series culminated in a TV movie originally titled "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood", but Nickelodeon decided to release it theatrically as Hey Arnold!: The Movie, in June 2002.

A dispute over a second planned Arnold movie then resulted in Bartlett leaving Nickelodeon to write and produce a TV movie for Cartoon Network called Party Wagon (also produced by Snee-Oosh), a story originally intended as a pilot for an ongoing series. It ended up being the first Cartoon Network movie-length pilot to be broadcast, but not picked up until Underfist: Halloween Bash, which was created by Maxwell Atoms, who created The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy and Evil Con Carne.

In 2005 Bartlett returned to BRC to make a multimedia simulator attraction for NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, called the Shuttle Launch Experience. In the course of the 3-year project, Bartlett interviewed 26 astronauts to gather their experiences from launch to orbit. One of the astronauts Bartlett interviewed was four-time shuttle flier and commander and current NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr..

After developing various pilots and feature scripts, Bartlett moved to The Jim Henson Company, where he co-wrote the computer animated film Unstable Fables: 3 Pigs and a Baby. Bartlett stayed at Henson to work as story editor on a PBS Kids preschool show called Sid the Science Kid with PBS executive Linda Simensky, whom he had worked with at Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.

In September 2008, a show for preschoolers called Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train was picked up by PBS Kids; produced by Brian Henson, this was the first show created by Bartlett to be picked up since Hey Arnold!. The series debuted on PBS stations on September 7, 2009.

In April 2015, Ready Jet Go! (formerly Jet Propulsion) was picked up by PBS Kids; produced by Wind Dancer Films, the series will debut on PBS stations on Winter 2016.

In November 2015, Viacom announced that Bartlett will be returning to Nickelodeon to write Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie.

Personal life

He is married to Lisa Groening, sister of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, after whom Lisa Simpson is named. They have two children, Matt and Katie.