Butch Hartman

Elmer Earl "Butch" Hartman IV (born January 10, 1965) is an American animator, YouTuber, illustrator, and voice actor.

He is best known for creating the animated television series The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom, T.U.F.F. Puppy, and Bunsen Is a Beast for Nickelodeon.

He graduated from Anchor Bay High School in New Baltimore in 1983, and subsequently attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.

He graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

As a young student, he appeared on The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour; he won close to $3,000.

While still attending CalArts, Hartman interned as an in-between animator on the Don Bluth film An American Tail.

Before graduating, he was a contestant on the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour for three episodes and shortly after graduating, he was hired as a character designer and storyboard artist for an unidentified My Little Pony animated series.

As he had no previous experience with storyboards, he was soon fired.

Afterwards, he found work with Ruby-Spears, where he worked on It's Punky Brewster and Dink, the Little Dinosaur.

He was also a member of the video reference crew for the Disney film Pocahontas.

In the early 1990s, he was hired as an artist in the model department at Hanna-Barbera, and was eventually contacted by studio president Fred Seibert to create the shorts Pfish and Chip and Gramps for his animated incubator series What a Cartoon!.

Eventually, he became a writer, director and storyboard artist for several of the early Cartoon Network shows, including Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, and I Am Weasel.

After his contract with Hanna-Barbera expired, he went to work with Seibert at his newfound Frederator studio, on his successor incubator series, Oh Yeah! Cartoons for Nickelodeon.

During his time working at Hanna-Barbera, he became acquainted with future Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane.

The two would later go on to make the short Zoomates together for Oh Yeah!

Cartoons.

The character Dr. Elmer Hartman in Family Guy was named after Hartman.

He also voiced various characters in the show's first seasons.

His biggest success came in December 1997, when he created The Fairly OddParents.

The series originally started out as a series of shorts on the anthology show ''Oh Yeah!

Cartoons''.

Eventually, Nickelodeon decided to pick the shorts up as a full series.

Premiering in 2001, the adapted series ended up becoming a huge hit, second only in the ratings to SpongeBob SquarePants (and it briefly even passed SpongeBob's ratings).

Hartman created the production company Billonfold Inc. in 2003, which he uses primarily to produce his shows.

Hartman was an executive producer on The Fairly OddParents for the entirety of its 16-year run.

To produce the show, Hartman founded his own production company Billionfold Inc. in 2003, which he also used to produce his other projects.

Danny Phantom received his furthest critical acclaim throughout his career, with Hartman himself acknowledging it as perhaps the best of his programs while acknowledging its cult following.

Following the third The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius crossover The Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour 3: The Jerkinators, the series ceased production in 2006, but it was announced on Hartman's forum on February 2, 2007, that 20 more episodes would be produced; the 6th season of Fairly OddParents aired on February 18, 2008, starting with the one-hour special Fairly OddBaby.

Danny Phantom ended production in early 2007.

From May 1, 2009, to May 3, 2009, the three-part special Wishology aired; although that too was originally intended as a series finale, the series was renewed for another season.

A tenth season was eventually ordered in 2015.

The Fairly OddParents is Nickelodeon's second longest-running animated show behind SpongeBob.

Due to the success of The Fairly OddParents, Hartman was asked to create another show for Nickelodeon; Hartman says the President of Nickelodeon asked him if he had an idea, and before he could say the title he was given the greenlight.

The show would later become Danny Phantom.

In February 2018, Hartman announced that he had left Nickelodeon on after having worked at the studio since December 1997; he confirmed that this resulted in the end of production on Bunsen Is a Beast after one season.

His latest animated program, The Garden, premiered on the Christian streaming service Pure Flix in 2023.

In 2021, he returned to Nickelodeon to produce a live-action Fairly OddParents reboot, The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder, which premiered on Paramount+ the following year for one season.

Hartman was born in Highland Park, Michigan.

He received the nickname Butch as a young boy and continued to use it as an adult.

Hartman spent his childhood in Roseville, Michigan, and his teenage years in New Baltimore, Michigan.