page_title: The Powerpuff Girls
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: The Powerpuff Girls / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Cartoonists Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust at Comic Con 10.
context_page_description: The Powerpuff Girls is an American superhero animated television series created by animator Craig McCracken for Cartoon Network, and the fifth of the network's Cartoon Cartoons. The series was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in its first four seasons, and by Cartoon Network Studios in its final two seasons. It centers on Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, three kindergarten-aged girls with superpowers. The girls all live in the fictional city of Townsville with their father and creator, a scientist named Professor Utonium, and are frequently called upon by the city's mayor to help fight nearby criminals and other enemies using their powers.
  McCracken originally developed the show in 1992 as a cartoon short entitled Whoopass Stew! while in his second year at CalArts. Hanna-Barbera president Fred Seibert screened the short and, following a name change, picked up the first Powerpuff Girls short films in its animation showcase program What a Cartoon! in 1995 and 1996.
  The series premiered on November 18, 1998, and ended on March 25, 2005. Excluding the two original shorts, the series ran for a total of six seasons, totaling 78 episodes.
context_section_description: During Craig McCracken's first year in the character animation program of CalArts, he created a series of short cartoons based on a character called "No Neck Joe". In June 1991, he created a drawing of three girls with large eyes, inspired visually by the 'waif' paintings of Margaret Keane, on a small sheet of orange construction paper as a birthday card design for his brother. The following year he included the three girls as the main characters of his short film Whoopass Stew! The Whoopass Girls in: A Sticky Situation. Initially, McCracken wanted to animate four Whoopass Girls shorts, but only one came to be. McCracken's shorts were selected to be shown at Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation in 1994.
  While working on 2 Stupid Dogs in 1992, McCracken's Whoopass Girls short was picked up for a series by Cartoon Network. However, the name Whoopass had to be dropped for the channel to include it as part of its new What a Cartoon! animated shorts showcase. McCracken explained it was because many executives at Cartoon Network didn't think that anyone would make toys for kids with the word "ass" in it. So the title was changed and became The Powerpuff Girls, the name Whoopass was also changed to Powerpuff by Craig McCracken, and the "can of whoop ass" was renamed "Chemical X". McCracken's new short, entitled "The Powerpuff Girls in: Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins", aired as part the network's World Premiere Toon-In on February 20, 1995. The short was not as popular as Dexter's Laboratory, a project McCracken and former classmate Genndy Tartakovsky (who also directed many episodes of Powerpuff Girls) worked on together; being the most popular of the shorts, Dexter's Laboratory was the first to be greenlit by the network. Cartoon Network executive Mike Lazzo (who later serve as the executive producer for Williams Street in the fifth season of Samurai Jack) allowed McCracken to produce a new Powerpuff Girls short titled "Crime 101", which aired on What a Cartoon! in early 1996. Veteran ABC announcer Ernie Anderson, who narrated the pilot episodes, died of cancer in 1997, and he was replaced by Tom Kenny when it became a series.
  The Powerpuff Girls series made its debut on November 18, 1998, and was the highest rated premiere in Cartoon Network's history at the time. During its run, the series consistently scored the highest rating for an original series each week for the network across a wide range of demographics—from young children to adults. In October 2000, Cartoon Network credited the series for its Friday night prime time ratings win among cable networks. By the end of 2000, merchandising based on the series encompassed a whole variety of products, including T-shirts, toys, video games, lunchboxes, and dishware. Concerning the show's success, Craig McCracken has stated, "I thought it would get on Cartoon Network and college kids would watch it and there would be a few random T-shirts out there in the rave scene or in record shops. But I had no idea that it would take off to this extent."  Following the series' fourth season, the closing of Hanna-Barbera Productions and the death of its executive William Hanna in 2001, McCracken left it to focus on his new animated series, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, leaving Chris Savino to take his place while production of The Powerpuff Girls was moved to Cartoon Network Studios. The show's last original run episode was on March 25, 2005; in all, six seasons were made. Cartoon Network had offered to give McCracken and Savino a seventh season of the series, but they believed six was enough, and that the series had run its course. Much of the people who worked on the new seasons also worked on seasons 3 and 4 of Dexter's Laboratory, but included other new crew members, such as Thurop Van Orman, who then created The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack in 2008.
  All of the original episodes were hand-drawn and produced at Rough Draft Studios in South Korea, except the What a Cartoon! shorts, with the first one being animated at Animal House in Japan and the second being anima
caption: The Powerpuff Girls was created by Craig McCracken, and his wife Lauren Faust was a director and writer for the later seasons.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2008:07:25 18:09:00", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1018", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "0", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:07:25 11:16:55", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:07:25 11:16:55", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "125237/16384", "EXIF ApertureValue": "76085/16384", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "190", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3128", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1500", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1728000/437", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "384000/97", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}