Craig Michael Bartlett is an American animator, writer, director, and producer. He is best known for creating the Nickelodeon television series Hey Arnold! and the PBS Kids television series Ready Jet Go! and Dinosaur Train.
Bartlett's career in animation began at Will Vinton Studios in Portland, Oregon, where he learned the art of stop-motion animation. He later moved to Los Angeles and worked on various projects, including animating the "Penny" claymations for the second season of Pee-wee's Playhouse and an animated ID for NBC with Klasky Csupo.
He later worked at BRC Imagination Arts, directing projects such as Postcards and Mystery Lodge for Knott's Berry Farm. Bartlett also animated the music video for "Jurassic Park" by "Weird Al" Yankovic from the 1993 album Alapalooza.
Bartlett met the Nickelodeon execs while story editing Rugrats in its first three seasons. He pitched Hey Arnold! to them in the fall of 1993 and produced a pilot the next spring. The series was greenlit in January 1995 and was in production continuously from 1995 to 2001.
After Hey Arnold!, Bartlett left Nickelodeon to write, direct, and produce an animated TV movie for Cartoon Network called Party Wagon. He then 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 2008, Bartlett moved to The Jim Henson Company, where he co-wrote the animated film Unstable Fables: 3 Pigs and a Baby. He then worked as story editor on a PBS Kids preschool show called Sid the Science Kid.
In 2009, Bartlett's show Dinosaur Train was picked up by PBS Kids, and in 2016, his show Ready Jet Go! premiered on PBS stations. In 2017, Bartlett returned to Nickelodeon to write Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie.
Bartlett attended and graduated from Anacortes High School in Anacortes, Washington. He married Lisa Groening, sister of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, Futurama, and Disenchantment, in 1987. They have two children, Matt and Katie.
