He later attended classes at a vocational school in his hometown, where he met his teacher Josef Skupa, who eventually would become a leading public figure in the world of Czech puppeteers.

Skupa was his mentor, entrusted Trnka with certain responsibilities, and managed to convince his family, who were initially reluctant, to allow him to enroll at the prestigious School of Applied Arts in Prague, where he completed his apprenticeship between 1929 and 1935.

Especially famous are his illustrations for the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and collections of folktales from Czech authors such as Jiří Horák and Jan Páleníček.

Also drawing upon his native folklore are his illustrations for Bajaja by Vladimír Holan, published in 1955, which proved to be the starting point for his future work in animation.

In addition to these, Trnka illustrated the tales of Andersen and Perrault, the fables of La Fontaine, The Thousand and One Nights, several works of Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Several years later, at the end of World War II, he founded with Eduard Hofman and Jiří Brdečka the animation studio Bratři v triku.

Despite his early success, Trnka did not feel comfortable with traditional animation, which in his opinion required too many intermediaries that prevented him from freely expressing his creativity.

[1] The result was his first feature puppet film in a cycle Špalíček (The Czech Year, 1947), based on a book illustrated by Mikoláš Aleš.

During 1949, Trnka also made three short films with animated puppets: Roman s basou (Story of a Bass, or Novel with Bass), adapted from a story by Anton Chekhov; Čertův mlýn (The Devil's Mill), based on a Czech fairy-tale, and Arie prérie (Song of the Prairie), a western parody loosely based on Stagecoach (known in Trnka's country as The Diligence) by John Ford.

In the same vein of exploring the classics of Czech literature, Trnka in 1955 faced the challenge of adapting to the screen a work immensely popular, the anti-war satire Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války of Jaroslav Hašek (The Good Soldier Švejk).

For the construction of the puppets, Trnka was inspired by the illustrations for the original book made by Josef Lada, which in the popular imagination were closely associated with the characters of Hašek.

In 1959 he made his last feature film: Sen noci svatojánské (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1959), adapted from one of the most famous works of William Shakespeare.

In his adaptation he gave focus not only to the images, but also to the music of Václav Trojan, and strove to give the film an air of ballet, for which he hired a renowned dancer as an adviser.

Ruka is considered a protest against the conditions imposed by the Czechoslovak communist state to artistic creation, and even some have seen in it an anticipation of the so-called Prague Spring.

Other prominent animators from Trnka's studios were Stanislav Látal, Jiří Brdečka, Jan Karpaš, Bohuslav Šrámek, Eduard Hofman and Václav Bedřich.

Unlike what had been done before, Trnka chose not to alter the appearance of the dolls with artificial elements to denote their emotions but to keep it unchanged, getting his expression through changes in framing and lighting.