Innovating Character Design (With Crayons and Butcher Paper)

With crayons and butcher paper, Dan Povenmire created characters, one with triangle-shaped head and one with green fluff of hair, that led to the comedy-driven show we all know and love.

Innovate Pasadena: Hello! It’s exciting to have a Pasadena-n here. Can you share a little bit about yourself and your background in arts and design?

Dan Povenmire: I love Pasadena. It feels like a real town, not like the city of Los Angeles. When I get home from work, I don’t feel like I’m in Los Angeles and I like that.

About my background, I started drawing at a young age. I was this child prodigy artist in Mobile, Alabama. Most of my works were pen and ink. I participated in a lot of juried art shows, where they wouldn’t ask for my age so when my works were selected, they didn’t know they were looking at an 11-year-old kid. They would always be surprised at my age when I showed up. A local paper picked up on that and wrote about me.

I used all the money I made from the art shows to buy a Super 8 camera and did some film stuff and animation. I even did a stop-motion animation with clay creatures that are on an adventure.

Eventually, I got burnt out and stopped doing serious artwork for a while. I was attending University of South Alabama and saw an add in the paper looking for a cartoonist. I thought, “I can draw. I’m funny. Why not?” I created my first weekly comic strip, Life is a Fish. I transferred to USC and the school paper there, The Daily Trojan, had me do the strip daily. This taught me how to write.

After school, I worked as a caricature in Olvera Street downtown for a couple years but also did a lot of freelance art gigs. I got hired to do storyboard for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I also worked on The Simpsons as a character layout animator. A lot of animation jobs have season breaks so I would work on different shows during the hiatus.

During one of the breaks, I found a job working on Rocko’s Modern Life, which is Nickelodeon’s first in-house cartoon production. When I applied, Roger Chiasson was the supervising art director. He saw my comic strips, laughed at my jokes, and hired me on the spot. The show creator, Joe Murray, needed someone who could write and draw. There was no script, just an outline and you had to come up with all the lines and all the visual gags, which was the type of humor they were looking for.

I also worked on variety of shows including Family Guy, Hey Arnold!, CatDog, and Spongebob Squarepants. I was at Family Guy when I finally sold my own show, Phineas and Ferb. And it became the most successful animated TV show Disney ever had.

IP: What was the creation that led to Phineas and Ferb?

DP: It’s been a long journey. I drew Phineas and Ferb wit a purple crayon on butcher paper. It was at this restaurant where they had paper over the table and a can of crayons to doodle while you waited for your food. Anyways, I was drawing a character with triangle head, because I’ve never seen one. A lot of characters you see usually have round or oval shaped head.

A friend of mine was pitching a show with square-headed characters, and I thought, “Why not a triangle?”

I really liked how the character came out. I tore the drawing off and brought it home with me, where I drew more characters.

After I pitched the characters and story to the network, I lost that original drawing. But when the show came out, I was cleaning out my garage and found the original drawing between two books It had stains and it was slightly worn out, but now it’s framed in my office.

IP: That’s incredible! What was it like when you finally sold your show?

DP: It didn’t sell right way. My friend, Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, and I worked together on creating Phineas and Ferb. I knew Swampy from working on The Simpsons and Rocko’s Modern Life, so we are already familiar with each other’s styles and how we work.

Anyways, it took 13 years for the show to be picked up. I pitched to Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Fox Kids, and several other studios. I was working Disney so I pitched it there and they said no. They said they weren’t looking for a show with a male leads at that time. But one year later, Disney called and said they were now in the market for a boy show, so they bought it.

When we wrote the pilot, the development department at Disney Channel was going through some executive upheavals so they left us alone. We had free reins, so Swampy and I wrote an outline. Then I wrote and storyboard-ed the entire time I was vacationing in France with my wife and her family. During the days, I would go out on day trips with everyone, then at night when everyone was asleep, I would stay up and draw. I wrote the whole thing between the hours of 10 at night and 5 in the morning. Then on the way back from France we stopped in England, where my partner Swampy was living, and we spent an entire day, punching up and rewriting it.

We pitched the pilot to Disney. They loved it and had almost no changes. It was that roller coaster episode. The show was approved for 26-episode season.

IP: I love the process of how the show came to be!

DP: I looked myself up on a website, where they had job titles. Mine had so many hyphens, like story artist-writer-director-songwriter-voice actor-executive producer-show creator. We often hear the saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” I don’t think that’s true. I think you don’t have to put those kinds of limitations on yourself. I may be a jack of all trades, but I’ve been nominated for Emmys in five of those categories, so you do the math.

If you like doing different things, do it. A lot of people will say you should focus on one thing. I say, “do everything you love.” You can be good at many things.

You have to change your approach to business. Disney didn’t want Swampy and I to do voices for the show. They said that they had a rule that their executive producers did not do voiceovers on their shows. I asked them why. They said it was “just policy.” And I said “How’s that policy working out for you? Is this arbitrary limitation helping you attract the best talent?” Then they said executive producers don’t write songs for their shows. Again, I asked how did this rule benefit them. When they realized there was no reason for these limitations, they acquiesced. I’ve been nominated for an Emmy for the voiceover performance for Dr. Doofenshmirtz and our songs have been nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics and Outstanding Original Theme. Then, we have written more than 400 songs for Disney and our soundtrack albums for Phineas and Ferb made it to the Billboard Hot 100.

IP: Going forward about developing your talent, what are your advice for those who want to get into entertainment industry?

DP: The hard part about the entertainment industry is it’s the only industry with no clear pathway to employment.

No one can tell you how to get our first job, they can tell you how they got their first job.

Once you’ve heard enough stories, you start to get an idea of how someone could get hired. It really just comes down to preserving, meeting people in industry, looking at what they’re doing, applying to any jobs at any studios, and repeat. Put your resume during the hiring time because the resumes will pile up fast.

IP: Looking back, what would you have change or wish you knew?

DP: Everything really worked out well in the long run, but when I was applying to the film school at CalArts, which is the best animation school in the world, I sent some of my artworks and any visual materials I had. The CalArts animation school wrote back and said they would take me now and I wouldn’t need to apply. The film school hadn’t decided yet, but Animation would take me right away. But at that time I didn’t want to do animation, so I threw that paper away.

I had an opportunity to go to CalArts. This is the school where all the big names are from. I would have been with the people behind The Simpsons, The Powerpuff Girls, and so many more. Who knows what happened if I went to CalArts. I might have had more success earlier, but I may not have met my wife. I like how my life turned out.

IP: Tell us, what changes do you see or hope will have happened in the next five years?

DP: Five years is a long time. I think I will continue to do what I do. I would love to do prime time series, a show more for adults. I would love to direct movies, live action or animation. I would continue to do different things and just grow in these areas.

For the animation industry, it is now the best it has been for artists. There are so much works out there, but sometimes that means artists are paid less. I would love to see the union be stronger for the creatives. One example is there is no residuals for the writers. So, the writers can write a story that becomes a big success, but receive no royalties. I would love to see that change.

IP: Here’s a fun one to wrap up this interview, how does Phineas put on his shirt?

DP: It is doable! Just a lot of shirt stretching and manipulating to get the shirt over his head. We actually showed it once in the show.

Many thanks to Dan Povenmire for sharing his stories and advice. Stay tuned for Innovate Pasadena Presents episode with Dan Povenmire and for Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candance Against the Universe coming to theaters in 2020.