The Disney Guys

Sept. 5, 2007

Rob Hughes and Zach Pavlov, both of Traverse City, stopped back into town this summer to take some time off their jobs at Disney—a job magnet for Traverse City transplants and scores of Michigan kids who are graduating from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, said Hughes.
“I was at a Fourth of July party and one guy is from Warren and another guy is wearing a Tigers hat, and there’s another guy wearing a Beach Bums shirt. There’s getting to be a huge number from Michigan.”
We decided to talk to Hughes and Pavlov about the attraction of the West Coast and the creative work they do.

ROB HUGHES, ANIMATOR

After working for 20 years in the animation field, Hughes, 45, decided to escape the traffic and make a go of it in Traverse City. He moved here in 2000 from Los Angeles, after directing such shows as Rocko’s Modern Life and Fox’s Family Guy. His wife Jen, a former stand-up comedienne, private eye and actor, founded Stylease, a chldren’s clothing business.
To earn a living in these northern climes, Hughes freelanced in Los Angeles on Rocket Power, As Told by Ginger, The Proud Family, and Rugrats (to name a few). And he worked long stints in Berlin and Singapore. “. . . to see what was cookin’ outside the LA animation world.”
Hughes also opened Traverse City’s first animation company, LincolnButterfield, with Traverse City friend, Joseph Walker. But living here was a hard way to go, and last October, Hughes accepted a job as animation director on Disney’s new show, Phineas and Ferb in Burbank, rejoining his two good buddies from his Nickelodeon days.
Hughes packed up his downtown office during his summer visit, but he’s not packing in the idea of living here full-time. The Hughes will spend their summers here, for sure, and maybe full-time if he ultimately re-opens the TC branch of LincolnButterfield.

NE: What are you working on at Disney?
HUGHES: A new show called Phineas and Ferb. It’s about two brothers who realize that summer is so valuable that every day they have to do something special. On the first day, for example, they built a roller coaster through the city. Phineas talks, Ferb doesn’t. It’s not that he can’t. He’s just a man of few words. They have a sister who is always trying to bust them, but every time their mom turns around to see what they’re up to, all the evidence is gone. Like a helicopter suddenly arrived and carried away the roller coaster. And they have a pet platypus that does battle with the evil Dr. Dufenschmirtz.

NE: Dr. Dufenschmirtz?
HUGHES: That’s right. Hey, it’s animation, baby. It’s a weird place. What’s unique is that every episode has an original song. I actually wrote a couple of songs that I got credit for.

NE: Do you animate pictures for the show?
HUGHES: No, nobody does anymore. It’s very rarely done in the United States because it’s too expensive. Instead, we provide an animation studio in Korea with every mind-numbing direction of what we want, and they animate. But we do draw a lot of pictures. We storyboard, story sketch, do character designs, background designs, prop designs, color keys.
Animation has become an assembly line. It’s like working at Ford, and you’re the guy who happens to be really good at snapping the carburetor on the car. You can’t take credit for the whole car, but just try driving one without a carburetor.

NE: Give me an idea of how it works.
HUGHES: This show is different than others because there are no scripts. So the writers come in with a premise, such as Phineas and Ferb turn their mom’s station wagon into a souped up race car and enter the Swamp Oil 5000. That goes to storyboard directors who flesh out the story and add gags. Then they pin it up and we all take a long hard look at it to see if it’s working and if it’s funny.
If it gets a laugh and it’s clever, it’s in. And then everyone talks about it. We punch up the gags, we might change the story line—it’s amazing what pops up on the other side.
The reality is that no one makes a cartoon by themselves. Everyone moves at different speeds and has different ideas about what’s funny. But the joy of the conflict is not everyone seems to have that particular understanding, and their egos get in the way. “This is my show! Stop picking at it!” But after the fourth show, everyone came together and it works.
My little slice of this heaven takes place around what Disney calls the Laika reel, which is sort of a talking slide show. We sync up the dialogue with the picture and see how the show looks when it moves in real time. We look at the pacing, make sure the jokes work, make sure the story makes sense and, best of all, we punch it up. That’s my favorite part. Then the show goes to design and timing.

NE: And after the Laika?
HUGHES: I do a frame-by-frame accoun-ting, in which I describe the picture and sound. There are 24 frames per second, and it’s an 11-minute show. We ship heavy knowing that the animation studio will just get some stuff wrong and we’ll have to cut a bit out--like the lump out of an 80-year-old. My job is easy if the actor emotes in the recording; then I can picture what they’re doing. If not, I have to make it up.

NE: How do you “describe” a picture?
HUGHES: Well, I use a chart of mouth positions—this is so boring, do you really want to hear this?—and you have a closed position, and an open wide position, and eight positions in between. They are labeled, a, b, c, d, e and so on. Then I do what’s called the accounting, phonetic letter by phonetic letter, frame by frame, up and down like how the Chinese write. So if the character says, “How are you?”, the first frame is “h” and the second frame is “ow.” I can do it a lot faster than I can describe it.
The body is different; I just thumbnail what I’d like them to draw in the margin of the exposure sheet. That’s our cartoon blueprint. That this remotely makes any kind of sense to the guy in Korea is a miracle. It’s like learning to drive a car by reading the manual in Braille. It’s a testament to their abilities.
NE: Did you draw a lot as a kid?
HUGHES: Absolutely. I used to draw on my tests instead of taking them. There was a parent night at my school, and in my box of work, I had a picture of a fireball sled. The kid was going so fast, his lips were flapping back in the wind—I was so proud of it. But I had drawn it on the back of a test that I got an F on. My parents weren’t very happy. They had this absurd concept that there’s a time and place for everything.

NE: Did you go to art school?
HUGHES: I went to Oakland Community College for commercial art. But it was cars, cars, furniture and cars. I had no interest in cars and I still don’t unless it’s 11 o’clock at night and I need to drive home. And I didn’t like people telling me what to draw or how to draw it. So I thought I’d find a job in a different field and draw as a hobby. I transferred to MSU and studied communications. But I didn’t go into journalism because you have to be objective. I can’t seem to write anything without a little zing.

NE: Right. You live for the zing …
HUGHES: And it gets me into nothing but trouble. I remember when I was trapped in a car on a trip with my brother-in-law, and he hadn’t eaten all day, so he bought a yogurt snack bar. He couldn’t get it open, and it was #!% this, and %!#% that. He squeezed it so hard, it exploded all over the car. He was really swearing, and he finally gets it all picked up, and holds his hand out to me, and says, “Do you want some?” I couldn’t resist. I reached over and smacked the bottom of his hand, and the crumbs flew all over the place. Man, was that funny. I’m a guy who just can’t resist a joke.

NE: How did you ever make it into Disney?
HUGHES: I did a lot of other things first. I made hot dogs in Florida, I worked for Consumer’s Power in Jackson, documenting files for a lawsuit. It was mind-numbing, but I had this eating habit I had to support. After that, I moved to Chicago, and I had this roommate who was studying art, and he told me about a company that needed a cell painter. Back then you inked a picture on one side and painted it in with even color on the other side. So that night, my roommate taught me how to do it, and I made up a portfolio—I tried to do a lot of styles to make it look like I’d been doing it a long time.
I was hired immediately and on my first day, I had to do yellow—and I kept blotching everything, I just couldn’t get it to work, and one of the other painters came over and said, “Hey-ho, welcome to the job, so glad you’re here!” And then she bent down and whispered, “You’ve never done this in your life, have you?” And I said, “No ma’am, I haven’t.” She said, “Let me show you the trick for yellow.” And she did, and I got to stay. I really liked that job—sitting around a table with a lot of creative people. I couldn’t wait to get to work every morning.

NE: Do you still feel that way?
HUGHES: The stress of putting out one show a week is unbelievable. It beats making hot dogs, though.

NE: So how’s California?
HUGHES: There’s a lot going on there. If you want to see a band, even the most obscure band—a crew of Scotsman triangle players comes to mind. And there’s a million different kinds of food. But traffic’s bad. I hope it gets worse, so people will finally realize that building more roads won’t solve it. Thankfully, I walk to work.

NE: Parting words for the aspiring artist?
HUGHES: Be a lawyer, they always end up with the best views and all the money. No, kidding. I just wish I had discovered animation sooner; then I wouldn’t have had to make all those hot dogs. The cool thing about animation is that it needs everyone—any kind of artist, people who are good with editing and computers, people who can add up numbers, stack paper, operate heavy equipment... Okay, maybe not that one.


ZACH PAVLOV, VIDEO GAME PROGRAMMER
At 26, Zach Pavlov is just getting his feet wet at Disney. Pavlov works in the Disney Internet Group, helping to program a virtual game based on the
Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s one of the ways that Disney is leveraging the success of the Pirates blockbuster sequel, along with a pirate ride and restaurant at Disneyland. The online project is called a massively multi-player online game, which means that up to 1,000 people online will be able to play against each other. That’s where Pavlov comes in. He’s a junior programmer at DIG, and it’s his job to make the game as entertaining and as easy-to-use as possible.
Pavlov has worked at Disney for nearly a year, but almost didn’t get there at all. Disney was his first job out of school, and he was driving from Pittsburgh to drop some of his stuff off in Traverse City, and then going to fly to Burbank to start work at Disney. Instead, he fell asleep at the wheel in Lansing.
Pavlov remembers nothing from the accident. He woke up from a coma six days later and discovered that his leg and two knees were broken. His father called his Disney boss, who promised that the job would be waiting for him when he recovered. It took a few months, but Pavlov arrived in September with a limp, crutches, and a patchwork of fresh scars—but ready to work.

NE: What were you like as a kid?
PAVLOV: I went to Pathfinder up until eighth grade, and was interested in computers. I wrote a program for the computer to count up to a million when I was in third grade—it’s a very easy program, so don’t be too impressed—and one of the teachers there gave me an old computer she had and didn’t want anymore. She knew I didn’t have one and wanted to help me out.

NE: And high school?
PAVLOV: I was pretty anti-social until my final year at Traverse City West. And then I joined the choir, the band, and I was already in theatre. And I was one of the students who helped out with the computers at the library. That was high school for me.
Then, I went to U of M and studied computer science. And from there, I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I considered becoming a math professor, or getting a master’s degree in computer science. Then a friend in art school told me about [Carnegie Mellon’s] Entertainment Technology Center in Pittsburgh. It’s kind of like a vocational school for people who want to get into the technology side of the entertainment industry. I got into that, and the first year, I did an internship with Disney.

NE: What did the internship involve?
PAVLOV: I built a cart-racing game for Toontown Online, part of this online world that Disney has created.

NE: Do you have to pay for it?
PAVLOV: No, it’s this velvet rope kind of concept. You can play for free, and pay if you want more challenge and features.

NE: Were you at all intimidated when you walked into Disney?
PAVLOV: I wouldn’t say so. It’s hard to be intimidated when the people around you are very friendly. And I really liked the programming system Disney uses. It’s called Panda3D –it’s an open source system that’s very transparent, and forces you to write in the most simple, logical way that other people can read and easily understand.

NE: Do you work with many women?
PAVLOV: No, there aren’t many women in the industry, and that’s a big problem that people are working on.

NE: Do you think it’s because more boys get started so young with video games?
PAVLOV: That’s part of it, and that’s one reason they’re trying to open up the games more to girls. Disney is putting together an online fairy world with some features they think girls will like.

NE: So tell me what happened with the car accident.
PAVLOV: I was driving near Lansing up to Traverse City where I was going to drop off my stuff at my parents’ house, and then fly out. It was 10 in the morning and I had just stopped to look at a guitar I was thinking about buying. So I got back into my car and was listening to relaxing music, which was a bad idea because I fell asleep at the wheel and lost control. No one was hurt except for me. It wrecked half my stuff—my computer, my guitar, my dishes, a lot of stuff.
I broke my legs, knees, I have crazy scars. I looked like (Ray Bradbury’s) Illustrated Man. I stayed a month at the Sparrow Hospital, which is an amazing place. They did a great job putting me back together. Then I came back to Traverse City for rehab and flew out to L.A. in September.

NE: How are you doing now?
PAVLOV: I have old men’s knees, but who doesn’t? They’re just going to hurt when it gets cold out.

NE: What’s it like now that you’re out there?
PAVLOV: I’m in North Hollywood, just west of Burbank. It takes some getting used to. I live in the arts district; there are some shops, but mostly concrete in either direction. I do get bothered that there are no trees, no canopy.

NE: What do you do for fun?
PAVLOV: I play guitar, Frisbee, biking. I have a lot of friends from Pittsburgh who’ve moved here. It is true that a lot of the people here are shallow, and it takes some effort to find people you like. But there’s also every sort of person under the sun. The problem is that they are really spread out. I just found about an LA cycling group—one of the bike captains is Daryl Hannah. They’re not as fixated on their looks—in fact, they do an ice cream crawl, if that tells you anything.

NE: Is your commute bad?
PAVLOV: I live next to work — I don’t have a car. But when you do drive, it takes about 45 minutes to go 7 miles. The main freeway is an inhumane conflagration of pain and suffering. There is a subway system into downtown L.A., and it’s not bad if you know where to go.

NE: Do you not own a car because of your accident?
PAVLOV: That’s part of it, but I’m going to buy a car very soon.

NE: Tell me about your Pirates of the Caribbean online video game.
PAVLOV: We’re near the end of the project, but we tried to capture the fun part of being a pirate. Historically, of course, they’ve done bad things like rob people, so we’re making pirating more acceptable—sailing ships, singing, ‘Yo, ho, ho!’ They have a swashbuckling kind of energy. We’re aiming for kids who want to explore the notion of, “I’m going on the open seas with my friends and we’ll have an adventure.” My job is to make it as easy as possible to do that. I focus on optimization. Ideally, our game can be played on the fastest computers and the slow ones too.

NE: Can you give me an example of how you make it more fun?
PAVLOV: With a lot of games, you have to take a lot of time to travel where your friends are. In our game, you can immediately teleport there. We’re designing the game for a quick adventure.

NE: People think of a programmer as working all alone. True?
PAVLOV: Not at all. Half the job is talking to people. We first brainstorm tricks we can pull to make things go faster for the player. But there are millions of lines of code, and you have to make sure that before you change anything, you don’t mess up someone else’s work. So my job is 10% writing code, 90% thinking about it.

NE: Advice to anyone who wants to do this for a living?
PAVLOV: A lot of my education at Pathfinder, at U of M, and ETC was in community building—learning how to work with a variety of people. It involves learning what they can do and learning what you can do, how you can fit in your own skills. It’s really a lot of fun.