Dan Povenmire

Daniel Kingsley Povenmire (/ˈpɒvənmaɪər/ POV-ən-mire; born September 18, 1963) is an American animator, voice actor, writer, director, and producer. With Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, Povenmire co-created the Disney animated series Phineas and Ferb, and Milo Murphy's Law, where he voices Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz. He created Hamster & Gretel.

Povenmire has worked on several animated television series including Hey Arnold!, The Simpsons, Rocko's Modern Life, and SpongeBob SquarePants. He was a director on the Fox animated sitcom Family Guy, where he was nominated for an Annie Award in 2005. He left the series to co-create Phineas and Ferb, for which he has received several award nominations. Following the initial conclusion of Phineas and Ferb, he and Marsh created and produced a second show for Disney titled Milo Murphy's Law, which premiered in 2016. In 2020, the duo made a second Phineas and Ferb film, Candace Against the Universe. The same year, he announced a new series for Disney titled Hamster & Gretel, which premiered in 2022.

Povenmire was born September 18, 1963, in San Diego, California, and grew up in the city of Mobile, Alabama. He had an interest in cartoons as a little kid. A child prodigy, he began drawing at age two; by the time he was ten, his work was displayed in local art shows. His first efforts in animation included a series of flip books that he produced in his school text books. As a child, Povenmire considered animator Chuck Jones and Tex Avery his hero; in a 2009 interview, he stated that "every drawing he did was beautiful to look at and had so much life in it". The works of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki were also an early influence on Povenmire's style. UPA's style influences his geometric designs.

Povenmire received his secondary education at Shaw High School in Mobile, which is now a middle school called Clark-Shaw Magnet School of Math, Science, and Technology. Initially, he attended the University of South Alabama, where he created his first popular comic strip, Life Is a Fish, devoted to the life of Herman the goldfish and the college students he lives with. Povenmire also supported himself as a waiter and performer at a dinner theater. In 1985, he transferred to the University of Southern California (USC), planning to pursue a career in film.

Soon after arriving at USC, he pitched Life Is a Fish to Mark Ordesky, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan, the university newspaper. Ordesky first "basically brushed [him] off", but, after viewing Povenmire's portfolio, accepted the strip. Fish ran daily in the paper. Though the rapid pace left Povenmire afraid he was "running out of ideas", he never missed a deadline and made $14,000 a year through Fish merchandise, which included T-shirts, books, and calendars sold at the campus craft fair. The discipline of regular production also helped teach Povenmire to "represent something in the least amount of lines".

Povenmire left USC without finishing the degree requirements, and used the money from Fish merchandise to fund a short-lived career as a street artist. His first professional animation commission came on the Tommy Chong project Far Out Man, for which Povenmire produced two minutes of animation. By age 24, Povenmire was freelancing on several animated television series, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In 1989, he appeared in a small role as a band member in Adam Sandler's first film, Going Overboard.

In the 1990s, Povenmire secured a job as a character layout animator on the hit animated series The Simpsons. His desk placed him opposite Jeffrey Marsh, another up-and-coming animator. They shared similar tastes in humor and music, and later became colleagues on other projects.

Povenmire's experience, from both previous industry work and from his own projects, earned him respect at The Simpsons. He worked on layout animation and collaborated on storyboard production for the series, recalling later that staff were handed pages of production notes and instructed to "Do the [creative consultant] Brad Bird notes and any others that make sense." He maintained a side interest in film, writing scripts and the screenplay for a low-budget horror movie, Psycho Cop 2. The movie's producers offered Povenmire the opportunity to direct the film, but its terms required that he quit The Simpsons. Povenmire chose to stay with The Simpsons, which he enjoyed and considered a better fit with his future ambitions. Rif Coogan ended up directing the picture instead.