Fanboy and Chum Chum

Shaun Cashman

I distinctly remember sitting with Fred at the Annie Awards a few years ago and watching Shaun Cashman and Phil Cummings win the TV directing award for their work on Billy & Mandy (”Attack of the Clowns”). Fred said then how great it would be to work with those guys. Well, we haven’t had the chance to be in business with Phil, yet, but we’re incredibly lucky to have Shaun as the supervising producer on Fanboy and Chum Chum. He took a break from the craziness of production to answer a couple of questions for the blog.

Frederator: Where did you grow up?

Shaun: I grew up in Middletown, Connecticut. Situated along the Connecticut River and home to Wesleyan University, it’s a town of about 45,000 people and it has one of those wide classic Main Streets that runs from one end of town to the other. It’s called the “Forest City”: because it’s nestled in the Connecticut River Valley and as you come into the valley from out of town it looks like it literally is popping up out of a forest – it looks awesome in the fall! I grew up in the North End, a predominantly Italian neighborhood at the time – my mother is Italian, my dad is Irish – I spent most of my formative years growing up there and making some of the lifetime friends I have now.

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Shaun: Aside from the classic Warner Bros shorts, Jonny Quest. It was, at the time, like a comic book come to life. I also grew up with the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, too! As for animated movies, I’d have to say The Jungle Book.

Frederator: What’s your artistic background?

Shaun: I majored in illustration in college, Paier School of Art in Hamden, Connecticut, and I went to NYU one summer for an intense 6 days a week course in film production. And I worked for many years in newspaper advertising design, marketing and freelance editorial illustration. Although neither one pursued it, both of my parents are artistic. My father is a very good watercolorist and my mother comes from a long line of musicians (she was a singer in her younger days), so growing up I was always surrounded by good music and exposed to some form of art.

Frederator: You’ve worked on King of the Hill and The Simpsons as well as Billy and Mandy and Chowder. What’s the single biggest difference between working on primetime and non-primetime animation (besides the money)?

Shaun: LOL! Besides the money, the main differences were that on the FOX shows, as a director, I had limited opportunity to put my stamp on an episode. Basically, the animatic was my chance to make my little “movie” before the writer/producers on the show took it and rewrote or revised it. Don’t get me wrong, I still had a blast directing on Simpsons and King Of The Hill but at some point on every episode you go from being director to a facilitator of revisions. On Billy & Mandy and Chowder, I got to do what I really always wanted to do and that was do cartoons, if you get my meaning. Classic 7 or 11-minute format cartoons, gag driven, and pushed to the limit. Artistically, those two shows were very liberating for me as a director and a timer. Maxwell Atoms, the creator of Billy & Mandy spoiled me rotten in that he actually let me do my job and trusted me to do it – can you imagine? LOL! That’s also where I met Carl Greenblatt, creator of Chowder, he was one of our board artists and has one of the best and most creative senses of humor I’ve come across in this business, and, he’s a great guy.

Mild-mannered Eric Robles and Shaun Cashman

Frederator: It’s been fifteen years now (!), but can you still point to your layouts in Simpsons episodes like “Deep Space Homer” and “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds”?

Shaun: Closer to seventeen actually, and yes, I can spot my animation poses and layouts in those early Simpsons episodes. The other side to that is, when I was a Character Layout Artist on the show, I worked on so many different episodes that I’ve actually watched them on television and NOT remembered that I did work on it until I saw my name in the end credits!

Frederator: What excited you about working on Fanboy & Chum Chum?

Shaun: When I was asked to direct the original short, it was the aspect of helping out a friend as well as getting my feet wet in the CG arena. Now, as Supervising Producer on the series, again, it’s to help out a friend to expand the world of the characters and to help bring to life that world and be involved creatively on a series from the ground up and to get more CG experience under my belt career-wise.

Frederator: Where do you get your creative inspiration?

Shaun: Other artists or an idea that makes me want to create. Yes, I do get inspired by other artists’ work, but usually it’s an idea that I want to create and see. I put myself in the audience’s place and think about what I like as a TV viewer or if I’m in the audience at a movie.

Frederator: Which artists, living or not, would you most want to meet?

Shaun: John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney and any of his “9 Old Men”.

Frederator: Any advice for those considering a career in cartoons?

Shaun: To quote Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, “…never give up, never surrender!” I think that spells it out – persistence is the key! I started my career in animation later in life, I was 36 when I shifted career paths, because it was something I always wanted to do. I even tried breaking into it in the late 70’s but didn’t actually make anything happen until the early 90’s. I tried it again at that point because that drive, that voice inside you that says “Do It!”, won’t go away until you do and give it your best shot! You can’t make things happen or change your life without making an attempt to do the things that you feel, inside, are right for you!

Superhero team of Ericboy and Cash Chum

Frederator: What would you say if one of your kids one day says, “Dad, I want to be an animator?”

Shaun: I don’t think I’d try to talk them out of it. Because it’s been very good to me and I’ve been very fortunate in the business, I would tell either one of my children that if that’s what really interests them and that’s what they feel they have a drive to do, then go give it a shot, at least trying to make it happen is better than going through life with the “what if’s” rolling around in your head because you didn’t try.

Thanks a ton for the time, Shaun.

(And thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric