If you’ve been tuning into The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central (Thursdays 10:30pm/9:30c), you’ve surely seen some of Rob Schrab’s work. Not only is Rob a co-creator of the show and a regular director, but he’s also found a way to get his phenomenal Draw-less Animation into several episodes. But that’s not the whole story on Rob’s connection to the animation world. He first shot to fame by way of his comic Scud: The Disposable Assassin (he released his 21st issue earlier this year), and this led him to make the big move to Los Angeles.

After writing and producing Heat Vision and Jack, the cult-classic Fox pilot, he went on to make Robot Bastard, his own independently-produced space opera. Rob’s DIY approach to filmmaking, using cardboard sets, costumes and props, was followed-up by his first Draw-less Animation project - Ringwald & Molly. After another live-action series, Twigger’s Holiday (which was made for Schrab and Dan Harmon’s film festival Channel 101), Schrab saw one of his scripts go to the silver screen. Monster House, (co-written with Harmon) which was originally intended to be live-action, was produced with Robert Zemeckis’ performance-capture technology and went onto snag an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature in 2006.

But it’s Schrab’s lo-fi self-produced animation work that really stands out from the pack. Take, for instance, his recent music video for Death Cab For Cutie. The mixed media puppetry and animation is so inventive and unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and he produced it for less than $5,000. Have a watch:

Now, two seasons into The Sarah Silverman Program, we catch up with Rob for a lengthy interview.

AARON: When you, Sarah and Dan Harmon first conceived The Sarah Silverman Program, were you talking about working your Draw-less Animation into the show?

ROB: A little bit of both. On the pilot I kind of kept my mouth shut, because everyone, with the exception of Dan Harmon and Sarah, was on the fence about me directing. The only work I had on my reel was stuff like the Heat Vision and Jack title sequence, Robot Bastard and Twigger’s Holiday. Everything was absurd, colorful, crazy and kind of a living cartoon. So I kept my mouth shut and said I’ll use this pilot as an experiment to just do scenes with people talking and still have it be entertaining - but put a little bit of flair every now and then.

Now when the second episode came along, I really wanted to try to some more animation - because its a style you won’t see anywhere else on TV. It’s also one thing I know I can do well and rather cheaply. My plan was to build everything myself, and I bring along Sevan Najarian, my After Effects wizard who coordinates everything. We work really well together as a team because not only is he a great technician, but he’s also a good animator.

Whenever I’m working on a project, I want to make it into something that I would tune into. So whenever you see stuff like that, that’s me saying “Well, if I heard about this, or I saw a commercial, I would be Tivo’ing it or I would buy this DVD. I think that’s the difference between our show and like another comedy that you see on TV. I’d hope you’re more likely to buy our DVD than a DVD of another sitcom. I buy DVDs of The Mighty Boosh or Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show and that kind of stuff. Hopefully there’s enough people out there that like our stuff too.

AARON: Tell us about the animation you produced for the recent Pee episode.

ROB: I’m very proud of that because it was the biggest, longest version of that look we’ve done on the show. It’s not exactly as complicated as, for instance, the Death Cab for Cutie music video I made. That one had a lot of layers going on.

AARON: Check out some of the animation from the Pee episode:

AARON: I’ve seen your home studio - you’re the king of DIY production. It feels like you took that up a notch or two.

ROB: But I’m still making the puppets out of cardboard and t-shirts. I think the only thing I actually bought was ping pong balls for the turtle eyes. For everything else I would dig through my t-shirts for greenscreen material and dig cardboard out of the garbage. I have a lot of toys and things that I collect whenever I go to Toys “R” Us or Goodwill, and go “that’s a neat little toy” and I’ll pick it up for under $5.

AARON: So when you shot the Pee episode, how long did the puppet portion take?

ROB: It was a shorter day. It would have just been me, a cameraman and Sevan - but because of the studio we were in, we had to hire lighting guys and grips from the CBS stage. When we shot the Loch Ness monster episode, it was just me and Rhet Bear, the DP, and a bunch of people who just hung out (like my AD John O’Rourke) and a couple of kids from the office who wanted to watch how I do it. But it was pretty much a two-man job. I guess the day I trust other people to puppet my stuff, I could probably get done a little faster. When I’m puppeting, I don’t know what to ask for until I do it. By the time I figure out how to explain how to get an arm, which is not attached to the puppet to act like it’s attached to the puppet - I might as well just do it. And I’m still developing this process. As I continue to do it, I’ll hopefully gain more elves - more helpers.

AARON: Here’s a short documentary segment about Rob’s animation in Pee:

AARON: I’m guessing that if you were handed buckets of money, you wouldn’t spend it on the puppets, right?

ROB: Ya, if I got that kind of money, I would try to hire a bigger team to take some of the weight of me and Sevan to get it done faster - or make it more elaborate. We try to use every different type of animation known to man and mix it up into a pot - which becomes this Draw-less style. I’m hoping to add CGI stuff into it, but only to assist the visuals. I would add environmental things like backgrounds while still keeping that tactile, hands-on puppet approach. It would also be great to figure out how mix in stop-motion or After Effects keyframing. The more tools you use, the more the audience says “wait a minute - that looks like a puppet but there’s no way it could be a puppet.” When an effects team defaults to just a simple puppet, you’re thinking that it just a guy with his and up a puppet’s ass.

AARON: Is the dog poop sequence from Ringwald & Molly a good example of this mixed media approach?

ROB: That’s one of my prouder moments. I’m the kind of guy who will be quiet for a long time and then just start cracking up. Then I’ll be like, “I just thought of a funny way to make a cardboard dog take a shit.” Then the next thing is how do I write an episode that justifies that. What if Molly’s thing was watching dogs take a shit. I still think that project was probably my peak of humor.

AARON: Let’s watch Ringwald & Molly in Cannibal Holocaust:

AARON: I watched the piece you did with Indie Mogul and you picked up that dinosaur toy. Did you put that use right away?

ROB: I think I got that first dinosaur as a birthday present. I then went out and bought like three more, so I have 3 remote controlled dinosaurs ready to go for the day when somebody goes “we need some more robot dinosaurs.”

I love toys that are battery powered and make sound, but more importantly - move. And then I take bits and pieces of cardboard, old toys and other stuff and I hot glue them together. It just adds another level to the sculpture. And then I found those dinosaurs - they not only make noise, but they walk around and bite. In an upcoming episode (if you blink you’ll miss it) I did this shout-out to my film Robot Bastard. In The Sarah Silverman Program, Brian’s (played by Brian Posehn) favorite show is Doctor LaserRage. So we rebuilt the Robot Bastard hallway set, and we cast Christopher Eccleston as Dr. LaserRage. Which was a huge deal for me because he played Dr. Who in the revival that first year. So I can’t believe the life I’m living - directing Dr. Who on the set of Robot Bastard. I wanted to re-create the old-school Tom Baker Dr. Who show, so I brought one of the robot dinosaurs and greenscreened Eccleston shooting lasers at it. At that point you go - “who am I making this film for?” I think there’s a lot of people out there that will appreciate it. It’s so quick, and it doesn’t hurt anybody, so why not smile a little?

AARON: Here’s the Robot Bastard trailer:

AARON: How does TV writing differ from writing on a feature, like Monster House.

ROB: Monster House was an interesting thing, because that was the first paid gig that Dan Harmon and I had. That was back in 1998, and it sat on the shelf for a number of years. It was originally supposed to be a live-action movie and there was concern about how to do the house. Then motion-capture technology came out and it came back to life. For something like that, Dan and I went into Zemeckis’ company and pitched a bunch of ideas and they took a shine to Monster House and we wrote a script and redeveloped it and then it was tabled by a bunch of other writers who punched it up. But that was a pretty isolated process, whereas with The Sarah Silverman Program, we’ve got a team. Sometimes we divide a show up, give it out to several writers and the head writer will push it all together under one voice.

AARON: How do you come up with concepts for The Sarah Silverman Program? Do you guys do roundtable brainstorms?

ROB: We do everything. At the beginning of the season, our head writer Dan Sterling will send out an invite that says “We’re going to start writing on Monday. Please come in with 10 ideas, good or bad, and make sure a lot of them have to do with Sarah.” Then we have 10 writers each with 10 ideas and we pitch them to Sarah. If she likes your idea it goes up on the bulletin board. Then we flesh out the beginning, middle and end - or imagine a way to combine two ideas. For instance, if one is the Sarah story, what would be Steve and Brian’s story then we weave them together and have them dovetail at the end?

AARON: Music often works its way into the show…

ROB: Sarah and her sister will sometimes come up with a song, or sometimes we’re goofing around and someone starts singing and improving and someone hits record and all of a sudden we have a song and we’re trying to write an episode around it.

AARON: Some of my favorite segments in Twigger’s Holiday were the songs.

ROB: Ya, that was an experiment. After Robot Bastard, I was so dependent on so many people. This is in 1999, before Final Cut Pro and DV cameras were cheap. I didn’t have an editing system, so I had to edit on an Avid in Milwaukee while I was based in LA. So a 15 minute short took like 2 years to make.

So I wanted to create a style in which I did everything from the ground-up. And that’s where Draw-less Animation style came about and then I made Ringwald & Molly. I do all the voices, I build all the props, animate, etc.

But after Ringwald & Molly, I really wanted to do more live-action stuff. I remember going “I just want to convince everyone that knows me that I’ve lost my mind.” So I figured I would dress up like an idiot, sing all these songs, add in special effects - and make this fast moving show that’s in your face. Working on that show was probably one of the happiest times of my life. Every month was like “What do I want to do next? What haven’t I done yet?” And then the song stuff kinda came out of me being dumb, but once I committed to it the songs came so naturally and I couldn’t stop writing songs. It was probably the best education for getting ready to direct on The Sarah Silverman Program.

AARON: What do you tell people who want to become a director?

ROB: Get your camera out and start shooting little things. It doesn’t have to be big - but just start shooting stuff on your own dime. When you start doing this, you learn when “you’ve got it.” That can often freeze you up on set. But when you’re shooting and its in your blood, your brain starts putting it together before you even get it into the computer.

AARON: Where do you find inspiration?

ROB: I am always looking on Ebay for something I’ve never seen before or clicking around Amazon or YouTube. I’ll just put together two words that I’ve never put together before. Maybe that will lead me to something that I never knew I’d loved.

Okay, I’m a nerd, by the way. I’ve seen sci-fi film, every 50’s B-movie - or at least heard of it. Outer Limits, Dr. Who, Star Wars, The Black Hole and everything inbetween. But then someone sent me a link to this YouTube clip of Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol). It was a black and white scifi show that is incredible. It’s sorta like an Outer Limits, Star Trek type show, and the design is just amazing. It don’t speak German and there’s no subtitles, but I’m just riveted. I’m thinking “How come I’ve never heard of this?” And thanks to YouTube, I did. So there’s gotta be some more crap out there that I haven’t seen.

AARON: What’s your take on fan films?

ROB: I like how Lucas embraced the fan films - it was such a brilliant idea. There was a time when if anybody was going to shut you down it was Lucas or Spielberg. But they probably figured out that it’s just free advertising and they keep the characters alive in between the shitty movies. I mean, most of the fan films are better than the new Star Wars movies.

AARON: What else are you working on?

ROB: I’m working on a spec script that I wrote on the side between seasons. I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve always loved movies and the people I look up to most are feature film directors, so I’m hoping to parlay the success of The Sarah Silverman Program into me directing a feature.

AARON: Is the spec intended to be animated?

ROB: It’s a live-action comedy/horror - sort of along the lines of Tremors. It would be a lot of fun. Now I’m trying to con somebody into letting a first time feature director do something like this.

AARON: Tell us about the short Sarah’s Magic Purse.

ROB: Justin Roiland (House of Cosbys), who wrote and animated it, wanted to do something in the vein of Rubik the Amazing Cube, or the Happy Days cartoon there was an alien girl. They always have to add in a fantasy element. So Justin wanted to recreate that type of show with Sarah and a magic purse. Rich Fulcher from The Mighty Boosh did the voice of Doug.

AARON: Will there be more of Justin’s animation in the future?

ROB: Right now we’re waiting to see if we get picked up. I think we’ve got 4 more episodes, and after Thanksgiving we should find out.