Initially, notes Aguilar, "We brought about 12 people over — artists as well as production management people." And it wasn't a brief visit, either. Chuang recalls, "I spent about three months over there initially — but I haven't been there since February because things have been going well!"

DreamWorks typically keeps a team of three or four of their experts at Imagi. "We've had character setup people and some pipeline people as well," says Chuang. "Joe was very instrumental in finding the resources that we needed to elevate the quality of the work. We didn't just put a bunch of storyboards over there and say, 'Good Luck.' We have been willing to send top talent from DreamWorks to help out."

Key among those people has been supervising animator Raman Hui, whose credits include supervising the animation on Antz and both Shrek movies. The Hong Kong-born Hui relocated from California to oversee Imagi's work, and Aguilar admits, "Having Raman over there makes all the difference. He has worked very hard at teaching them what our needs are and getting them to understand us."

Chuang stresses that the real education has come in the area of production processes. "One thing that we have at PDI/DreamWorks is knowledge about production that is very meaningful. We understand what shortcuts to take, which helps Joe and his team tremendously."

One of the challenges with the series is making scenes work with the technology at hand.

While Father of the Pride is being created at Imagi using Alias' Maya (bolstered by plug-ins that DreamWorks developed for its upcoming feature Shark Tale), the key issues don't revolve around technology. In Chuang's view, "There's really not much technology. I can't go to Joe and say, `We're going to take 12 weeks to develop this new effect.' We don't have the time or the budget for new technology! We've had to use what's in front of us and make it work."

Most notable to Chuang is that Father of the Pride is being rendered in Maya, too. "That surprises most people. When our Maya rendering team saw it, they asked, `What renderer did you use?' I said, `We used yours.' They didn't quite believe it."

While Chuang is a vocal advocate of using Linux-based hardware in digital production, he says, "This show is mostly done on Windows boxes. We didn't want to mess what works for Imagi. Having respect for their process is very important."

The prime technologies that DreamWorks has relied on for Father of the Pride have been in networking and videoconferencing, which facilitate communication between Glendale's staff of 85 — plus 13 writers, and the 240 Imagi people in Hong Kong. Of course, bridging 15 time zones can be tricky, and online communications have been key. As Chuang notes, "We use a lot of online review tools for this project. I've been trying to deal with this for many years at PDI, so I have a lot of experience — or at least I've made all the mistakes already.

"We're actually connected to Imagi on the TS3 network 24/7. We have videoconferencing 24/7 and we have online training. If they run into problems, we can bring the best DreamWorks people online and provide assistance. The idea is to really support them with the full-scale abilities of DreamWorks to make this possible. Joe has access to the best people from across the company, because we don't need them full time — we just need them to answer specific questions."

The networking approach used with Imagi isn't too different from what the company has used in past collaborations between Northern California-based PDI and DreamWorks in Southern California. Chuang adds, "I tested some of these ideas on our feature work, and we ended up adapting a lot of it for this project."

While the collaboration with Imagi started out with daily conferences, Chuang continues, "It's been going so smoothly that we've cut it down. Now we talk to them pretty much every other day. But we're so well synched-up electronically that we can see the work 24/7 and they can see our information 24/7, so it's really transparent."