Travis Braun talks about his all-new 3DCG animated kids’ series that follows a ‘doggone hard-working’ doggy construction crew of irresistibly cute and playful pups; show debuts today, June 14, on multiple Disney platforms.
While most adults a certain age spent their childhood racing Hot Wheels across their living rooms, Emmy Award-nominated T.O.T.S. writer and producer Travis Braun spent his childhood changing carburetors on the real deal.
“I grew up in an auto-racing family,” says the Texas native. “So, we had a family racing team, and I grew up building real racecars with my family. My dad is a race engineer, so he ran the crew and decided what changes to make on the cars. My brother is a racecar driver for NASCAR, Porsche, and Le Mans, and various other forms of racing. My brother would be putting wheels on the car while my mom was polishing bodywork and working on the engine. Honestly, it was a great childhood. It was such a fun way to grow up.”
Braun and his family spent their days traveling in a motorhome to races throughout the U.S., and the experience drew the family closer together. It built a strong bond that Braun was inspired to infuse into a show that eventually became Pupstruction.
“I also grew up with two chocolate labs that were puppies when I was a baby,” shares Braun. “We grew up together. They were instrumental to my childhood, so it felt natural to mix that into the show, too.”
Premiering Wednesday, June 14 on Disney Channel, Disney Junior, and Disney+, Pupstruction is an imaginative, music-filled animated series from Disney Branded Television that follows the adventures of a doggone hard-working construction crew ranging from some of the brawniest breeds to irresistibly cute and playful little puppies. The show centers on crew leader Phinny, an innovative young corgi who dreams up some of the biggest and wildest ideas to help his town of Petsburg. The other members of Pupstruction are Luna, a comically spontaneous sheepdog; Roxy, a can-do rottweiler; and Tank, a lovable, snack-obsessed mastiff.
“Building race cars really brought me and my family together and doing construction brings this pup family together,” notes Braun. “They are also a family-run crew, just like my family was.”
Despite growing up with dogs that are notoriously massive, Braun made Pupstruction’s lead Phinny the smallest pup on the crew (and one of the smallest in the series). But he proves one doesn’t need big paws to have big ideas, or successfully execute big projects like using a Ferris wheel to help people get across a river. Together, the Pupstruction crew uses mud, sweat, drool and plenty of heart to build and create.
“I relate to Phinny the most because I loved building with Legos and things, but I would take the instructions and throw them away,” admits Braun. “I just didn't want to follow those. I wanted to build my own thing. I didn't want to build a firehouse, I wanted to build a red spaceship. I always had a big imagination and wanted to put that into a small dog.”
He continues, “Phinny wants to be one of these construction pups so badly, but he's so small, and he doesn't feel like he can do the job. But he realizes that it's not about how big you are, it's how big your ideas are, and how big you dream. That's something I would have related to as a kid, and I hope other kids do as well. They might feel small and feel like they're limited by that. But they are only really limited by their imagination.”
Braun came up with the idea for Pupstruction while working on Season 2 of Disney Junior’s T.O.T.S., which is where he met Abigail Nesbitt and Victor Cook, who subsequently became Pupstruction’s director and executive producer, respectively.
“I think we were on T.O.T.S. for only maybe five or six months when Travis first mentioned to me this other project,” recalls Cook. “Working on the pilot didn’t happen until way later, but that's how early it started.”
Cook, like Braun, grew up with a machine expert for a dad. Unlike Braun, Cook didn’t take to the profession.
“My dad was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force, but I would never even pick up a screwdriver,” recalls Cook. “I had no interest in it and my dad never pushed it on me. He knew I was into drawing so he would always bring me Rapidograph pens, Zipatone paper, Bristol boards, comic books… he would really support what I wanted to do. That’s where I connected with Pupstruction. I feel Phinny’s parents are like that, where they want to help him achieve his dreams. We all have our own individual dreams, so I think it's really important that your family gets behind you on them.”
It was also an early goal that the T.O.T.S. crew, which had become like a family during the production, would be included in the production of Pupstruction; Braun notes that “once you find that camaraderie of a team that works well together and also has fun, you don't want to lose it.”
“We were always talking about bringing the T.O.T.S. team along for the ride,” says Nesbitt. “It is such a great team, and I was super excited that was what Vic and Travis wanted to do as well. That was a big component of the appeal.”
For Nesbitt, the deep connection she felt with Braun’s show had to do with the core of all great animation crews: teamwork.
“I've worked and directed with teams for my last three shows with Disney and I love how every person on the team has a component to making this final product,” she says. “What I told Travis is that I love how, on the pup team, each one plays a part when they build. Each one adds to the beauty that is Petsburg. I just think it's just so reflective of the artists and how we make one of these shows.”
Cook adds, “I’m not athletic or into sports at all, but working in animation and working on these shows is as close to a team sport as I’ve ever gotten. We all have our area of expertise that we contribute to making these shows.”
Within the crew, much praise has been heaped on Nesbitt for her and the design team’s exceptional work with creating the environments and buildings that make up Petsburg and cater to its diverse anthropomorphic animal population.
“You have so many different animals living in Petsburg - cats, dogs, hamsters, turtles, fish - and when you look at the design of Petsburg, it's not just buildings, it’s how these characters get along and how they get around,” explains Nesbitt. “So, you have canals, roads, a city hall that a fish lives in, you have hamster buildings and tubes that go around the city. It's all very challenging. We also had to be challenged in the way that we built some of the buildings, and some of the actual build sites have to be something that our pups can realistically do.”
In comes the show’s main building song, which dives into how this pup crew builds their projects, who is assigned to which job, and their work ethic as a team.
“The child watching can see the challenge that they have to put this skatepark together when they can't break down the boulder that's in the center of it,” says Nesbitt. “The challenges that they have on the show, we have to think about ahead of time to see how we can relay it to the audience in a way that makes sense.”
But out of all the buildings and transportation passageways Nesbitt designed for the series, the Pupstruction headquarters is her shining beacon of success.
“The headquarters, which Abby was instrumental in designing, actually functions,” shares Braun. “Every hinge and every hydraulic and every way that it expands actually is a functioning headquarters. It’s so thought out how all the levels can stack and unstack and fold on each other and it realistically works. That's a huge kudos to Abby and the whole design team for figuring that out.”
After it was designed, and because they had to model it, Nesbitt and her team created architectural maps of how the headquarters’ three levels connected.
“We could basically make this in real life because we have the blueprints,” says Braun.
Nesbitt continues, “We would just need a lot of land.”
Another challenge the Pupstruction production team faced was creating a (not creepy) squash and stretch effect for characters that were covered in CG-animated fur.
“On T.O.T.S., the characters had a sculpted look, but on this show, we have animated real hair onto each of the characters to more realistically convey their personalities,” explains Cook. “And, if you look closely, you can see Phin is like a diamond shape, Tank is a square, Luna is round… it all fits their personalities. And, for the way they move, we wanted a little bit of classic squash and stretch to really keep them alive and to also play out our funny gags. It’s a big back-and-forth process. You definitely don’t want to take it too far.”
The show’s overall tone is humorous and fun, but the messages Braun and his team hope to relay to kids are very serious, especially considering the show is speaking to a generation where kids have access to almost every toy and electronic mechanism under the sun that could keep them distracted for long periods of time. And yet, kids still want to play with the wrapping paper more than the toy wrapped inside. Pupstruction nurtures that “imaginative play” part of being a kid that could be lost in today’s society if we’re not careful.
“We talked about that a lot,” notes Braun. “The show is kind of the wish fulfillment of, ‘What if a kid had a construction company?’ and I think that's what sets us apart with this show specifically. Every episode is about some big idea that Phinny comes up with that is so wild and so outside of the box. It’s not just building a bridge; it's using a Ferris wheel to get people across the river. These are things a four-year-old would think of and not things a normal construction crew would ever make, but I think that's what makes our crew special, and our show special.”
He concludes, “To me, the best success would be if it's something that kids enjoy, but also that parents will watch along with their kids and that they can laugh and have a good time too. If we can bring a family together for 30 minutes on the couch, we’ve done our job.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
