Episode 74 – Bob Arvin

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:21:22
Bob Arvin
I fluctuated as to whether I wanted to be Walt Disney or Paul McCartney. Okay. I was like, which one do I want to be? Yeah, that’s the thoughts of a young kid. Sure. We want to be our inspirations. I found a book called The Illusion of Life. It was basically a handbook written by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of Walt’s nine old men.

00:00:21:24 – 00:00:35:19
Bob Arvin
It was like a how to manual. Of how to make a Disney movie. How to tell an animated Disney character how to design a Disney character. We walk in the lobby and I’m just I’m standing there like one. I’m going to get arrested in the very place where I’m trying to get a job.

00:00:35:20 – 00:00:36:24
Brandon Adams
Trying to get a job.

00:00:37:01 – 00:00:55:12
Bob Arvin
My mom never knew what to make of my career goals, saying I want to be an animator just sounded unrealistic. And after I’d been in Hollywood about a year, she apologized and said, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d ever make it. If you really want to get down to it, I helped design a Disney character.

00:00:55:14 – 00:00:57:15
Brandon Adams
Well, I mean that’s not many people can say that.

00:00:57:16 – 00:01:15:02
Bob Arvin
This is a great lesson in life is you never know who’s watching and what it could lead to.

00:01:15:04 – 00:01:33:04
Brandon Adams
Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Blueprint. Today we’re with Bob Marvin’s director movie producer. On a good day. So we’re going to see what he has to say. Check it out and do me a favor. If you guys could just hit that subscribe button at the bottom. It’s gonna help us get more of these stories out. And, just get us a little more exposure, so please.

00:01:33:04 – 00:01:35:11
Brandon Adams
And thank you. Hey, Bob. How are you today?

00:01:35:14 – 00:01:37:09
Bob Arvin
Doing good. Thanks for having me.

00:01:37:11 – 00:01:55:03
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Awesome. I really appreciate you getting on here, because you have a completely different story than we’ve told before, which is, you know, super cool, because I like to kind of dance in and out of the different avenues that people take. But yours is yours is off a different path. Tell me a little bit about yourself and where you grew up.

00:01:55:20 – 00:02:20:18
Bob Arvin
I grew up just outside of, Louisville, Kentucky. And a place called Oldham County. And, my dad was actually school superintendent, for 15 years. So pretty much from the time I think I was second grade till beyond my graduation, he met that school district, and, you know, it, it was a great place to grow up, because we were we were.

00:02:20:20 – 00:02:44:03
Bob Arvin
I mean, we could be in Louisville in, like, 15 minutes, do whatever we wanted. But I’ve got a nice rural style upbringing. That had pretty much been farmland, up until the time I was growing up there. And then kind of subdivisions started popping up. So we had a a nice hybrid. Yeah. It was a great time to be growing up.

00:02:44:04 – 00:02:45:05
Bob Arvin
A great place to grow up.

00:02:45:09 – 00:02:48:12
Brandon Adams
Yeah, I was family, like, growing up.

00:02:49:18 – 00:02:58:03
Bob Arvin
I had a really great family. I felt like I kind of grew up as Leave It to Beaver. I would have been Wally, the older brother.

00:02:58:05 – 00:02:58:21
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:03:00:09 – 00:03:25:05
Bob Arvin
You know, my my my dad, you know, being a community leader, certainly had an impact on me. My mom gave up her career as a teacher to raise my brother, and I, look after the home, which, you know, that was a great stabilizing factor. Not quite so common these days as it was back then, but, great community.

00:03:25:06 – 00:03:48:14
Bob Arvin
We went to a good church. Our high school had, like 1500 students, so it was a pretty good size. And I was plugged in with the marching band. So that was great, too. Because you have, like, 150 other people that have the same goals and you’re all trying to achieve something together and, and go through the highs and lows of life.

00:03:49:03 – 00:03:53:19
Bob Arvin
Together for four years. And so that was a lot of a lot of fun too.

00:03:53:22 – 00:03:58:14
Brandon Adams
At 1500 you, you grew up all the way k through 12 and you’re in the same town.

00:03:58:19 – 00:03:59:05
Bob Arvin
Yes.

00:03:59:11 – 00:04:02:03
Brandon Adams
And then was it same school? Was it divided?

00:04:02:19 – 00:04:31:20
Bob Arvin
Well, there were a number of elementary schools. And then, about the time I went into middle school, they split to two middle schools. So the community was growing since we were the next county over from Jefferson County, where Louisville was, in the 70s. They started bussing students to try and integrate, and, a lot of people that, you know, were wary about putting their kid on a bus to ride an hour across town.

00:04:31:20 – 00:04:50:12
Bob Arvin
And they were like, well, I can hop over the county line to Oldham and. And so many did. And so our community grew, and it’s continued to grow to this day. But we ended up with two middle schools at that point, but we still only had one high school. So we all kind of funneled towards that high school.

00:04:50:12 – 00:05:02:05
Bob Arvin
And and so that was pretty cool because you got to meet the people that were at the other middle school and make new friends. But there was also that continuity. There were people that I graduated with that I’d known since first grade.

00:05:02:18 – 00:05:10:09
Brandon Adams
Yeah. When you were in high school, were you into other things like sports or art or theater or anything like that?

00:05:10:11 – 00:05:35:23
Bob Arvin
Yes. I It was a, it was a hard choice for me between music and art. Okay. Because in middle school, I got to do both. I got to take an art class, and I. And I was in the band. What do you play? Trumpet. Okay. And, But I’d played, piano since first grade, and I still do okay to this day, but, you know, I had to make a tough choice.

00:05:35:23 – 00:05:54:00
Bob Arvin
Am I going to. Am I going to be in band or art in high school? And I got to do both. I didn’t take the art class but you know, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that my dad was school superintendent, but I, they, I was continually asked. It actually started in eighth grade.

00:05:54:00 – 00:06:05:15
Bob Arvin
They wanted the school mascot on the wall. And so my art teacher had me, spearhead a group of, like, ten students to to our our mascot was the colonel. And Colonel.

00:06:05:15 – 00:06:06:02
Brandon Adams
Sanders.

00:06:06:06 – 00:06:28:22
Bob Arvin
Well, that we we made him look more like a. Yeah. Well kind of but not in white. But, we, we painted the colonel up on, the, the gym wall. And so that kind of planted the seed in the, the principal’s mind that we could do that. Yeah. And so he asked me to do another one that I did on my own.

00:06:28:22 – 00:06:52:14
Bob Arvin
And so by the time I got to high school, I kind of became known as the guy that was painting the murals. So the whole time I was in high school, I painted various mascots on the walls, I painted. We had two gyms, once for the girls team and one for the boys teams. I painted both gym floors, and, and our, our girls team won the state championship my senior year.

00:06:52:16 – 00:07:00:10
Bob Arvin
That’s awesome. And, it was amazing for me because I’ve been following that girls team since I was in elementary school. Yes, our neighbor was on the tour.

00:07:00:10 – 00:07:01:04
Brandon Adams
We all. Yeah.

00:07:01:05 – 00:07:19:02
Bob Arvin
Yeah. And so the fact that we won on the last second shot my senior year was just amazing. So that summer after my senior year, they hired me to paint a mural dedicated to that team on the wall at cool. And it survived until six months ago.

00:07:19:04 – 00:07:19:24
Brandon Adams
Oh, okay. What happened to.

00:07:19:24 – 00:07:25:17
Bob Arvin
It? They tore down the building. Okay. So it lasted all the way up to the end of that building.

00:07:25:18 – 00:07:28:19
Brandon Adams
Do you ever go touch it up or anything? No. Anybody touch it.

00:07:28:19 – 00:07:33:06
Bob Arvin
Up? No. I use sign painters. One shot that lasts for an eternity.

00:07:33:07 – 00:07:34:07
Brandon Adams
Is it indoors?

00:07:34:09 – 00:07:35:17
Bob Arvin
It was indoor. Okay. Yeah.

00:07:35:19 – 00:07:37:19
Brandon Adams
So could last for an eternity.

00:07:37:21 – 00:07:53:22
Bob Arvin
That they don’t make paints like that anymore. But, Yeah, I. When I found that sign. Painters one shot. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. But the one very nice and smooth, durable. And the colors were just as vibrant the day they tore it down. I just want to put it up back in 86.

00:07:54:03 – 00:07:58:09
Brandon Adams
That’s amazing. So you thought maybe I’m going to be an artist coming out of this?

00:07:58:11 – 00:08:21:00
Bob Arvin
I fluctuated as to whether I wanted to be Walt Disney or Paul McCartney. Okay. I was like, which one do I want to be? Yeah. You know, that’s that’s the thoughts of a young kid. Sure. We want to be our inspirations, but, I was really leaning towards music. When I got out of high school, but I kept getting the art gigs.

00:08:21:21 – 00:08:26:15
Bob Arvin
And, so that’s where I kind of, gravitated towards.

00:08:26:17 – 00:08:32:13
Brandon Adams
So you were, you were, you played the Trump in the piano and you were a songwriter, I’m guessing.

00:08:33:00 – 00:08:52:13
Bob Arvin
Somewhat. Yeah. Okay. We had a band that we were trying to we did the demo and, one of one of my, side hustles when I was in college. I ended up working for several radio stations doing their promotional artwork, and, I finally got to work for the cool radio station that did the rock and roll music.

00:08:52:14 – 00:09:16:16
Bob Arvin
Yeah. I started adult contemporary, but I was like, it really like to be over there. Yeah. And, part of the deal was they let me use their, studio at night, and, so we would never, I mean, you know, this was early 90s. So we were on one inch tape. You know, the best that a kid like me could have done back then was maybe like one of those.

00:09:16:21 – 00:09:38:24
Bob Arvin
What was it, a fast X cassette four track. Yeah. And here we were with a one inch eight track and, and, they gave me free rein in the evenings, and, it was amazing. So, you know, we kind of. We fooled around in there for about a year, and, I didn’t know anything about engineering, so the recording sounded pretty, pretty lame.

00:09:38:24 – 00:09:43:07
Bob Arvin
But. Yeah, but some of the songs we came up with were we’re halfway decent, but.

00:09:43:07 – 00:09:46:24
Brandon Adams
So what happened? You guys just started to break up people. Life happens. Kind of.

00:09:47:03 – 00:10:11:23
Bob Arvin
Yeah. I mean, you know how it is with a band and especially the, the, the folks that we had in the group. We’re all very talented, but, you know, the typical career path, they were going to school to study to be X, Y and Z, and that’s what they went did. You know, it was a little more different for me.

00:10:12:00 – 00:10:37:23
Bob Arvin
The main reason I went to college was because my dad was a school superintendent. My mom was a teacher. My, my mom’s mother, she had gone and finished her schooling in her 40s. And my, my grandfather didn’t get to finish high school because he went to World War two. Okay. So the mentality then was you got to go to college.

00:10:37:24 – 00:11:02:16
Bob Arvin
You’re not going to be anything yourself unless you go to college. And I really wasn’t into it surely. And and the fact that while I was there, I was getting gigs working for the radio stations and, I was getting all sorts of client gigs. They wouldn’t pay much, but I was working. I was doing what I wanted to do, and I would ask people, what are you doing with your degree?

00:11:03:11 – 00:11:25:16
Bob Arvin
And they’d be like, nothing, nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it just deflated me. But I couldn’t pull myself out because I felt like I’d be letting my family down. Surely. So, you know, that’s like 44 or 5 years of my life just kind of bouncing back and forth between where I really should have been focused and going and trying to do what I was supposed to be doing.

00:11:25:17 – 00:11:34:09
Brandon Adams
When you took, so so you chose art or music in, in school or business or what was, was a degree in.

00:11:34:11 – 00:12:02:04
Bob Arvin
Well, I knew I wanted to be an animator. Okay. And back then, that would have meant hand-drawn animation. Yep. And that. And the only game in town really anymore was was Disney. And they were kind of down and out. Yeah. But what really influenced me in those high school years. I mean, it was it was like a blessing to me that Disney was down and out because what basically what they were doing was churning through all their old library to try and make a buck.

00:12:03:06 – 00:12:20:10
Bob Arvin
They really haven’t changed much, though, having it’s felt like the Disney Channel. I mean, I remember when we got cable TV for the first time and it was amazing. I was like, oh, we went from four channels to 40 and one of them is the Disney Channel, and I can watch Disney til my eyes fall out and.

00:12:20:24 – 00:12:48:09
Bob Arvin
They were putting on documentaries about nine old men that were Walt’s top tier animators. They were, they were running all behind the scenes from their golden era in the 40s. I was like, oh, man, that looks like a lot of fun. They’re bringing these characters to life. I know how much I love these movies. And, I was at the mall one day, and, in the book store?

00:12:48:10 – 00:13:15:12
Bob Arvin
Yes. There used to be malls and bookstores, and I found a book called The Illusion of Life, and it was about an inch thick, and it was basically a hand book written by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of Walt’s nine old men. It was like a how to manual. Of how to make a Disney movie, how to tell to animate the Disney character, how to design a Disney character, everything.

00:13:15:12 – 00:13:46:03
Bob Arvin
I mean it’s the storytelling aspect. You know why you would put your camera a certain way, why you do certain color palettes. I mean, you know, I went from just watching movies to studying them and figuring out, oh, this is why they’re evoking a certain emotion at certain moments in a film and how they did it. And that, you know, you start to realize that all these moments are designed and really, you know, people pore over how to to achieve that.

00:13:46:05 – 00:14:10:12
Bob Arvin
And so here I am watching Ollie Johnston on the television on the Disney Channel being interviewed here. I have this book and I, I like I’m like, well, what the heck? I’m a you know, we don’t have the internet then. So I had to call information and I got, the phone number for Disney Studios. And I knew well he was retired, but I thought I’m gonna call and ask for him, see what happens.

00:14:10:14 – 00:14:40:04
Bob Arvin
And sure enough, the nice receptionist, like, well, Mr. Johnston doesn’t work here anymore. He’s retired, but he does check his messages periodically, so I’ll let him know you called. And, I must have been three months later, while I was at school, those three hour time difference in Kentucky and in Los Angeles. And my mom picks up the phone and they’re like, Will you accept a collect call from Ollie Johnston?

00:14:40:06 – 00:15:03:13
Bob Arvin
And my mom’s like, who? No. Click. Oh, no. And then as soon as she hung up, she was like, oh. Oh, no. Holly realized what had happened. And, during our dinner time, the phone rang again and they’re like, yes, what’s up? The card, the charges. I got to speak to Holly for like 45 minutes. Wow.

00:15:04:08 – 00:15:08:21
Bob Arvin
And, you know, I’ll remember that til the day I die.

00:15:08:22 – 00:15:11:01
Brandon Adams
What did you guys talk about?

00:15:11:03 – 00:15:30:00
Bob Arvin
Well, he was asking about me. It’s very gracious. He was. Because obviously he knew I must have been interested in animation. He, he he tried not to rain on my parade. But he was like it’s not like it used to be. Yeah. And he was, he was right. You know they had the young up and coming bunch back then.

00:15:30:03 – 00:15:48:12
Bob Arvin
They were about to come out with the Great Mouse Detective. Which isn’t one of the more memorable movies. They just come off the failure of The Black Cauldron. They were really trying to find themselves, but you had some up and coming greats like Glen Keane in that bunch too. That, that you know really hadn’t come into their own yet.

00:15:49:09 – 00:16:10:23
Bob Arvin
But he told me about CalArts which is pretty much where animators would go get their training. Well he told me a few anecdotes about Walt and I honestly can’t even remember which ones he told me because I just it hit me that I’m talking to a guy that knew Walt Disney. It’s like I was 18 years old going geeking out too much to hear the rest of the story.

00:16:11:20 – 00:16:30:23
Bob Arvin
But we did bond a bit on. He asked me which Disney movie was my favorite and I told him The Jungle Book and he said that’s mine too. And I even watched The Jungle Book just a few months ago. I hadn’t seen it in years. And, it’s still just as great as it ever was.

00:16:31:03 – 00:16:56:14
Bob Arvin
I think that is probably some of the best animation was that will ever be done. But, yeah. So that really skewed me towards the animation. But I wasn’t ready to leave home. Yeah. And you know not only did our girls basketball team win the state championship, but the University of Louisville won the national championship. Okay, same year.

00:16:56:18 – 00:17:25:20
Bob Arvin
Right. And I was a big U of L fan. And I was like, that would be fun to be in the Louisville Pep Band and go to those NCAA ball games. And for those that don’t know NCAA ball in Kentucky is like what what football is in Texas. Yeah. And so I, I did manage to get in the pep band and I’d go to academic counseling and they’d be like, well, what do you want to do?

00:17:25:23 – 00:17:32:23
Bob Arvin
And I’m like, I’d like to work at Disney, be an animator. And then the work every time was like, what are you doing here? Yeah. And, you know.

00:17:32:23 – 00:17:33:24
Brandon Adams
Like, have you seen the pep band?

00:17:34:01 – 00:17:54:22
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Yeah. So I probably would have pulled myself away sooner. Yeah. If, if it hadn’t been for being in the in the pep band, and I had to be in the marching band to be in the pep band. So I did four more years of marching band in college. But it wasn’t until I finally pulled myself away.

00:17:55:09 – 00:18:10:18
Bob Arvin
From college. And that was hard. I mean, my last semester at U of L, I mean, I, I was probably clinically depressed. I mean, I didn’t come out of my dorm room. I was just like, I don’t want to be here. I don’t know what I want to do.

00:18:10:20 – 00:18:13:10
Brandon Adams
You know, it was coming to an end and you know not what road to take.

00:18:13:14 – 00:18:31:14
Bob Arvin
Yeah. You know I, I didn’t know how my family would react. I mean you know they weren’t going to disown me or anything. Right. But you know, you build up these fears in your mind. And I just decided I’m going to work. Whatever crap job I have to. I was like, I’m still working at the radio station. That’s pretty cool.

00:18:31:14 – 00:18:42:21
Bob Arvin
But it certainly wasn’t paying the bills. But, I ended up rooming with anywhere from 2 to 3 other guys. This.

00:18:42:21 – 00:18:43:19
Brandon Adams
Is after you graduated?

00:18:43:22 – 00:18:44:23
Bob Arvin
Well, I never graduated.

00:18:44:23 – 00:18:45:06
Brandon Adams
You never.

00:18:45:06 – 00:19:10:24
Bob Arvin
Graduate. Never graduated. Okay. I just stopped. And these other guys were about a year out from graduating, and so we just went out, got an apartment together, and, my grandfather was, was a shell dealer for 30 some odd years. In the Louisville area. And that had been my first job. And so he was retired now.

00:19:10:24 – 00:19:37:09
Bob Arvin
So I ended up working at other shell stations. And, after that, we, we moved to another apartment that was right across the street from the Sears catalog call center. And we all went, worked over there. It was part time. You made 100 bucks a week and they didn’t want anybody benefits. So they captured how many hours you work.

00:19:37:09 – 00:19:38:00
Bob Arvin
So I was doing.

00:19:38:00 – 00:19:38:20
Brandon Adams
29.5.

00:19:38:20 – 00:20:04:23
Bob Arvin
Hours. So I was doing the radio station. It’s the gas station and the, the Sears call center. Yeah. And when I was at Sears, I started to get to use some of my art. I did their, Christmas cards one year and then when they have special promotions for the staff, I do like some decorations they put up on the wall that, I do them from scratch by hand.

00:20:04:23 – 00:20:25:23
Bob Arvin
And, so some people saw that and, you know, and this is a great lesson in life is you never know who’s watching and what it could lead to. One day I’m just sitting there and the if we didn’t really have cubicles, they were like they were like pinwheels. And we were each yeah. You know a spoke in the wheel basically.

00:20:26:15 – 00:20:46:17
Bob Arvin
And the guy that was next to me leans over in between calls and he’s like, dude, you want to work at the track. And we had just had the Kentucky Derby and he was referring to Churchill Downs. Yeah. And the funny thing is the only time I’ve been to Churchill Downs was four times with the Yeovil Marching Band to play my old Kentucky home before the eighth race.

00:20:47:21 – 00:21:14:05
Bob Arvin
And you know, it’s weird how you could live so close to a famous landmark like that. I lived 30 minutes away my entire life and didn’t see it until I was 18 years old. Yeah. But he leans over because you want to work at the track, and I’m like, sure. What? What what? Yeah. A new company had just taken over the video production, and, they brought in a mobile truck from Carlsbad, California.

00:21:14:07 – 00:21:42:15
Bob Arvin
And the guy that had been running the graphics computer was going back to California, and they needed somebody to basically be a button pusher. And, so I was like, yeah, sure. Give it a shot. And these guys were paying 75 bucks a day. Supposed to be 100 bucks a week at the Sears catalog. Yeah. And I they thought I’d just be sitting there typing and then I realized what they had, they had a Wacom tablet there.

00:21:42:20 – 00:21:45:01
Bob Arvin
Nice. And,

00:21:45:03 – 00:21:53:05
Brandon Adams
Wacom tablet for people that don’t know is, something you can draw on with a pen to kind of translate whatever. You’re just, like, drawing on paper, but digitizes it.

00:21:53:06 – 00:22:10:18
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Screen. But back then, they didn’t have a screen on it. It was just this rubber piece. And in the production truck, my, I had three small monitors that, you know, were basically for me to see the output of the computer and the the preview of what I was going to be sending to the, the main switcher.

00:22:10:20 – 00:22:33:09
Bob Arvin
But, so I couldn’t see what I was doing on this, so I’d have to put it up on the monitor. That was like eight feet away. So I’m like, drawing like this. Look at this stuff that across the room. But I started creating custom graphics for them. And then after every single race, we weren’t tied into the main computer to get all the racing results.

00:22:33:11 – 00:22:54:11
Bob Arvin
So I would have to, see the report and type in fast. And, you know, when you have a jockey with a name like Eddie DeLuise and you’re typing that repeatedly, you know, you’re like, there’s got to be a better way. Yeah. And one of the other interests that I did have growing up was, in eighth grade.

00:22:54:11 – 00:23:13:23
Bob Arvin
My dad got me a RadioShack color computer, and it had 4K of Ram, and you had to program it using Basic, and it was. It sounds so limiting, but it was amazing because if I wanted that computer to do something, I had to figure out how to make it happen. It wasn’t just oh I’m going to download something, install it and run.

00:23:13:23 – 00:23:35:14
Bob Arvin
It was like I had you know. Code it essentially. Yeah. And so I tapped into some of that and started opening up the, it turned out that graphics computer had a scripting language that I was able to figure out. And even though I couldn’t keep a database, I figured out how to get a script to write another script.

00:23:35:16 – 00:23:54:21
Bob Arvin
And so I was able to, at the beginning of the day, essentially create all these little sub scripts that had all the jockey names, all the owner and trainer names, the horse names. And so I could quickly, at the stroke of a key, now get Eddie Del Del, who says his name in there instead of having to type it every time and hope I didn’t misspell it.

00:23:54:22 – 00:24:23:00
Bob Arvin
Yeah. And so, that caught their attention. And the owners of that production truck were wanting to get their home track of Del Mar, in San Diego. The contract there and they had actually offered to do a cease and a production free to try and get the contract. And they needed a operator to go through that.

00:24:23:00 – 00:24:34:21
Bob Arvin
So I was the exact same production truck. But they asked me to go out there for the summer meet as they’re out there for like six weeks in San Diego. And it was weird opening the door and instead of seeing South Louisville there was the beach.

00:24:34:23 – 00:24:39:05
Brandon Adams
Yeah, that’s a different, different look. Yeah. Nice. Wake up.

00:24:39:07 – 00:24:47:00
Bob Arvin
But that was my first taste of living in California. Yeah. So I went from the Sears catalog to a stint in California just.

00:24:47:00 – 00:25:06:09
Brandon Adams
By somebody leaning over and go. Yeah. You know, it’s funny how you walk through your life and you meet these people all, all over the place, right? And, sometimes just saying yes opens the doors for a lot of other things because people are actually scared to take those steps sometimes, right? Or listening when someone says, hey, man, I got something to connect you with.

00:25:06:09 – 00:25:14:18
Brandon Adams
You know, so San Diego was it. You’re out there and you’re you’re checking that place out and you think, man, I’m really close to Cal Art right now.

00:25:14:20 – 00:25:44:05
Bob Arvin
Exactly. So I decided I was going to come back, and, so I think about six months later, I did decide to come back on my own, which meant that I had to cut loose all the safety nets all the way from gas stations to radio stations to working at the track. And, I just kind of put my finger down on the map not knowing anything about Los Angeles.

00:25:44:07 – 00:26:09:24
Bob Arvin
And, I didn’t pick the best neighborhoods. It could have been worse. It certainly could have been worse. But, the kid that went out with me, he had just graduated high school and wanted to just go do something. And, and so we were out there six months and so my plan was work prep jobs and try and get into CalArts.

00:26:11:09 – 00:26:31:17
Bob Arvin
And I submitted my portfolio and they rejected me. And I had submitted, you know, the professional work I been doing for the radio stations and stuff and like, well guess it wasn’t meant to be and I, it was interesting because I was like I’m not, I’m not just going to kind of take no, I want to get some feedback.

00:26:31:17 – 00:26:50:09
Bob Arvin
And so I went in person to pick up, my portfolio and said, can I speak to somebody to go over this with me and tell me what I could work on for the next submission? And and it was the weirdest thing. The guy’s looking at it and he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know why you didn’t get it.

00:26:50:11 – 00:27:12:00
Bob Arvin
I mean, you know, there’s certainly lots of areas that I could have improved on that, that Cal Arts can help me with. But I guess in comparison to the submissions that did make it in. So, I mean, I figure I probably submitted late in the process and they had probably already filled their slots. And that’s fine because I don’t think that would have been a good path for me.

00:27:12:00 – 00:27:27:13
Bob Arvin
Yeah. But for many people that was the right path, but not for me. So I made it. I made it six months in California, of course, after I got rejected, then I really didn’t know, what I would be doing.

00:27:27:15 – 00:27:44:08
Brandon Adams
And, how does that sit on you? Like, do you think? I mean, I’ve taken my life. I’ve uprooted everything. I’ve given up, everything that I’ve made to this point. I came all the way down here and knocked on the door. And not only did they give me a no, but they said they didn’t even know why. They gave me a no.

00:27:44:10 – 00:27:50:12
Brandon Adams
Now, are you questioning what’s the next step? Because this may be harder than what you think. Or where are we at with this?

00:27:51:20 – 00:28:20:12
Bob Arvin
I certainly didn’t give up on myself. And even when I was depressed at the University of Louisville, I never really gave up on myself. I may not have known what the next step was, but, Yeah, during that time in California, it was tough. Funny enough, I was working, another Sears job because I was, working, selling, scratch and down appliances and furniture.

00:28:21:24 – 00:28:47:15
Bob Arvin
And, and just like that guy that leaned over to me, this couple came in, you know, probably in their 60s, they bought a sofa from me, and somehow we got to talking about church, and I was like, you know, I haven’t been to church in years. I really should start going back. And they’re like, like, you know, we love our church.

00:28:47:17 – 00:29:11:21
Bob Arvin
Like, we go to church at Rocky Peak up in Chatsworth, you know, check it out. And I go, all right. So my last month there and I didn’t know it was my last month there, I started going up there, really enjoyed the messages and, and the people I was meeting. And then my roommate said, dude, I’m joining the Air Force.

00:29:11:23 – 00:29:38:12
Bob Arvin
So I couldn’t pay rent on my own. Yeah. And so, I had to go back home. And, and so I actually went back and worked a meet at Churchill Downs to earn enough money to go back and get my stuff in California and bring it home. Bring it home. But since race meets only lasts for, you know, a couple of months, that only, you know, that’s not a long term solution.

00:29:38:15 – 00:29:40:13
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Where’d you keep your stuff? While you were gone?

00:29:40:20 – 00:29:42:00
Bob Arvin
My roommate was still there.

00:29:42:00 – 00:29:42:17
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:29:44:07 – 00:30:02:10
Bob Arvin
So, Yeah, I left him on his own for about a month while I went to back home and worked. And then he joined the Air Force and and, I didn’t start doing that ever again. He joined the Air Force. You know, I started to keep in touch with somebody. He was a he was he was a great guy.

00:30:02:11 – 00:30:03:20
Brandon Adams
You ruined my dream.

00:30:03:22 – 00:30:23:10
Bob Arvin
But, I when his fault, he had to go his own way and and just a few months after we left was the Northridge earthquake. So we we’ve been riding that out. Yeah, right. I mean, just like, two miles away from the epicenter. So I’m kind of grateful that I was back in Louisville, and all we had was like two feet of snow that day.

00:30:23:12 – 00:30:54:02
Bob Arvin
I’ll take that. But, the, the real story of my life is how like, even when I wasn’t following God he was still working in my life. That guy leaning over. Me finding that church in, in in Chatsworth. Now I was back in Louisville going. Now what. And one of the gas stations you know needed me to fill in for a third shift.

00:30:54:08 – 00:31:12:01
Bob Arvin
They didn’t hire me back but they needed me to kind of fill in for the late guy, which is if he or the normal late guy usually kept a little revolver in his back pocket. It’s, I’m sitting there at that gas station just reading the classified ads, trying to figure out what am I going to do?

00:31:12:03 – 00:31:39:00
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Is it felt like I kind of out of the start and then the already petered out. And I looked up and there was this ad the local NBC affiliate wanted an art director and I thought my experience at the track maybe. Maybe I could land that job. And while I was working at the track, I’d made a demo reel and I’d put it on beta esp a professional format.

00:31:39:24 – 00:31:56:18
Bob Arvin
So that I could make as many that was I want. Problem is I didn’t have a beta ESP deck so. I was like where am I going to get this dubbed. And while I worked at the track this guy named Dave would pop his head in because he worked on like the racing Rick Capp show every week.

00:31:57:14 – 00:32:25:09
Bob Arvin
For this company called Video Bread b r e d like thoroughbred. And I thought well that got Dave Eddie over. I bet they could dub my of my demo reel. So I called up I’m like yeah come on bring it down. And so Dave gives me a tour while this guy Jamie’s dubbing my demo reel.

00:32:25:11 – 00:32:43:15
Bob Arvin
And, off on the side of the edit bay is their graphics suite. And Dave goes in and introduces me to the woman working in there. And he’s like, hey, this is Bob. He’s applying for the art director’s job down at wave three. And and she’s like, oh, did so and so leave. And he’s like, oh, I don’t know.

00:32:43:17 – 00:32:48:00
Bob Arvin
Well, guess who got the job at wave three? That girl in that video.

00:32:48:03 – 00:32:52:17
Brandon Adams
Oh. She left. Yeah. She’s like, oh let me go check that one real quick.

00:32:52:19 – 00:33:19:07
Bob Arvin
I wouldn’t have liked it it way three anyway. Yeah. It was kind of like the closed door CalArts the closed door at wave three. And but video Brett now needed a graphic artist. Perfect fit for me at that time. And computer graphics were brand new. Brand new. You know they’re invented really in the 70s and we had stuff like Tron.

00:33:21:18 – 00:33:55:09
Bob Arvin
We were, we were about at the time the Jurassic Park was hitting. And I was becoming a viable art form commercially and artistically. And what year is this. This would have been 93. Okay. And so video, Brett calls me and says I feel real bad. The only way that the woman found out about the job was because I told her while you were standing there, like, why just come down an interview with us?

00:33:55:10 – 00:33:59:08
Bob Arvin
Because we need somebody now.

00:33:59:10 – 00:34:24:17
Bob Arvin
Now this is where the story gets really weird. Yeah. So I go and interview with them that, that morning I had had a friend from high school that I hadn’t seen in ten years. And he had shown up and visited me in my apartment. And, I’m not I’m not a guy that. Hey, let’s go out to the bar or watch the game or that’s just not me.

00:34:24:17 – 00:34:51:00
Bob Arvin
But this guy was like, he’s like, hey, there’s some friends there watching the ball game down at the silo, which was this bar right around the corner from video. Brett. And and this was like a 20 minute drive from where I live. So it’s not like we’re just going around the corner. So we go down there and as we walk in there’s another guy standing at the end of the bar holding a VHS camcorder.

00:34:51:00 – 00:35:16:18
Bob Arvin
That was a childhood friend of my brother’s that had gone to Western Kentucky University and been in their video department. And I’m like, hey, I haven’t seen you in forever. What are you doing? And he’s like, I’m, I’m working with my pal over at Video Bread. And I’m like, sitting at a bar holding a VHS camcorder. I was like, what?

00:35:16:20 – 00:35:42:23
Bob Arvin
He’s like. He’s like, yeah, you want to go on over here? And I’m like. Like, I just interviewed there this morning. I don’t know. And this was like 11:00 at night. Yeah. And I’m like. I don’t know if it’s really good. I he’s like, oh, come on. Come on over. Yeah. So we walked over to Video Bread and the doors are completely unlocked, which I later found out was pretty typical there.

00:35:43:00 – 00:35:51:03
Bob Arvin
So it’s pitch dark outside. Doors are locked. We walk in the lobby, and I’m just. I’m standing there, like, going, I’m going to get arrested in the very place where I’m trying to get a job.

00:35:51:03 – 00:35:53:16
Brandon Adams
Trying to get a job. Knight of.

00:35:53:18 – 00:35:55:12
Bob Arvin
And,

00:35:55:14 – 00:35:56:15
Brandon Adams
Who’s actually casing the place?

00:35:56:16 – 00:36:18:18
Bob Arvin
So then the guy, Jamie, that had run my demo reel earlier that day comes out of the back and he’s like, hey, you were here earlier. And I’m like, yeah. And I was like, you ran my. You ran the dope on my demo reel. And I’m like, how do you know this guy? And and he’s like, oh, we went to Western Kentucky together.

00:36:18:18 – 00:36:53:09
Bob Arvin
And then and he’s like, what was your name again? I’m like, Bob Arvin. And he’s like, Arvin. It’s like Mike Irvin’s brother. And I’m like, yes. And so it turned out my brother had starred in all of Jamie’s student project videos at Western Kentucky while he was studying to get his degree in video production. So I’d seen all his projects of of exploding squirrels and stuff and, and so right there and, you know, everything was just like this big exhale.

00:36:53:11 – 00:36:57:13
Bob Arvin
And he’s like, it’s like, dude, you got the job. They feel so bad that.

00:36:57:15 – 00:36:58:08
Brandon Adams
And.

00:36:58:10 – 00:37:04:00
Bob Arvin
And sure enough, within a couple of days I was there working at video Brad.

00:37:04:02 – 00:37:21:10
Brandon Adams
That’s amazing. Like, so you’ve, you know, small world. Opportunity happens. Right? Door opens up. You go into something, you say it’s brand new out the rip is their expectations are telling you you need to have, you know, the skill sets. Or is it like, hey, this is something new. We’re going to learn this together.

00:37:23:02 – 00:37:44:05
Bob Arvin
Well, I mean, they were a well established video production company, but computer graphics were still emerging. So it wasn’t like you could just go to the local school and say, hey, I need a computer graphics artist. And they were really only looking for somebody that could make charts and graphs, and lay out text and that sort of thing.

00:37:44:07 – 00:38:02:03
Bob Arvin
So, they, you know, they really needed somebody to fill a seat. It was kind of like when I got the job at the track, they needed somebody to fill a seat. So you. Then you have an opportunity. What are you going to do with it? Yeah. So my time at video, Brad, there was a sofa in my office, and I.

00:38:02:06 – 00:38:21:13
Bob Arvin
I don’t even know why I rented an apartment during that time because I most of the time slept on that sofa in the office. I did all the work video Brad wanted me to do by day. But at night I discovered that they had, a 3D animation program, and it was so rudimentary by today’s standards. It was called Crystal Topaz 3D.

00:38:22:08 – 00:38:41:09
Bob Arvin
I think it was like 11 grand for a seat. Yeah. Run it on a 486 computer. I had like 256 megs of Ram. And it would only run on dos. Yeah. So I had to choose if I was going to use a painting program. I had to reboot going to windows to run high res Koufax which was my Photoshop.

00:38:42:03 – 00:39:07:09
Bob Arvin
And if I wanted to animate I had to go back into DOS and run Crystal Topaz. And you could only create basic shapes and extrude them and, from that I started building everything I could. And within a few months they were basically offering animation services. And so instead of going and spending tens of thousands of dollars a Cal Arts.

00:39:07:24 – 00:39:31:13
Bob Arvin
I got paid to do it to, to not only learn a craft, but a brand new craft that within a year after, you know, after Jurassic Park, everybody wanted an animator and there weren’t any. There weren’t any computer animators. You know that’s not enough to meet the demand. So I got paid to learn my craft instead of getting into debt.

00:39:31:18 – 00:39:50:14
Brandon Adams
That’s amazing. Learn it. That’s amazing. I actually went to school for 3D animation as well. So I worked on a Silicon Graphics machine and at the DOS, remote into it, and, was well outside of my skill set. I’d never touched a computer in my life and get to this point. So I’m kind of feeling some of the things you’re feeling right now, and it’s a kind of a cool journey.

00:39:50:14 – 00:40:06:21
Brandon Adams
So like, as you started to get in, I did not get paid to do mine. I had to pay to do it. So I caught on the other side of that. I was about, I graduated in 95 from, from high school. So, I was a few years behind you when it came to opportunities in the in, in that field.

00:40:06:21 – 00:40:15:23
Brandon Adams
But, where did you where did you go and how long did you stay inside of this one platform before? Some other ones really quickly came out.

00:40:16:03 – 00:40:49:09
Bob Arvin
I, you know, I started, being exposed to trade magazines. Yeah. Which I didn’t even know existed before. I worked at a post-production facility. And, I started reading about 3D studio, which was, version four on DOS. And I had to beg and plead, please give me this software. And they finally relented and, I had gotten a $500, Christmas bonus that year.

00:40:49:11 – 00:41:22:03
Bob Arvin
And when they did our employee evaluations a few months later, they discovered that I had spent my Christmas bonus on the Digimon training series for 3D studio. And since we didn’t have YouTube back then, this was like, it was amazing to watch somebody using the software and walk you through it and show you best practices. And, I mean, you could read a thousand, you know, computer manuals and not get the information that I got out of that training series.

00:41:22:05 – 00:41:43:10
Bob Arvin
Now we take it for granted. You know, you just do a quick YouTube search and. Yeah, there’s somebody, you know, going, you know, like and subscribe. And here’s how we do it. And but not then and the owners of video, Brad were like you, you spent your Christmas bonus on a video training series. You know they were like like I thought I was a nut.

00:41:43:14 – 00:41:45:20
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:46:08 – 00:41:48:04
Brandon Adams
Investing in yourself, though.

00:41:48:06 – 00:42:19:18
Bob Arvin
And what I ended up doing, you know, I started doing my own projects on the side, again, not going home, you know, but I, I had recently started playing ragtime piano music, so I wanted to push myself on the piano side. And, so I was playing Scott Joplin music at the time, and it occurred to me that ragtime is really regimented to eighth notes.

00:42:19:20 – 00:42:43:07
Bob Arvin
Very. So I could I can chart that out. And so I, I probably put on a metronome in my ear and I played it on my digital piano. And I, I basically did a version of the radio stations weasel mascot and dressed him up like you know, the Main street piano player, Disneyland or something.

00:42:44:04 – 00:43:10:07
Bob Arvin
And there were no, there were no, you know, armatures and 3D studio. So I had to do segmented geometry and bins and stuff, but I got that we used to play Maple Leaf Rag. And I didn’t even get to see it with sound until, because there we had one inch video decks.

00:43:11:04 – 00:43:35:05
Bob Arvin
Their newer fancier d two digital decks they didn’t want me anywhere near because my computer could only lay off one frame of animation at the time. And back in the days of video machines, they would have to do a five second pre-roll and a five second post roll. So if you’re going to lay off 300 frames of animation, that’s 300 times that that deck has to spin up, lay down one frame and spin back down.

00:43:35:07 – 00:43:59:02
Bob Arvin
So that’s a lot of wear and tear on the hardware. So they had me laying off to their old one inch tape decks and they really didn’t give a rip about anymore. And so my buddy Jamie married that together in the editing suite and, and it wasn’t until then that I even knew if I successfully got it in that weasel to push down the right keys at the right time, in sync with the music.

00:43:59:03 – 00:44:23:12
Bob Arvin
Yes. But I had that in my pocket and and I’d put the rest of the work. I’d done a video, Brad, and kind of cobbled together a demo reel. But, you know, what was I going to do with it? I was in Louisville, Kentucky. Where else was I going to go? I did have one other potential.

00:44:23:14 – 00:44:41:00
Bob Arvin
I don’t even know if I should share this, but, there was one company in Louisville that tried to steal me away, but they were video production on the side, and they had another business that they did by day, and they were like, well, when you’re not working on video production, you might have to do some production work for our main product.

00:44:41:00 – 00:44:53:09
Bob Arvin
And I’m like, well, what? What is? And like, it sounds like something out of Austin Powers. But they were like, well, they’re penis and larger. Oh. And I’m like, I think I’ll pass. Yeah.

00:44:53:11 – 00:44:57:02
Brandon Adams
Thank you. But I couldn’t stare at that all day long. Yeah.

00:44:57:04 – 00:45:23:16
Bob Arvin
Yeah. So, Yeah. So what was, what was I going to do with this demo reel? But I had it. And, one day, a video where one of our main clients was like, hey, again, being in the right place at the right time. This client goes tonight at the Louisville Graphic Design Association. This, producer from the home improvement TV show is going to be speaking.

00:45:24:02 – 00:45:46:07
Bob Arvin
You guys want to go and I’m thinking, yeah. But Jamie and the other editor that we’re up for and I’m like, yeah, I’ll go hang out with you guys. Well, I was the Louisville Graphic Design Association. These were people that did illustrations for the newspaper and local magazines. They didn’t know anything. But we, we were the only three in the room that knew anything about video production.

00:45:47:13 – 00:46:10:15
Bob Arvin
And so this guy Jim was up there talking about all these things and we were the only ones getting it. We were even sitting in the back, you know. Yeah. So we went and talked to him afterwards and he was like, yeah, here’s here’s my number. If you’re ever in LA, let me know. Yeah. So, the whole time as a video brand, I just work, work work work work.

00:46:10:17 – 00:46:39:15
Bob Arvin
I, I dove headfirst into what they had for me. Building up my skill set. And after a couple of years, I, you know, I had, like, two weeks worth of vacation built up. And so I’m like, I want to take a road trip. I bought myself a 94 Firebird formula that at T tops. And, first time I’d had a, like, nice car like that, that, but, not that I was making that much a video, Brett.

00:46:39:15 – 00:47:07:15
Bob Arvin
But when you’re that age, you’re like car. Yeah. Yeah. But, so I was going to drive cross-country, and that’s same friend from high school, was working out and Hollywood as a group, but he was visiting family in North Carolina, and I was like, I was like, well, why don’t I pick you up at your grandparents? And, let’s just drive to LA, I’ll drop you off and I’ll drive back.

00:47:07:17 – 00:47:27:01
Bob Arvin
And so we just made up the trip as we went along. And, but I had called that guy Jim and at Home Improvement and said I’m going to be dropping off my friend in LA on such and such a date. And he’s like, well that sounds great. He’s like, I’m going to be working. So it’s gonna be a working lunch.

00:47:27:01 – 00:47:42:06
Bob Arvin
But you know, you’re welcome to join me in the in the edit bay. I’m like, yeah, that’d be cool. See a Hollywood edit Bay. So the night before, my friend and I had been in in Yellowstone National Park. Just nowhere near L.A., right?

00:47:42:08 – 00:47:43:00
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:47:43:02 – 00:47:51:18
Bob Arvin
But and again, this was before GPS and being able to get estimates. And you know we’re dealing with paper maps and and

00:47:51:20 – 00:47:55:09
Brandon Adams
Gas station down the road which was on the left.

00:47:56:19 – 00:48:26:11
Bob Arvin
Well they closed the southern entrance on Yellowstone National Park. We had to go out through Montana. So here we are coming out through Montana, basically 20 mile. Less than a day before I’m supposed to go meet Jim in Burbank. So we drove all day. All night. Just rotated. You know, trying to sleep drive. Trying to sleep drive.

00:48:26:13 – 00:48:59:17
Bob Arvin
We got into LA like, two hours before my meeting. I had enough time for, like, 30 minutes of this and a quick shower. And I, I walked into a modern video film right across the street from Warner Brothers in Burbank. And I was just so out of it. I mean, I was just like, and for whatever reason, I mean, I still hadn’t really been going to church, but for whatever reason, I was I pushed the door open at Warner in video film.

00:48:59:17 – 00:49:26:11
Bob Arvin
I said, Lord, whatever your will is. And, so I’m sitting in, the Henry Suite, which was a digital computer platform where they would do a lot of paint work and, again, stuff you could do on an average PC now, but then it you had this, you know, probably cost $100,000 for a scene. And then they build another $200,000 room around it, you know, and that’s what kind of room we were in.

00:49:26:13 – 00:49:44:22
Bob Arvin
And I’m sitting there with Jim and he’s like, hey, good to see you. And they were editing some promos for a pilot that he was helping put together. And, now we were in the Henry Suite, but then this other guy named Henry, his name was Henry. He comes bouncing in the room and he’s like, hey Jim.

00:49:44:24 – 00:50:04:09
Bob Arvin
Like who’s your friend. He’s like oh this is Bob. He’s like hey Bob what do you do? And I’m like I’m a computer animator. And, and Henry’s a very bouncy kind of guy. He literally jumped a foot backward and he’s like really got a demo reel,

00:50:04:11 – 00:50:06:03
Brandon Adams
In my pocket, you know? Yeah.

00:50:06:06 – 00:50:32:08
Bob Arvin
VHS crammed in my back pocket. So I’m like, okay, of course I do. And so he brought down their lead, 2D artist that was working on their, their flame system there, which was another high end graphics system at the time. And there was my piano playing weasel opening up the demo reel, and I could see them shoot eyes at each other.

00:50:32:08 – 00:50:53:14
Bob Arvin
And I’m like, I’m like, oh, my gosh. And and as soon as the demo reel was done, I was like, Henry was like, come up to my office. So again, remember no sleep. So I’m like and he’s like he asked me a few questions, but it really got down to you know how much you need to earn.

00:50:53:23 – 00:51:11:23
Bob Arvin
How quick can you get here from Kentucky. And I’m like, go on. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Yeah. And then I’ll never forget the last question of the interview was duck season or web season?

00:51:12:00 – 00:51:20:19
Bob Arvin
I don’t even remember what I said. I probably said duck season because I don’t want them to shoot Bugs Bunny. Yeah. But it was so awesome being asked that question right across the street from Warner Brothers.

00:51:21:00 – 00:51:22:09
Brandon Adams
Yeah, that’s cool man.

00:51:22:11 – 00:51:29:00
Bob Arvin
So I was there in two weeks. So I mean I had to close down all my affairs in Louisville.

00:51:29:00 – 00:51:31:19
Brandon Adams
But let’s just say you went home and you said mom, dad guess what.

00:51:31:21 – 00:51:54:22
Bob Arvin
Oh I called. Okay. Yeah. Well I immediately called my current employer to they weren’t they video where I was not too happy with me. Yeah. But they got over it. Yeah. And now my buddy Jamie owns video bread, so. Yeah. Me and video. Pretty good. But, But, yeah, within two weeks, I had to get back home, clean out my apartment, load up the truck.

00:51:55:17 – 00:52:10:09
Bob Arvin
Say goodbye to everybody. Video. Brett. And that was hard. That was the best job I had ever had. And still one of the best jobs I ever had. So much fun there. But, there was a new chapter. Open it up.

00:52:10:11 – 00:52:13:24
Brandon Adams
And folks were happy for you at this point.

00:52:14:01 – 00:52:40:02
Bob Arvin
Yeah. You know, if my mom never knew what to make of my career goals. You know, she was a very loving mom and very good to me. And, but, saying I want to be an animator just sounded unrealistic. And after I’d been in Hollywood about a year, she apologized and said, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d ever make it.

00:52:41:06 – 00:52:41:19
Bob Arvin
I didn’t know how.

00:52:41:19 – 00:52:43:09
Brandon Adams
To take that stuff to here.

00:52:43:11 – 00:53:05:15
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Yeah. Well, in her mind, it wasn’t anything against me. It was that in her mind. There were a million other people that wanted to do the same thing. So why would I be one of the ones that got the breakthrough. But again it’s like I really attribute it all to God putting me where he wanted me to be at what time.

00:53:05:17 – 00:53:39:09
Bob Arvin
And the fact that I basically surrendered to him going into that door at modern video film. He was waiting on me to do that. Yeah. I was trying to do it under my own power before. How am I going to get to Hollywood? How am I going to get these projects done. Yeah. And, and even still, when I was sitting with the guy from Home Improvement, out front of modern video film, he kind of gave me some coaching a little bit because I was trying to figure out how much do I need to earn to survive in California.

00:53:39:09 – 00:53:59:06
Bob Arvin
And, but, you know, he goes, well, what are your goals? You know, and like this goofy kid, I was I’m like, oh, you know, like to be like Lucas or Spielberg. I’d be awesome. Yeah. And I was sitting at the gym, had actually worked at Lucas Film a little bit, I think, as an intern, and he had help with some storyboards with Ron Howard on one of, I think, on Willow.

00:54:01:07 – 00:54:27:01
Bob Arvin
But, you know, but he very graciously, you know, he didn’t chuckle or anything, you know, he, he guided me well. And but circling back to my first time out there, that false start when I moved to Burbank, I was like, I mean, they had me working. We were sleeping under a desk for the first few months I was there.

00:54:27:02 – 00:54:32:19
Bob Arvin
Yeah. I went out in September. So up until the end of the year, it was just work, work work work work work work.

00:54:32:21 – 00:54:36:21
Brandon Adams
You mean you literally were sleeping on your desk? Or you’re like, I’ve been here a lot, and I don’t have a home.

00:54:36:21 – 00:54:39:04
Bob Arvin
No, I mean, we slept on the desk.

00:54:39:06 – 00:54:40:11
Brandon Adams
Like you did not have an apartment.

00:54:40:17 – 00:54:45:24
Bob Arvin
Oh, I had an apartment. Okay. And I even had a cat by then. But you didn’t see me much.

00:54:45:24 – 00:54:47:03
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:54:47:05 – 00:55:07:09
Bob Arvin
But we were, I had been when they asked me about the project they wanted me to work on. It was 3D tracking, and there was no such thing as 3D tracking at the time. And we were working on a trailer for Disney, for the upcoming 101 Dalmatians live action. And they were wanting to put Dalmatian spots on on world monuments.

00:55:07:15 – 00:55:38:15
Bob Arvin
Leaning tower piece, the pyramids. And they wanted to do the Statue of Liberty, and they had stock footage of helicopter shot around the Statue of Liberty, and they had a probably scanned off of a Times Square toy of the Statue of Liberty viewpoint model. That undoubtedly did not match the real Statue of Liberty. Right. And somehow I was supposed to track it so we could put create a mat with those spots to put on the real Statue of Liberty.

00:55:39:06 – 00:56:00:10
Bob Arvin
So I had to animate that by hand. And so when he said can you do that. I tried before and failed. We tried messing around with a little bit of tracking at video brand and it was terrible. Yeah. But you know, when you’re asking, you can do something if you want to get a job in Hollywood, the answer is yes.

00:56:00:11 – 00:56:22:21
Bob Arvin
Yes, like I can do that. So that was scary. Yeah. Cause I had uprooted everything and burned a bridge at the best job I’d ever had, and I could completely crash and burn. And, we managed to do it. They still had to do some finessing in the flame afterwards, because there was no way even, even net with today’s technology.

00:56:23:01 – 00:56:26:02
Bob Arvin
And it would not be get a perfect track with that model and that.

00:56:26:04 – 00:56:50:14
Brandon Adams
Yeah, yeah. It sounds like you’ve been doing consistently the same thing of I just believe that I’m supposed to be doing X. So I am going to do X. You did that at the gas station. You did that with the track. You did that with going to California the first time. So like every time is like, yeah, but I’m supposed to be here and I believe in what I’m doing, and I just.

00:56:50:16 – 00:56:56:05
Brandon Adams
Is that your belief in yourself, or is that you just being inquisitive on what’s next?

00:56:56:07 – 00:57:23:18
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Well, I’m always looking over the horizon. I’m always asking questions. I’m always looking for a better way to do things. But, you know, my my journey back to God happened when I got back, when I got to Burbank. Because that that foundation had been laid on the previous visit and I went, started going back up to Rocky Peak.

00:57:23:19 – 00:57:41:11
Bob Arvin
Once I was, I went back to Kentucky for Christmas. And then once I got back in January, I started going up to that church and you know, I was single. So I went to the singles group, but it was the preacher was amazing, and singles group was.

00:57:41:13 – 00:57:41:19
Brandon Adams
Not.

00:57:41:19 – 00:57:59:18
Bob Arvin
So, not so much. And you could tell the guy leading it was kind of on his way out. You know nothing against him. But you know I, he was ready to move on. And so there were only like 15 or 20 people that were showing up and, and I only was able to make myself go every other week.

00:58:00:02 – 00:58:30:08
Bob Arvin
I would come out of the, the main service and kind of stand there between the buildings going, I should go up there. And I’m like, yeah. After I’d gone for, I don’t know, 2 or 3 times. We, we were having a group discussion and I heard this voice behind me that I hadn’t heard before, and I’m like that turned out it was my future wife.

00:58:30:10 – 00:59:03:21
Bob Arvin
And so here I am. I’ve only been in LA for months. Yeah. Months. We started dating and, It was fast. And another month or so, we were engaged. We got married the following January, so I was like, life just went. Whoo! Yeah. But, I was at that church until I left California. Almost 30 years.

00:59:03:21 – 00:59:32:08
Bob Arvin
29 years I was there. So I made so many friends at that church. The guy that, works with me, you know, writing for our projects and helped me produce a meeting there. You know, so it’s like, again, you know, the Lord put me just, I mean, the way I got the job at the track, the video bread, the modern video film.

00:59:33:03 – 00:59:53:16
Bob Arvin
And then even when I ended up at Disney, I had left modern video film. We were new. I was newly married. I was getting more. I was getting so much work out of Louisville. I was like, and I was like, I felt like I should focus on that. And then my main client got bought out and then that went away.

00:59:54:15 – 01:00:31:14
Bob Arvin
And like now what. And I put like 30 resumes out. Nothing. And I had interviewed at Dream Quest images. Originally it was an independent visual effects house. And then I’d interviewed there once before while I was at modern. And I didn’t understand a film pipeline. For, for CG animation, you’re either a modeler, a texture artist or a lighting artist or rig or rigging hair animator.

01:00:32:24 – 01:00:56:12
Bob Arvin
And so when I was in that interview, they were like, well, what do you do? And I said, what do you need? And so that was not the right answer. No. Yeah. But I didn’t know it wasn’t the right answer. And so when I hit this dry spot I, I had put a number of resumes out.

01:00:56:13 – 01:01:21:05
Bob Arvin
There was one show in particular that I probably a mutual acquaintance could have set me up with. It just, it wasn’t my thing. And I didn’t want to do it. And so I held out and I ended up working for a company right around the corner. I could walk to work on a project for NASA. And about a month into that project was supposed to be a three month project.

01:01:21:06 – 01:01:48:05
Bob Arvin
About a month into it. Dream quest called. And, and so I went and interviewed with him. And now this time, this was 1998. Nobody knew what previs was, but Dream Quest was forming a previous department, and they were one of the first. I’m sure I’ll, probably beat them to the punch, but, there there really was no such thing.

01:01:48:05 – 01:02:08:10
Bob Arvin
Directors didn’t know what to do with it. Even visual effects supervisors were only just then figuring out how to do previs. And so the guy that ran the previous department was aware of my resume, as everybody else was. I’m a leader, I’m a modeler, I’m a texture artist. And I was like, because of video ad because of my general video film.

01:02:09:08 – 01:02:36:00
Bob Arvin
Yeah. I don’t even know if we had the term general generalist though. Right. And so he, I was like one of his top picks to help flesh out their previous department. And so in the blink of an eye, I’m working for Disney because Disney bought Dream Quest images. And, because they just come off of doing the, I think, Pirates of the Caribbean and Armageddon and they were doing all the Jerry Bruckheimer movies.

01:02:36:01 – 01:03:00:08
Bob Arvin
Yeah. And so Disney was like, keep hiring these guys. Why don’t we just buy them? Yeah. And, so, Hoyt Yeatman, who founded Dream Quest Image as part of the negotiation, was that Dream Quest would be considered part of feature animation and get all the perks this over past Disney Land. The benefits packages, everything. And so I was considered part of feature animation.

01:03:00:10 – 01:03:20:16
Bob Arvin
And it was a it was a weird gig in many ways I loved it, but I was in the second building. They had a first building where like their main crews were and they bought the second building behind them to put the model shop in there, which was awesome because I, I always made an excuse to walk to the other build with the model shop.

01:03:20:18 – 01:03:43:02
Bob Arvin
I was like, these are the real artists here, these guys. But the only other departments back there was the art department, which was two guys and, us the previous department. And then they had a couple of, makeshift offices that every now and then they put a flame in there or, so the producer might be in there, but it was very few of us in that building.

01:03:44:05 – 01:03:51:05
Bob Arvin
But, the whole facility was on SGI. They were all.

01:03:51:05 – 01:03:51:15
Brandon Adams
Silicon.

01:03:51:15 – 01:04:15:15
Bob Arvin
Graphics running Maya, which was probably still version one. And I was on a PC. We got to pick whatever we wanted to work on. So the guy next to me was on a mac. I was on a PC, and my supervisor, he was a PC guy. So there’s really three of us at the at that point in time.

01:04:15:17 – 01:04:39:08
Bob Arvin
And, I did very little previs and a little bit of previous, Bicentennial man, Mission to Mars. But, it was cool because since I was kind of a jack of all trades, I get to do all kinds of stuff. We were even doing, like, development work for the studio at one point they had movie ideas that they.

01:04:39:12 – 01:05:04:12
Bob Arvin
And I’m thinking you guys don’t have people in Burbank. We were out in Simi Valley like, you know, 45 minutes away from the studio. I they had me making maquettes. I was doing digital sculpts on, on, potential movie characters. I did some elements for matte paintings on some of the films. I mean, I got to do a little bit of everything.

01:05:05:10 – 01:05:36:16
Bob Arvin
Which was perfect for me. Yeah. And but the coolest thing that happened was, Matthew Broderick. Inspector gadget was already in production when I started there. And, they didn’t like how the test screenings were going. And so they they were like, we need to do something. And they were wanting to put a character on the dashboard of that gadget mobile that would talk to, Inspector Gadget.

01:05:37:21 – 01:06:00:11
Bob Arvin
And I didn’t even understand what they were asking for at first. It’s like a a face on the dashboard is like what was. And and then they were in such a hurry. One of the art directors and myself, we just started sketching down ideas. And, and it kind of centered around like a golf ball type character.

01:06:00:11 – 01:06:33:12
Bob Arvin
That’s just the sphere. But the gadget mobile was one of those classic Lincoln convertibles with the suicide doors on it and, and the, the quad headlights and really beautiful automobiles. I was like let’s make it look like the car. And, and so the art director and myself, I don’t remember which part was his and which part was mine, but we literally folded our drawings in half and the top was one drawing and the bottom was another drawing.

01:06:33:14 – 01:06:56:15
Bob Arvin
And so, scanned that in and jumped in 3D studio. And I stayed late that evening, and within a few hours I had modeled the character and built a few more targets for it. And I found a, like the internet was brand new that this was even pre Google, I think. I remember one day somebody going, have you tried Google?

01:06:56:17 – 01:07:21:24
Bob Arvin
But back then you had to go through like 12 different, search engines to try to find any sort of results. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had found a, a little audio file of David Letterman saying complimentary beverage. Help yourself. And so I quickly animated that character. Just to say that line of dialog and rendered it out.

01:07:21:24 – 01:07:46:11
Bob Arvin
So within a day or two, I had the powers of be at my desk watching this character go complimentary beverage. Help yourself. And, you know, this was my television background. Because television producers would always see the latest movie and want it and have like 1% of the budget and, and .00 1% of the time. Yeah.

01:07:46:13 – 01:08:08:20
Bob Arvin
And you had to figure out how to get 90% of the way there and 10% of the time. And so I came in there with that television mentality. And, and when you’re in film you research it, you develop you build the pipeline. Here’s this long process. And so here I am in two days going here you go.

01:08:08:22 – 01:08:41:12
Bob Arvin
And they’re like what? And so that little animation I did ended up at all the test screenings of, Inspector Gadget and then the powers that be changed at the studio. And, Or actually. No. Not yet. The guy that was in charge of the studio wanted a different direction for the character. So they designed something that was more consistent with the rest of the film, with all sorts of levers and pistons and what have you, and made him look hip hop with a hat that spun around.

01:08:41:14 – 01:09:01:18
Bob Arvin
So then they did their traditional pipeline of bringing in the modelers and the texture artists and the shader writers and. Right. And I have no idea how big the crew was, but my guess would be that, you know, probably a dozen people over six months. You know, just total speculation there. But and I forgot about it.

01:09:02:03 – 01:09:22:15
Bob Arvin
And then just probably six weeks before the movie was supposed to come out, then the powers that be changed at the studio and whoever took over was like, whatever happened to that little golf ball guy that looked like the car? I liked him a lot better. Well, of course, Dream Quest it wrapped that crew, that animated that character.

01:09:23:10 – 01:09:42:07
Bob Arvin
And and so, one day I look up and there’s like, you know, the heads of the departments over my desk know, and I’m like, oh, you know, you always get this in your stomach. Like what have I done. And they’re like, you remember that little guy you animated and like, yeah. You think you could do that for the movie?

01:09:42:08 – 01:10:07:21
Bob Arvin
And I’m like, yeah. I’m like, well, you got two weeks and we need 16 shots. Don’t even think about getting any voiceover because they haven’t recorded it yet. And so I basically they handed me the 16 shots that had already been done and asked me to mimic the timing and the movements. But every time you see that character in the actual movie, he’s saying complimentary beverage.

01:10:07:21 – 01:10:10:20
Bob Arvin
Help yourself.

01:10:10:22 – 01:10:28:16
Brandon Adams
How cool is that? For if you know, you know, like your family now sees this kind of thing, or you tell this story and people find that and that’s, that’s really just kind of like one of those, like, hidden gems that is like, hey, this is my stamp on this, right? And there’s a story to not just this.

01:10:28:16 – 01:10:43:20
Brandon Adams
It’s like there’s a little bit more to the film now. You know, I mean, it’s like hearing about the shoe or whatever that was in Star Wars. That was supposed to be like a ship or something, I don’t know. You know, so, I mean, but you hear about that stuff, you know, and it’s like, oh, that was really cool.

01:10:43:20 – 01:10:54:14
Brandon Adams
That’s how that happened. Or that’s why that was. Yeah. You know, and and sometimes the naked eye doesn’t catch those things. But the people that were a part of it can actually kind of point those out and say, that was my stamp.

01:10:54:18 – 01:11:10:24
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was fun to actually get something on screen. Yeah. Is everything else I did was all development work, and that never saw the light of day. So yeah, that was fun to, you know, I mean, if you really want to get down to it, I helped design a Disney character.

01:11:11:01 – 01:11:18:10
Brandon Adams
Well I mean that’s not many people can say that. Yeah. You know what happened next. Like you started do you continue to work for someone else or.

01:11:19:17 – 01:11:24:24
Bob Arvin
This was the late 90s and

01:11:25:01 – 01:11:47:16
Bob Arvin
They were merging Dream Quest with another unit. And and funny enough, they were moving them to Burbank and one week after, we had closed on our new house, which was still on the other side of the hill in the San Fernando Valley, but the, the leader of the Motion Picture Division comes out and gathers this all together.

01:11:47:16 – 01:12:16:17
Bob Arvin
And he’s like, do anybody buy a house out here because we’re moving you to Burbank. But, I kind of got a sense of the future wasn’t bright. There was during quest was an amazing operation and they had a real family, feel to it. Because, Hoyt started in his garage, the guy that had been helping him, operate had been there since the early days.

01:12:16:19 – 01:12:41:16
Bob Arvin
So even though they sold it to Disney, these people were still on board. You know that I guess that helped maintain that family environment there. But they, you know, they were about to get absorbed Disney style and, and, the unit they were going to be merging with, just finished on, a movie called dinosaur, which I don’t think many people remember.

01:12:42:08 – 01:13:08:14
Bob Arvin
But, I believe it had live action back plates and they put animated dinosaurs on it and they worked on it for seven years. And a lot of talented people on that movie, but I think it was just a misguided project. Spent way too much money on it. And so they put these two units together and and true Disney fashion let it set for two years and they closed it.

01:13:08:17 – 01:13:31:06
Bob Arvin
Yeah. And so I was already doing more freelance work at night than I was doing during the day while I was at Disney. And I was like, well I’ve got that credit now. It was my life’s goal to work for Disney. And here I was after two years going I think it’s time to move on. Yeah.

01:13:31:07 – 01:13:44:06
Bob Arvin
And so, in February of the year 2000, I started my own company, 3D Bob productions. And, that’s still what I do to this day.

01:13:45:08 – 01:13:50:02
Brandon Adams
What was the first, what was the first job for 3D? Bob.

01:13:51:21 – 01:13:56:20
Bob Arvin
An animated Bill Cosby. Okay. And we did not know what a creeper he was at the time.

01:13:56:21 – 01:14:00:09
Brandon Adams
Of course not. Yeah, he was top of the world for over a minute.

01:14:00:09 – 01:14:32:03
Bob Arvin
Oh my goodness. He was a childhood hero of mine between Fat Albert and The Cosby Show. When I was older, I mean, that was it. Yeah. I mean he was the biggest name in the business for there for a while. So to have that opportunity. Yeah I, I had connected with some of the guys in the promotion department at Carsey Werner Productions and they, they produced the second Cosby Show, which is called Cosby.

01:14:32:24 – 01:14:56:16
Bob Arvin
And, and back then there were these Lipton Iced tea commercials, that had little stop motion characters and that would battle it out in the ring and. And they wanted something like that. And so I, I sculpted a physical Cosby caricature and there was no 3D scanning at the time. So it was this pen.

01:14:56:16 – 01:15:24:17
Bob Arvin
So you draw your wireframe on it and then this pen, you just plot the points. And so I created this caricature of Cosby and we did, I think five different spots. Of him dancing. We, we had the, we spelled out Cosby in big Jell-O chunks that came down. Oh yeah. And, you know, we it was a very cool first gig.

01:15:25:17 – 01:15:29:00
Bob Arvin
You know, it got some coverage and trade magazines and stuff.

01:15:29:00 – 01:15:29:23
Brandon Adams
That’s cool.

01:15:30:00 – 01:15:31:16
Bob Arvin
Opened some other doors.

01:15:31:18 – 01:15:32:05
Brandon Adams
That’s cool.

01:15:32:22 – 01:15:35:07
Bob Arvin
But it was it was a great first, first little.

01:15:35:07 – 01:15:41:12
Brandon Adams
Gig. Did you stay in, LA or California area for 3D? Bob? When it when it kicked off.

01:15:41:14 – 01:15:45:01
Bob Arvin
Yes, I, I was there until a year and a half ago.

01:15:45:03 – 01:15:46:04
Brandon Adams
A year and a half ago.

01:15:46:05 – 01:15:48:04
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

01:15:48:06 – 01:16:03:04
Brandon Adams
All right. So you you got in there and you thought of 3D. Bob’s about to take off. I need to build out hardware. Software. I need people, I need what I. This is in my apartment. Like, what are we doing?

01:16:03:06 – 01:16:31:19
Bob Arvin
I found a, office space on Cahuenga, right across from, universal. That was monthly. I got a $30,000 loan, and so I at that enable me to pay rent. I got another, I leased a did you buy deck? Because I wanted to be able to just output my work directly without and, always carry my files across town or something.

01:16:33:10 – 01:16:52:17
Bob Arvin
And I brought in contractors. So I paid them out of the budget, so the project would come in, but, it was tight. Yeah. You know, it was really tight. And even when you get a boost, like the Cosby Project, that money goes fast. Yeah. And most of the money that comes in off of it goes to your artists.

01:16:53:19 – 01:17:16:18
Bob Arvin
But I mean, I couldn’t afford work proper workstations. I had bought basically some Dell office computers, and we were working on those. Got us through. Yeah. But, but it was tough. But, we found out after being at that space for six months that, they were going to tear that building down. Oh, no.

01:17:16:18 – 01:17:44:24
Bob Arvin
Yeah. And so, we found another spot, in Burbank, on Magnolia Avenue. There’s just one little production company after another. And we found a space, on the corner. That’s a beauty salon. But, we moved in that space and, and I had a, a partner working with me for a, for a couple of years and he would go out and do sales while I was doing most of the work.

01:17:46:03 – 01:18:11:17
Bob Arvin
But we were still trying to build up a talent pool because most of the talent pool was still geared towards the high end equipment, knowing with SDI and flat flame. And we’re running a 3D studio and, and the baby version of flame, which was combustion was their PC based positing software. So it would be easy for network shows, this kind of look down on us this next little.

01:18:11:18 – 01:18:39:13
Bob Arvin
But what I didn’t know is that the visual effects business is a race to the bottom. They wanted the best work for the least amount of money. Right. And so we were relatively cheap compared to the established guys. And so we got some gigs done. Data only because of that fact. But you know and my partner at the time was new to the industry.

01:18:40:02 – 01:19:06:08
Bob Arvin
And he was like about sales, you know, like I’d make those sales. Let’s get those sales. And he oversold. And we we had just coming off doing the season finale of a show that was very grueling. Is rewarding. And it was the second sequence we’d done for these guys. And success.

01:19:06:10 – 01:19:47:05
Bob Arvin
But the problem was he had sold another series finale. Another show. And what they were wanting was very complicated. It was really even, even on you know, higher end machinery and it was just a tough sequence. And we ran out of time. And it was one of those moments where I was literally at the, I’d been in the computer so long I can hardly hold my head up and I’m hitting keys like this and the effects supervisors or, you know, glaring at me over my shoulder and I’m just like, how did I get I get here.

01:19:49:11 – 01:20:14:22
Bob Arvin
Fortunately they paid their bill even though we failed. But you know, we picked ourselves back up and and kept going and the, the guy that I told you about from my church that I work with. He and his career had been Jeff had been at ABC Saturday morning as his first VP job.

01:20:15:13 – 01:20:39:02
Bob Arvin
Which led to him, ending up at Hanna-Barbera in the days when they were forming, Cartoon Network. When I met him he was working at Sony Wonder overseeing like distribution of Sesame Street. And we started talking and he was like yeah I’m, he’s like I I’m gonna be working on this project for this ministry.

01:20:39:04 – 01:21:00:11
Bob Arvin
I’m going to get out of the Hollywood scene, and I won’t go into any more ministry oriented projects. And I’ve been talking to this group out of Florida that wanted to make, like, a 45 minute Jesus movie that they could use in their ministry. And so he ended up working on that project together. He, he actually worked for the client and, and I was the vendor.

01:21:00:13 – 01:21:09:17
Bob Arvin
And so we expanded our studios, and brought on like 20 people. And this was 2002.

01:21:09:19 – 01:21:10:24
Brandon Adams
This is in the salon.

01:21:11:01 – 01:21:13:00
Bob Arvin
No, we had to we had to expand out of that.

01:21:13:00 – 01:21:14:02
Brandon Adams
Okay.

01:21:14:10 – 01:21:44:01
Bob Arvin
We ended up near the Burbank airport and about 8000ft². Okay. And, You know, but I that was a I learned so much on that project and very little. But was learning. Learning CG. It was really my first time managing a team, managing a big project. Yeah. And, about everything that could go wrong did.

01:21:44:03 – 01:21:57:13
Brandon Adams
What’s the biggest challenge when it comes to going from small things that you really have your hands and everything to like, hey, there’s a lot of moving parts in this, and I need to, systematically go through it. Like, what’s the what’s the biggest challenge?

01:21:57:15 – 01:21:58:04
Bob Arvin
People.

01:21:58:06 – 01:22:01:24
Brandon Adams
People finding them or managing them both?

01:22:02:02 – 01:22:25:12
Bob Arvin
Yeah. At the time, you know, again, we were still dealing with, VHS demo reels. Yeah. And we would have to go through 50 reels to find one good candidate to interview. And I had budgeted the project as if there were a dozen of me working on it. Yeah. That was my only frame of reference. Yeah.

01:22:25:14 – 01:22:29:10
Bob Arvin
So I didn’t understand how other people worked or operated.

01:22:29:14 – 01:22:32:19
Brandon Adams
Whether you were fast or whether you were slow. Yeah.

01:22:33:24 – 01:23:03:05
Bob Arvin
And I really didn’t understand people either. You know, I, this, this project went for about a year and a half, and we started out as kind of like this group of eight people, and we ended up just so you know, there were a couple of over overages that we you know, had to bill for, that were tough.

01:23:03:24 – 01:23:39:16
Bob Arvin
And we brought and we even tried bringing in seasoned professionals that had worked on feature films and stuff. And the funny thing is, is that our highest performing people were the interns that we hired. And it was because they were, they were hungry to learn. They were willing to learn. But there was also, you know, I’m looking for the right way to put it because, you know, we had, we had good people working for us, but I guess it’s just human nature.

01:23:42:07 – 01:24:01:22
Bob Arvin
I had the attitude of man, you know, this kind of goes back to my mom going, I didn’t think you’d make it out there. You know. Well, for me, I was like massively grateful that I was working in the industry that I had wanted to. And I was thinking, who wouldn’t be grateful to be an animator?

01:24:02:02 – 01:24:23:22
Bob Arvin
You know, you certainly don’t pick it to make money. And, you know, there’s so, so much, downturns, you know, it’s not stable. So you certainly don’t pick it as a big career choice and going, boy, I’m going to make it big in animation. But let’s just say not everybody’s is dedicated to the project. Right.

01:24:23:22 – 01:24:48:17
Bob Arvin
You know, I’ll do my work. I will do my work well. But, at the end of the day, I’m out of here. You know, and you know, whether the project succeeds or not really don’t make much of the difference to me. I’d never seen that before. And, you know that that was, that was hard to register how to, how to deal with that, you know.

01:24:48:22 – 01:24:56:22
Bob Arvin
I think we’ve seen more of that in our culture over these years since. Yeah. But that was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that.

01:24:57:00 – 01:24:59:22
Brandon Adams
How did you handle that?

01:25:01:03 – 01:25:06:16
Bob Arvin
That’s just the best I could. I mean, sometimes I was just worn out. That had no energy for any of it.

01:25:06:18 – 01:25:17:07
Brandon Adams
Did you dismiss the people that weren’t as invested as you? Or did you just. All right. I’m not bringing on any more people like that. I’m just starting to stack up with the the hungry.

01:25:17:09 – 01:25:35:04
Bob Arvin
I guess the frustration for me, and I mean, I, I get it on the other side. I’ve been on the other side, I’ve moaned and complained and there’s, you know, going back to the gas station, you know, one of the things that came out of my mouth, I, I someday I’ll just hear it one at a moment and it’ll just echo and others cringe.

01:25:35:22 – 01:25:52:09
Bob Arvin
The guy that gave me a job, I was mad at him and I said well someday I’m going to have a real job. You know, so it’s like we’re all guilty of that at some point in our lives. You know. So I’m this isn’t meant to be an indictment of anybody. This worked for me.

01:25:52:11 – 01:25:54:19
Brandon Adams
Yes. Sarah to John.

01:25:54:21 – 01:26:26:02
Bob Arvin
But it’s a, it’s a it was a tough situation because, I was a first time business owner. Yeah. My my daughter had just been born. We had just bought her house. I was committed to 8000ft² for three years. I mean, I was stretched this thing. Yeah. And, There was this great opportunity. And I was part of the problem too, because instead of this was my lesson learned, the project was called The God Man.

01:26:26:08 – 01:26:57:06
Bob Arvin
And and it was a 45 minute Jesus movie. The blessing is that it’s been seen by, I don’t know how many at this point, at least like 500 million worldwide. Yeah. Nobody in America knows it exists. But, they’ve used it worldwide and they’re still using it to this very day 25 years later, which is amazing. But at the time, I let my goals get in the way of the successful completion of that project.

01:26:59:17 – 01:27:17:19
Bob Arvin
I was like, this should be a movie, you know, 45 minutes. We’ve already built these great looking assets. It would only take that, you know a little bump and it could be feature quality. Yeah. And and again I didn’t understand business. You know, it’s going to take the client a while to go back to their donors and, and present it and get an answer.

01:27:17:19 – 01:27:19:06
Bob Arvin
And we were in production.

01:27:19:08 – 01:27:20:01
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

01:27:20:03 – 01:27:40:03
Bob Arvin
We couldn’t wait. And so I should have just zipped my lip. Yeah. So this is the project that I’ve been hired to do. I’m going to do my best with it. Then we can go make a movie. Yeah. But you know, you learn from life and I had not learned yet. So there were all these stressors going on.

01:27:40:05 – 01:28:19:16
Bob Arvin
But I guess the thing that, that flabbergasted me as a, as a leader was I was like if I create an artist friendly environment, these people will thrive and they’ll feel a part of what we’re doing. And, and so one thing we did like the I think it was the special was the with the special edition of the Star Wars or the prequels were coming out and, you know, my wife and I like when the special editions of Star Wars came out, we went to see each one at at the Chinese theater stood in line for four hours.

01:28:20:21 – 01:28:42:07
Bob Arvin
That whole thing. And, so I wanted to do that for the crew. And again, the internet was still very young and, and they were also limiting like how many tickets any one person. Goodbye. So the office manager myself we’re jumbling multiple credit cards and we were trying to get like 20 seats, which was next to impossible to do.

01:28:42:13 – 01:29:06:00
Bob Arvin
And we pulled it off. We got 20, 20 seats for the guys or how many there were. And only one person said, thank you. Well, and one other person was like, okay, my girlfriend come. And I was just like, you know, if you could shake your head and judge it. But it was me again going, well, someday I’ll have a real job.

01:29:06:02 – 01:29:31:03
Bob Arvin
You know, it. They, you know, they didn’t understand what it really took to get that for them. Yeah. And then the later too. I had a contact at Disney Television Animation. That from, from day one. I mean I told you Cosby was my first project, but my first phone call was Disney Television Animation.

01:29:31:05 – 01:29:55:06
Bob Arvin
And and so we set up a luncheon where we brought the contact from Disney over and we opened it up to our crew. We said if you have a project you’d like to pitch to Disney, we’ll take it to Disney and split a 5050 with you. Because we had the contact we were able to get it in front of them.

01:29:55:17 – 01:30:18:08
Bob Arvin
But we recognized that this is your project. You know and so we looked at as a business opportunity and the, the, the gossip I heard second hand swirling around was we were trying to steal their ideas. And I was like I don’t, I don’t need your ideas. Yeah. I was like I got plenty of ideas.

01:30:18:09 – 01:30:20:07
Bob Arvin
Ideas are cheap. Yeah.

01:30:20:09 – 01:30:26:23
Brandon Adams
You thought you were giving somebody a leg up to get exposure. And they took it as you were trying to scoop off them because you didn’t have nothing. Yeah.

01:30:27:00 – 01:30:56:13
Bob Arvin
Yeah. So those were some disappointments. You know, and, you know, and I certainly get where some of them had grievances. Yeah. You know, there were certainly things that were handled poorly. Yeah. But, yeah, those were huge lessons learned for me early on. And now to this day, you know, I make sure that the project that I’m working on, I’m going to meet the specs that were given and, do the best I can deliver on that one.

01:30:56:19 – 01:30:58:03
Bob Arvin
Yeah.

01:30:58:05 – 01:31:19:01
Brandon Adams
Yeah. That’s a that’s an interesting perspective I got to tell you. For me, this has been a very, very good interview for me because I relate a lot to a lot of the things that you’re saying. I, in my own process or my own journey, have come across a lot of similarities. And I and I see how you, how you handle them.

01:31:19:03 – 01:31:36:23
Brandon Adams
I’ve seen how I’ve had to handle some of my life. And yeah, it’s very similar in a lot of these things. And it’s like, great to hear some of the experience that you’ve had, you know, jumping through these. So thank you. First off for that. That’s that’s pretty amazing. To get to experience that and get to ask any question I want, you know, at the end of the day.

01:31:36:24 – 01:31:47:08
Brandon Adams
So, but thank you for that. That’s a, that’s, that’s very eye opening. And, something I’m going to, you know, think through as I go, go forward in my, in my career as well, in my company. So.

01:31:47:08 – 01:31:47:22
Bob Arvin
Sure thing.

01:31:48:17 – 01:31:55:05
Brandon Adams
What got you to transition to, to Texas.

01:31:58:12 – 01:32:17:10
Bob Arvin
I’d been struggling with California for a number of years. I went there. I mean, my whole, my whole childhood, I mean, I started getting into to Walt Disney when I was in elementary school. Star Wars came out when I was eight. I knew from a very young age I was going to live in California.

01:32:18:14 – 01:32:30:07
Bob Arvin
I mean I love Kentucky. I’ve always considered Kentucky my home. But it just got way too difficult to live there. Yeah.

01:32:30:09 – 01:32:33:24
Brandon Adams
Cost wise or lifestyle or.

01:32:34:01 – 01:32:56:17
Bob Arvin
Well I mean like the house that we bought in 1999. We bought it it and you know, it was in a nice area. I mean, we were only one block over from a busy avenue, but, we were in a cul de sac, and for LA, it was a peaceful cul de sac. As peaceful as it could be, there.

01:32:57:09 – 01:33:26:18
Bob Arvin
But a few years ago, the homelessness started creeping into our area. I mean, we were in the most north western corner of the San Fernando Valley, and traditionally, that’s where horse ranches are. There still are. There used to be some, movie back lots up there where they would shoot Westerns. First time Superman ever took flight was off of Stony Point, up the hill from where we lived.

01:33:28:18 – 01:33:52:15
Bob Arvin
Lone Ranger used to film where our church, you know, is located now. So it was nice. Peaceful end of the valley. And so the homelessness started encroaching. Yeah. You know, there’s nothing like sitting at the red light and watching some guy with his pants around his ankles go across the street. Yeah. You can barely walk and you’re trying to raise your kids.

01:33:53:09 – 01:34:31:20
Bob Arvin
Yeah. My kids are both grown now, but, but, you know, our situation kind of kind of changed. My wife was nearing retirement, and I just started talking to her. You know, I knew from my time in Kentucky that, you know, life could be different. You know, less frazzled. Hurry here, hurry there. Yeah. I, I took a film crew to Alabama, a few years back, and everybody just loved it from L.A..

01:34:31:21 – 01:34:49:11
Bob Arvin
It was awesome. And they never had waffle House to North. And, we got back to LA, and as soon as we’re trying to get on the 405, some some guy flips us the bird. We cut him off and we’re home.

01:34:49:13 – 01:34:52:04
Brandon Adams
Welcome home.

01:34:52:06 – 01:35:11:17
Bob Arvin
But, the crime started entering our neighborhood. There was a home invasion, a street over. You know, there was I mean, the very night my wife and I walked down to the corner to go eat, another couple was doing the same, and some guy randomly pulled off to the side of the road and started beating on him.

01:35:11:19 – 01:35:34:24
Bob Arvin
Well, so these things started happening, and, the taxes were already high. Utilities through the roof. You know, and everybody’s like, oh I’m here because I love the weather. I’m like, I’m, I’m working all the time. Yeah. I never see the ocean I never I never see the weather. But it was harder for my wife.

01:35:35:01 – 01:35:58:11
Bob Arvin
She immigrated here from the Philippines when she was, about 13 or 14. Lived in LA ever since. And, so it was harder for her because LA was really all she’d known. Yeah. But now that we’re here in Texas, you know, like my, my wife just the other night, she was like, you know, I sure like it here.

01:35:58:11 – 01:36:17:08
Bob Arvin
There’s not the big hustle bustle. And, you know, she’s doing substitute teaching now instead of being a full time teacher. So, less pressure. She’s leading a Bible study and making lots of friends. And so I’m thrilled to see that that she’s, you know, connecting here and really enjoying it.

01:36:17:08 – 01:36:18:16
Brandon Adams
And then routes.

01:36:18:18 – 01:36:53:15
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Yeah. And and the and the amazing thing too is you know El is expensive as the houses are in LA. They’re cramped. You don’t have much room both in your yard and your house. There’s not much closet space. You know, and it’s like we sold our house and we’re able to buy cash here. Sorry, Texas. I’m sorry, but it came after 25 years of scraping to make the ends meet in LA.

01:36:54:03 – 01:37:15:15
Bob Arvin
So we worked hard to be able to get to the point where we could do that here. Yeah. But, we’ve got some elbow room. You know, we’re not measuring our yard and square feet. We’re measuring eight acres and. Yeah. And, and there’s a place for everything in our house. There’s a huge attic for the stuff we want to say for our son later, when he has his own.

01:37:15:15 – 01:37:17:10
Brandon Adams
Place, when he finds Texas.

01:37:17:12 – 01:37:18:06
Bob Arvin
Oh. He’s here.

01:37:18:07 – 01:37:19:21
Brandon Adams
Yeah. There you go.

01:37:19:23 – 01:37:34:06
Bob Arvin
But, you know, he’ll eventually move out and have an apartment. And so we’ll be like, oh, we should say that coffee table or should I say, you know. So put that in the attic. You know, it’s like we couldn’t do that in LA. Yeah. Most people park their cars in their driveway because their garage was their attic.

01:37:34:07 – 01:37:54:16
Bob Arvin
Yeah. Yeah. So you you don’t realize how that affects your mentality. You know, it sounds frivolous, but so many times like when something would break in the house, I’d be like, you know, I’ve got to pull four things out of the way in the garage just to get to the tool box. And I don’t even remember if I left the screwdriver there.

01:37:55:23 – 01:38:15:15
Bob Arvin
So you don’t fix it. Yeah. Or like when I moved I discovered that I owned 16 screwdrivers. Because I just kept buying a new one because I could, I can’t find. Yeah. Where I put it. Now I know where every single one of my tools are. Yeah. So just those simple little things just affect your peace of mind and, and how you go about the day.

01:38:15:15 – 01:38:20:19
Bob Arvin
It’s it’s so weird. You you don’t realize it till you kind of experience the difference.

01:38:20:21 – 01:38:35:13
Brandon Adams
I’ve done a lot of traveling and across the world, and I, I don’t know if I love Texas because it’s home or if I love it because it’s the greatest state ever made. But I do love it. It’s so great. It’s peaceful. People are nice.

01:38:35:14 – 01:38:36:03
Bob Arvin
Yeah, I.

01:38:36:03 – 01:38:46:20
Brandon Adams
Got space, I can go. I live in the country on a few acres, and, I can go in my backyard and, you know, it’s just. It’s just nice that I don’t have to listen to people talk next door, you know?

01:38:46:21 – 01:39:08:09
Bob Arvin
Yeah, it’s it’s really great. I did a a good bit of research. It took us a year to find our house. And I also looked at all the other states where California people were going to go. And what what’s the draw there? But I knew I had a tropical wife that wouldn’t want to live somewhere like Wyoming or Idaho.

01:39:10:04 – 01:39:30:13
Bob Arvin
But you know she’s definitely a city girl and she also loves having, you know, I mean like the thing that we can get here, it’s a combination of what I grew up with in Kentucky and what we but the good things about LA. That she can. Yeah. I mean we’ve been to the symphony orchestra a number of times.

01:39:30:21 – 01:39:55:00
Bob Arvin
You know it feels like we live in the sticks but we are just 30 to 45 minutes away from everything. Yes. There’s Asian markets here that she can enjoy. You know a wide variety of different types of restaurants. You know, so this was a really good compromise for the two of us. Yeah. And, and I’m glad we ended up where we did.

01:39:55:02 – 01:39:55:15
Bob Arvin

01:39:55:17 – 01:40:14:01
Brandon Adams
Well, I tell you what, I’m glad you guys are here, too. And I didn’t know that you guys were, I’m sure we’ll be in contact with you more in the future. Even if I’m just picking your brain for things. I mean, it’s really cool because coming into a new world like this, I mean, I’m. I’m sure a lot of people knew who you were, you know, in your circle, in your area.

01:40:14:01 – 01:40:20:23
Brandon Adams
You know, it’s like even at your office, you know, and then all sudden you turn the page.

01:40:21:00 – 01:40:48:03
Bob Arvin
It was hard because you’re you’re saying goodbye to 30 years worth of friends. Yeah. And and there are days where I wake up and I’m like, oh, yeah, I’m in Texas. Because when you’ve been somewhere, it’s that long? Yeah, that’s feels like reality. Yeah. So some of it is just getting used to the new surroundings. I’ve enjoyed it from the moment we got here, but only now I’m starting to figure out where everything is.

01:40:48:03 – 01:40:55:08
Bob Arvin
And, those sorts of little details, but, it’s been a great fit for us.

01:40:55:10 – 01:41:00:07
Brandon Adams
Well, as we close this out, what projects are you working on currently?

01:41:00:09 – 01:41:25:18
Bob Arvin
We are, in production right now on, Well, actually, I’ve been working for Doctor Ben Carson for about four years now. He has an organization called American Cornerstone Institute, and their focus is on creating curriculum for homeschool kids. And, and often private schools are picking up on it. And so we’re kind of they’re schoolhouse Rock.

01:41:25:22 – 01:41:51:21
Bob Arvin
We we’ve been doing, short animated episodes of a series called Star Spangled Adventures, and every episode is about seven minutes, roughly, and focuses on a moment in American history and, so it kind of breaks all the rules of animation, because for each seven minute episode, we’re building new sets, props, characters, and, but it’s better. It’s been a great run.

01:41:51:21 – 01:42:26:17
Bob Arvin
We’ve done 47 episodes for them. And, for the last year we’ve been in production on a Star Spangled Ventures movie that, we’ll be wrapping in May. Right now, the plan is to premiere it at the Trump Kennedy Center, in July or in June. And, and so that it’s, roughly 80 minutes, where we’re focusing on all 250 years of American history and we kind of see it, through our, our character that has been the host of all this.

01:42:26:19 – 01:42:53:03
Bob Arvin
The episodes is Liberty, the Eagle, and she’s been the teacher in those episodes. But we made this kind of a prequel where Liberty is on her assignment for the first time. And so, we’ve called her the Spirit of Freedom. So she’s not a time traveler, but she can be wherever she wants, whenever she wants. And so we decided to give her a nemesis, Taranis the crow who’s trying to mess everything up.

01:42:53:22 – 01:43:15:24
Bob Arvin
And, so we kind of see it through that filter, and, and then on the, our human characters, we see the historical events through the, this family called The Wiggles. Thorpes. And so we start all the way back in the days of George Washington, and go all the way up to modern times.

01:43:16:01 – 01:43:38:06
Bob Arvin
Okay. Through this family. Because obviously, with the 250 year arc, you can’t follow one character. So we made it a family. So, yeah, we’re we’re getting really close to having this, this wrapped up. And, we’ll be posting the beginning of May and so that’s what’s going on right now. Yeah. We got a virtual pipeline set up with artists.

01:43:38:07 – 01:43:44:01
Bob Arvin
Coast to coast. But a number of them are in the Dallas area, which is pretty cool.

01:43:44:03 – 01:43:49:00
Brandon Adams
So you’re doing everything virtually now or do you have a, a home here? A home base here.

01:43:49:16 – 01:44:09:14
Bob Arvin
I don’t have an actual facility here, but, you know, everything’s, rendered on site, and and the servers are with me and such, but. Everybody works from their home on their own gear. And we share all the files in the cloud, and, it’s worked pretty well. Yeah. And this has been a great crew.

01:44:09:16 – 01:44:20:14
Bob Arvin
They, they’ve even though for some of them I haven’t met in person yet. You know, I know I’m like a brother, you know, it’s it’s really an interesting world we live in now. Yeah.

01:44:20:19 – 01:44:27:05
Brandon Adams
You got you got so much, firepower going on at the house. They got looking at their at your roof to save your money. Bitcoins now. Right.

01:44:27:06 – 01:44:30:12
Bob Arvin
So they’re probably wondering why my meter’s spinning so fast.

01:44:30:16 – 01:44:39:02
Brandon Adams
Yeah, exactly. Well, I’ll tell you this, man, this has been a, a really good interview, that I’ve been happy to be a part of, man.

01:44:39:02 – 01:44:40:20
Bob Arvin
Honestly, like, appreciate you having me.

01:44:40:20 – 01:44:51:10
Brandon Adams
Yeah. You, you gave me a lot of insights and some things I’m going to glean back. And I hope you don’t mind if I just got to reach out and ask you some questions and stuff, because you do have a lot of experience that I’d like to, you know, have some insights on if you.

01:44:51:11 – 01:44:55:08
Bob Arvin
Yeah. You know. Yeah, that’d be great. Okay. You won’t know about this at all.

01:44:55:11 – 01:45:05:23
Brandon Adams
Oh, yeah. Hit me with that one time. This was this. I asked you to bring a project. Did you bring something in that kind of reflected, you know, was, something about your history and you brought in this blue book. What is this?

01:45:06:02 – 01:45:35:00
Bob Arvin
Yeah, I’ll pick it up. So. This is my grandfather’s cruise book from World War two. He was on the USS Tennessee, which was a battleship that was actually built in 1917. The Tennessee was at Pearl Harbor, and, was right next to the Arizona. So they were actually shielded by all of the smoke from the Arizona.

01:45:35:13 – 01:46:08:11
Bob Arvin
And only eight men died on the Tennessee that day. My grandfather was still a kid on the farm at the time in high school, but his, his cousin, Edwin Puckett, was on board the Arizona and died that day. And, I didn’t know much about this growing up. And then my junior year in high school, I that’s when we took American History and Kentucky and we were signed a big, long project where we had to do a massive report.

01:46:08:24 – 01:46:32:18
Bob Arvin
And so I chose, I think my dad mentioned and he was like, well, you know, your grandfather was on a battleship. You should ask him about that. And, and so I did interviews with my grandfather. That’s when I first saw this book to actually to, to Bonny Sue here, which is my mother. But

01:46:32:20 – 01:47:07:23
Bob Arvin
This this affected me a lot. Not just the fact that, you know, my grandfather was on the ship for two years. And, he didn’t even meet my mother until after the war. I mean, I think she was two years old before he met her. But you know, there were men that, you know, didn’t fare as well as my grandfather in the war, but and I had the privilege of meeting many of his shipmates in 2005, when they dedicated.

01:47:07:24 – 01:47:32:03
Bob Arvin
There’s a museum behind the high school, and, I think it’s Scott County, Tennessee. There’s a this log cabin that they filled with artifacts from his ship. And they were opening that museum. And I interviewed about 30 of the vets, and one, you know, it was that was just amazing. Yeah. But, you know, I hope to make a movie about this ship one day.

01:47:33:06 – 01:48:00:00
Bob Arvin
Because it went from being a Pearl Harbor to, their biggest battle was in Surigao Strait in the Philippines, where a huge column of the Japanese navy was coming up the strait, and they couldn’t turn to the left or to the right. And all those old battle wagons from Pearl Harbor were waiting on them at the mouth of that strait, and, and it’s interesting because they did this maneuver called crossing the T and the nickname of the Tennessee was the big T.

01:48:01:02 – 01:48:29:15
Bob Arvin
And so as that column’s coming up, the American ships were up here and they were able to train all of their big guns on that column and just decimated them. There was, there was the story was they were coming up and down the sides. And so they just had that, and what was amazing was the radio operator on the Tennessee Heard the chatter and they were like, oh, those old battle wagons are expendable.

01:48:29:17 – 01:48:58:12
Bob Arvin
Yeah, those those same old ships in the middle of the night came through. And, it it’s pretty amazing. My grandfather told me that that night they were, they, they were all thrown out of their, their bunks. All the lockers were burst open. They thought they’d been hit. And the chaplain used to be the one that would call the shots to the men.

01:48:58:14 – 01:49:06:00
Bob Arvin
And he came on the speaker and he’s like, how’d you guys like that? That was our first 12 guns, salvo.

01:49:06:02 – 01:49:06:21
Brandon Adams
Oh, man.

01:49:06:22 – 01:49:27:04
Bob Arvin
So it was their own firepower. Yeah. That rocked the ship that much because usually, you know, they had four turrets, with three guns each. And so you’d usually, you know, aim them all independently and fire them one at a time. Yeah. But just because of the nature of an oncoming enemy. We had radar. The Japanese did not.

01:49:27:04 – 01:49:31:22
Bob Arvin
So they’re firing flares into the sky, trying to see what in the world is going on. All they’re doing is going, here we are.

01:49:31:23 – 01:49:33:14
Brandon Adams
Yeah, exactly.

01:49:33:16 – 01:49:42:03
Bob Arvin
But, Yeah. So it was. I would have loved just once in my life to felt one of those big guns go off and just feel it.

01:49:42:03 – 01:49:43:05
Brandon Adams
Just feel in your chest.

01:49:43:05 – 01:50:11:17
Bob Arvin
Yeah. But, But. Yeah, this I went through this book so many times and, the interesting thing, too, as an artist, there’s, there’s all these illustrations, that were done by a guy. I hope I get his name right, but I think it was Hamp Law. And to me, it was a I mean, I know this guy was just a crew member that could draw.

01:50:11:17 – 01:50:33:18
Bob Arvin
And so he got the assignment. But to me, it was like I grew up on his drawings the same way I grew up on, like, Ali Johnston’s drawings or somebody else’s, you know? And this guy puts so much personality into the drawings that he would make. I know that a lot of people would find some of them not very politically correct these days, but they were depicting the people that were trying to kill them.

01:50:33:18 – 01:50:35:15
Bob Arvin
So I kind of cut a little slack.

01:50:35:18 – 01:50:36:11
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

01:50:36:13 – 01:50:50:11
Bob Arvin
Some of the depictions, but yeah, but yeah, just my love of history, you know, I think about it just came from, from this book and knowing my grandfather’s experiences in the South Pacific.

01:50:50:13 – 01:51:06:07
Brandon Adams
And it’s another one of those things where the smoke covering up that ship was just one of those moments where the butterfly effect, it worked out for you. And here you are. And here are the things you’re changing, the things that you’re doing in your life because of a little smoke.

01:51:06:09 – 01:51:28:06
Bob Arvin
I went to Pearl Harbor, I think it was 2004 when, it actually fell on a Sunday. And man, that was a moving service. But you know, there were still vets with us there and we’ve just now lost the last. That’s the Arizona. But there was a man from the West Virginia there signing autographs.

01:51:28:21 – 01:51:47:03
Bob Arvin
He had little plastic leis and he was signing them and he was on the West Virginia which was outboard to the Tennessee. And I had just been to the gift shop and, and I saw that they had the USS Tennessee caps. And they actually looked like this, which was how the ship looked when my grandfather was on it.

01:51:47:04 – 01:52:04:22
Bob Arvin
Yeah. And so I just like cleaned them out and they’re, they’re all here. Dad. Here’s mine. I’m gonna take these home. So the guy from the West Virginia saw my grandfather stand there. Tennessee cap. And he was like, we took all your torpedoes.

01:52:05:19 – 01:52:07:02
Bob Arvin
Oh. Fun.

01:52:07:04 – 01:52:29:14
Brandon Adams
Well, that’s awesome, man. I tell you what, that’s, holding on to a bit of the past, and and being thankful for the people that have gone and done those things before you and actually helped you build the life that you have today and appreciate that. Yeah. It’s, we need more of that in this world. So, and I can’t thank you enough for for being on and the story you’ve told.

01:52:29:14 – 01:52:34:08
Brandon Adams
And, I hope to have more of these conversations. And, man, I wish you the best of luck.

01:52:34:14 – 01:52:35:02
Bob Arvin
Well, thank you.

01:52:35:18 – 01:52:39:08
Brandon Adams
Can you want to tell the other people where they can find you at?

01:52:39:15 – 01:52:58:19
Bob Arvin
I wish I had a URL to send you to, if you want to see, star spangled Adventures, you can go to Little Patriots learning.com, and you’ll see most of the episodes have been released there. There’s still a few to come. You can also go to Star Spangled adventures.com so that you could, get the updates on our feature film.

01:52:58:21 – 01:53:05:23
Brandon Adams
Very cool. Well, again, thank you for being on the show. And, until next time, everyone, that’s the blueprint.