From Hong Kong, to early CGI commercials, Antz, Shrek and more.
Raman Hui is the director of Monster Hunt and Monster Hunt 2, two Chinese-Hong Kong films that brought Hui back to his roots in Hong Kong. But before those hits, Hui had worked for years at PDI (Pacific Data Images) in California, starting in commercials as junior animator in 1989, before eventually becoming supervising animator and lead character designer on PDI’s first feature film, Antz (1998) and supervising animator for Shrek and Shrek 2, among several other roles at the studio.
Hui spoke recently at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 in Hong Kong, and I wanted to re-trace his PDI journey with him. PDI was, of course, a huge innovator in computer graphics, visual effects and entertainment (it was bought by DreamWorks SKG in 2000, when it was renamed PDI/DreamWorks and became owned by DreamWorks Animation).
In our conversation, Hui shares several fascinating stories about how he arrived at PDI, his first projects (which included the CG Pillsbury Doughboy ads), early CG animation tech, his job offer at Pixar, and then staying at PDI to work on Antz and later Shrek.
b&a: How did you come to be at PDI originally?
Raman Hui: I went to school in Hong Kong. I worked in Hong Kong after I graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic. I was doing hand drawn animation back then, and then I started seeing some computer animation, and I was very interested in that. But in Hong Kong, no one was doing that. Then, one of my co-workers, he wanted to study abroad and he had all these school catalogs on his desk. One day, I looked through them. It was like, ‘Oh, it’s too expensive.’ But then there was one from Sheridan College of Art for a summer course on computer animation for 600 Canadian dollars. I was like, ‘Hey, I can afford that, just for three months.’ So I took a leave of absence and went to Sheridan in Toronto.
Then I did some computer animation—it was before Softimage or Maya—I did some work and I sent it to the teaching assistant. He said, ‘Hey, Raman, your work is pretty good. Why don’t you apply for a job in the US? He introduced me to PDI, Pixar and ILM. ILM was still optical, not digital. Pixar was more like an experimental lab, and they were not hiring. But PDI were doing commercials. So I sent my reels to PDI and then I got a reply back asking me to go for an interview. I still remember they sent me a ticket and I flew from Toronto to San Francisco. They put me up in a hotel in Palo Alto, and the name of that hotel was Hotel California.
The interview was a whole day, from 9 to 6. Each person would come in and talk to me for 30 minutes. Back then my English was pretty bad. I had printed out a program I had written to get my animation done, to show them. They looked at it, but they didn’t ask me anything technical. They just talked to me very casually, asking, ‘Why do you want to come here? What do you like?’ Then later on after that, they gave me a job offer. I was surprised that they gave me a job offer because they didn’t hire that many people, maybe one or two per year.
I asked them later, ‘Why did you guys hire? What were you guys looking for when you interviewed me? Because you guys didn’t ask me anything technical or serious.’ They said, ‘We just wanted to make sure that you were mentally okay. You seem like a nice guy. We like your work already, but we just wanted to make sure you’re good to work with.’
b&a: What was the first project you worked on at PDI?
Raman Hui: It was a commercial for Pepto-Bismol. I had to create a glass stomach, a simplified version, and then you see the coating of Pepto-Bismol softly covering the stomach. I had to write an algorithm to have the liquid surround that thing. Because, back then at PDI, we had to do everything. The great thing was they gave me really good training. It was maybe two months of training.
b&a: What other early projects did you work on?
Raman Hui: Well, the reason they hired me was mostly because they wanted to do character animation, because of my 2D animation background. But, at that time, there was no character animation at the studio. It was all flying logos or something like Pepto-Bismol. The first character animation that I worked on was for the first CG Pillsbury Doughboy. It was very short, it was the Pillsbury Doughboy doing mambo. Tim Johnson was the director of that. I was the animator. We even took mambo dance lessons together.
b&a: Did the Pillsbury work open up more character animation at PDI?
Raman Hui: Yes, Pillsbury kept coming back to us. Almost all our animators in the character animation group had worked on a Pillsbury Doughboy commercial. Later on, we got a TV show called Last Halloween.
b&a: The thing that interests me about that period is that a lot of small studios were using their own proprietary tool sets to do the work. I mean, some studios might have adopted Power Animator or Alias or something like that, but PDI built their tools, right?
Raman Hui: Yes. You learn all those in-house tools. That’s why I am not very useful outside of PDI, because I learned everything at PDI and it was all in-house! For animation, we’d EMO, which was short for EMOtion. Back then, you couldn’t define time. The way you defined time is that there was this thing called local time. So, your whole piece of animation was from zero to one, and then between zero and one, you define 0.05. That’s that time to try to get a key there. It was very tedious.
b&a: I’ve talked to some animators and artists at PDI over the years, and I think they’ve said they miss some of those tools like EMO and the lighting tool, because they were more spreadsheet-based.
Raman Hui: I am one of the few who animate with spreadsheets. For some reason, I’m not good with a mouse. I find it hurtful sometimes. So when you use a curve editor, you have to use the mouse to move. I’d rather type and define the time or define the range by numbers. I animate 90% with a spreadsheet.
b&a: Wow. Do you mean, still or back then?
Raman Hui: Back then, and then even at the end when I was still on the box animating. You’re totally controlling what you’re doing. That’s the thing that I like about it. But of course, all the younger animators, they don’t. They want to just move stuff and see it right away. I would type in the degree of rotation, five degrees, and do it that way. I think that way, too, because the system was built that way. I miss that. No one does that anymore.
b&a: So, after those commercials and Last Halloween, you were building up your animation skills, and, I’m guessing, at the time, the company wanted to take things further with a long-form project?
Raman Hui: That was when things went south.
b&a: What happened?
Raman Hui: So, everyone was excited. We were building all this character animation experience. We even did a test for Casper, for Steven Spielberg, but we didn’t get the job. I think Steven used our test to show it to ILM to say, ‘I want it to be like this,’ but we didn’t get the job. It happened a few times like that because we didn’t have that relationship or that trust, until one time we got an offer from a studio to work on DragonHeart. They wanted to give us the show, but the upper management were too scared to take it. So they turned it down and we were so disappointed. So, some people started to leave.
People started going to Pixar. Actually, I went for a job interview, too. Glenn McQueen went—we had worked on Last Halloween at PDI. His first day at Pixar was the day I went for a job interview. He showed up at work and I show up, too, and he was like, ‘What are you doing here, Raman?’ I did the interview and they gave me a job offer. I was about to quit PDI, but I felt like I should tell Tim Johnson first. Tim said, ‘Raman, if you leave, I’m going to leave, too, and then that will be the end of PDI’s Character Animation Group.’ So then I was like, oh shit.
So, I decided to stay. It was PDI who got me the green card and gave me a chance to do that. There were other incredible people there, too, like Dick Walsh. I thought I would miss working with people like that. So I decided to stay there, but we didn’t know what was going to happen. We stayed there and kept working on commercials. Actually, after that, I started to direct commercials, and then I did a lot of work for Japan. Eventually, DreamWorks came to PDI. And we started making Antz.
b&a: Just before I ask you about Antz, I also noticed that you had a credit on The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror VI episode, which had Homer done in 3D.
Raman Hui: The Simpson’s thing was fun because it’s not a high paying show. It was something that we worked on kind of on the side. There was a lot of 2D. The production drew a lot of reference drawings for us. I wish I had kept them! They were big drawings, too, breaking down how all the characters would move.
b&a: So, as Antz ramped up, what did your role become on that film?
Raman Hui: First it was character design. It was nerve-racking. We had been working in Silicon Valley at PDI. Then one day they told me I needed to bring my drawings to Hollywood. I was like, ‘What?’ I had to show them in front of Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Luckily, they liked my work.
I was also one of the supervising animators, partnering with Rex Grignon. I was animating a lot of the character Z, the Woody Allen character.
b&a: What do you remember was the toughest part of that film for PDI?
Raman Hui: We had to build a team. We were small before, and then suddenly you have to hire all these people, and how do you manage that and then get it done on time? The other tough part, I think, was getting the acting right. But, we had very good references from all the Woody Allen movies. We basically watched all his movies to try to get into character.
b&a: What do you remember about the period then between Antz and Shrek? I always felt like there was this huge step up in tech between those films at PDI.
Raman Hui: There was not much of a period, actually. We were doing Antz, and in fact we did a lot of overtime because the movie had a very tight schedule. At the same time, they were developing Shrek, but with a totally different crew and a totally different approach. They were going to do motion capture.
I had only signed up for Antz. But then Andrew Adamson, who had been at PDI, he came back. Andrew was so nice to me because I came to California from Hong Kong, and I didn’t know how to drive. And when we were in Silicon Valley, he knew how to drive, so whenever Andrew saw me around, he said, ‘Hey, you need a ride?’ We had also worked on Angels in the Outfield together. Anyway, Andrew came back to PDI for Shrek, and he wanted me to be on the show. So, straight after Antz, I started on Shrek.
b&a: Just to finish up, I wondered how your time at PDI working firstly as an animator, but then supervising and then working with directors—how do you feel that might’ve influenced you as a director?
Raman Hui: I think PDI taught me so much. There’s something very unique about PDI. When people ask me where do I like to stay in the US, I always say San Francisco more than LA because San Francisco feels more homey. And PDI was also like that, compared to Hollywood. PDI was more like a family. It was very inclusive. People would take care of you and they would try to help you. You could be honest about your weaknesses. You didn’t have to hide. So, I take that with me throughout.
One time I was working with ILM Singapore on my second Monster Hunt movie. I went to ILM Singapore who worked on the movie, and immediately it felt like PDI back then. It was a small team, not a huge group of people, and they worked together and they shared information together.
ILM, Pixar and PDI—they all have a little bit of that approach to culture. It’s more family-oriented. Of course, when it got too big, it would start to become Hollywood or Hollywood would try to make you become more Hollywood. But the good thing is we felt like we brought some PDI to DreamWorks and Dreamworks became a little bit more PDI, too.
