Daniel Kingsley Povenmire (/ˈpɒvənmaɪər/ POV-ən-mire;[5] born September 18, 1963)[6] is an American animator, voice actor, writer, director, and producer.

With Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, Povenmire co-created the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb and Milo Murphy's Law, in both of which he voiced the character Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Following the success of Phineas and Ferb, he and Marsh created and produced a second show for Disney titled Milo Murphy's Law, which premiered in 2016.

Daniel Kingsley Povenmire was born in San Diego, California, on September 18, 1963,[6][7] and grew up in the city of Mobile, Alabama.

[10] As a child, Povenmire considered animator Chuck Jones his hero;[11] in a 2009 interview, he stated that "every drawing he did was beautiful to look at and had so much life in it".

Though the rapid pace left Povenmire afraid he was "running out of ideas", he never missed a deadline and made $14,000 a year through Fish merchandise, which included T-shirts, books, and calendars sold at the campus craft fair.

[10] Povenmire left USC[9] without finishing the degree requirements,[14] and used the money from Fish merchandise to fund a short-lived career as a street artist.

"[12] He maintained a side interest in film, writing scripts[14] and the screenplay for a low-budget horror movie, Psycho Cop 2.

During one of these layoffs, Povenmire found a temporary job on the series Rocko's Modern Life,[14] Nickelodeon's first in-house cartoon production.

[19][20] The show's creator, television newcomer Joe Murray, hired Povenmire solely on the strength of his Life is a Fish comic strips,[9] which proved he could both write and draw.

To correctly depict the moves, Povenmire asked color artist Cynthia MacIntosh, who had been a professional dancer, to strike poses so he could properly illustrate the sequence.

[25] In the episode "To Love and Die in Dixie" (November 15, 2001),[27] Povenmire drew on his childhood in the Deep South to create and sequence a background scene in which the redneck character nonchalantly kicks a corpse into the nearby river.

[24] "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows" (January 17, 2002), a Family Guy episode which Povenmire directed,[28] won the Emmy Award for Best Song.

[12][34] He also became a writer for the show, writing the season 2 episodes "Graveyard Shift", "The Fry Cook Games" and "Sandy, SpongeBob and the Worm", all of which premiered on Nickelodeon between 2001–2002.

In 1993, Povenmire and Marsh conceived the series Phineas and Ferb,[9] based on their similar experiences of childhood summers spent outdoors.

[22] Instead of a conventional script, the pair pitched the pilot by recording reels of its storyboard, which Povenmire then mixed and dubbed to produce action and vocals.

[38] Povenmire and Marsh wanted to incorporate into Phineas and Ferb the kind of humor they had developed in their work on Rocko's Modern Life.

They included action sequences and, with Disney's encouragement, featured musical numbers in every episode subsequent to "Flop Starz".

[11] A third Emmy nomination, for the episode "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein" (2008),[39] pitted the show against SpongeBob SquarePants,[40] although neither nominee received the award due to a technicality.

[43] In 2021, Povenmire, among other writers, won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Writing Team for a Daytime Animated Program" for their film Candace Against the Universe.

The style developed almost accidentally, with Povenmire's first sketch of title character, Phineas Flynn, which he produced while eating dinner with his family in a restaurant in South Pasadena, California.