"It doesn't help that I drew him to look like me."

Steve Dildarian Gets Animated About His New Show on HBO

When Steve Dildarian was an adman, his voice was heard by hundreds of millions of viewers. As a rising animator whose edgy-quirky new show, "The Life & Times of Tim," debuts next Sunday on HBO, however, he'll settle for a healthy fraction of that. Dildarian hopes that Tim, a low-key, 25-year-old dude with a penchant for outrageous social situations, will strike a chord with viewers who like their humor sliced sly and deadpan. Dildarian, 38, called recently to discuss his road to "Tim."

-- Michael Cavna

In terms of influences, in "Tim" we can see a little Ben Stiller and a lot of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Are we getting warm?

For sure, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is the first thing [I] go to. That show and [Larry David's] sensibility, I just really reacted to that. . . . Watching that made something click in my head -- just him walking around and talking. It made the idea of writing a TV show seem that much easier. I hope people don't think my work is a rip-off, but that feels like my show. It feels like he's doing me. . . . A year before I ever saw that show, people kept telling me: "Oh my God, you are Larry David." He's a kindred spirit.

Is Tim totally autobiographical and an avatar of you?

Well, it's hard to deny it. It doesn't help that I drew him to look like me.

So you wear Banana Republic like Tim, then?

Maybe I do favor Banana Republic and Gap more than I like to admit.

So while an adman, you were the Budweiser donkey. Was that a highlight -- your voice heard the world over in a Super Bowl commercial?

I had never done a voice-over when I did the donkey. But for whatever reason, I laid down a "scratch" track. We couldn't have tried harder to replace me, and [we tried] hundreds of actors. [Anheuser-Busch executive] August Busch made the call. He said: "This guy [Dildarian] sounds the most like a donkey." After that it encouraged me. Soon, I was a talking toilet in an Ace Hardware commercial.

So you said you like a raw, crude look to your work, like when you started using iMovie. Now that you have an HBO budget, do you have to resist the look becoming more polished?

I try my best to keep the spirit of the production to be like friends in a basement, so it doesn't feel like the professionals got their hands on it.