PBS animator finally found his niche

It’s not every fine artist who is inspired by the “Three Little Pigs.” But it happened to Zachariah O’Hora.

An artist who was hijacked into writing, O’Hora is creator of a new animated series for PBS called “Carl the Collector,” premiering Thursday.

Carl is no ordinary raccoon. He’s autistic and loves collecting things. O’Hora got the idea from observing autistic kids at his sons’ unorthodox school.

What that has to do with the “Three Little Pigs” goes back to O’Hora’s high school.

“Growing up I loved comic books and superheroes, and I was just drawing all the time,” he said.

“And whenever I was bored, I was drawing whatever it was and was doodling whatever it was around me — which got me into trouble with drawing in schoolbooks. I like to tell my parents that now I get paid to draw in schoolbooks.”

But that paycheck was a long time coming for O’Hora, 50.

“In high school I had a really great art teacher who brought in a picture book one day by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith called ‘The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs.’ And the art was so amazing! It was the first time I’d seen a fairy story flipped on its head because in that book, the wolf is telling that story from jail. ... That was when I thought, ‘I can do this for a living!’”

But he didn’t immediately follow his artistic dream. He hitchhiked across the country first.

“I read ‘On the Road,’ followed the Grateful Dead around — so I kind of had a circuitous route.”

He landed in San Francisco where he suffered a litany of odd jobs. He worked for the San Francisco Jazz Festival as an equipment person. He had a job on the assembly line at a vitamin factory. And he painted signs at a sign shop.

But he also finally buckled down and earned a bachelor’s degree in illustration from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Then he married, and he and his wife moved to New York City.

“I was trying to figure out how to write and illustrate picture books, and it’s a very opaque business” that resulted in four years of rejections, he said.

“My wife told me, ‘If you’re having trouble writing, write about what you know.’ And she wrote a bunch of things about me — a lot of it was annoying things I did, like snoring.”

But the advice paid off. His first book to be published, “Stop Snoring, Bernard!” is about a sea otter who annoys all the others with his pernicious snoring.

He has since written a dozen other books. His two sons, Oscar, 17, and Teddy, 15, are inspirations for his work, as is his own childhood.

“As the oldest [of five kids], I had a lot of responsibility. So it seemed like having kids was a terrible idea. And I’m so glad I did end up having kids. My partner had the opposite idea, she wanted kids, and we met in the middle. And it’s the hardest and best thing I ever did and made me live for something other than myself.”