Brian Lee Hughes describes his life with the four-star word "peripatetic", and rightly so. Stints as an agency art director have taken him to Berlin (Fallon), London (Mother) and San Francisco (TBWA\Chiat\Day), while his directorial pursuits have led him to Denmark, Toronto and now LA. "I'd like to have a little bit more stability," he sighs.

Given a glance at his reel, stability is not necessarily the first characteristic you'd ascribe to the 37-year-old. Repped worldwide by Reginald Pike/Reginaldo (except for the UK, where he's handled by Rokkit), Hughes' spots are at once odd, unsettling and ultimately, hilarious. He can do clever (Solo Mobile "Housewarming" and "Vigil") and crazed (Bubblicious "Beware the Burst"), silly ("Merry Maddenoliday" for EA's Madden '07) and sick ("Bloody Zit" for Canadian convenience store chain Mac's).

You could pin his left-of-center approach on his extensive art background - attending the University of Texas at Austin, Hughes took courses in fine arts as well as advertising and pre-med, got his feet wet in filmmaking through working with Dogme-dealing director Lars von Trier in Denmark, and has an online compendium of his visual art projects at publicincorporated.com. But Hughes says he draws the most inspiration from "the pre-med stuff," citing an animal behavior class in which he learned a smiling chimp uses most of the same facial muscles in grinning as a scared chimp. "I really wanted to tap into that and try to find a new way to make people laugh.

"You establish some kind of normalcy [in the work] that people are comfortable with," he explains. "And then once you take that away and destroy the innocence with some kind of corruption, you make a moment. It's a shock, and people laugh."

There were plenty of those "moments" in his days as an agency AD starting with Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners and culminating with TBWA in San Francisco, where, with spots like PlayStation 2's "Gravity Boots" and "Tractor Beam" under his belt, he nabbed top art director honors in Boards' 2004 Festival Report Card. But with the possibility of a creative director gig becoming likely, Hughes opted for the director's chair. "I looked at all the creative directors and all the directors I'd worked with," he says. "And it seemed that the directors had more swimming pools and less divorces."

Having directed "some 70 spots or so" over the span of 18 months, Hughes may finally be en route to doing the breaststroke in his backyard. "I've pretty much sacrificed all my relationships and happiness..." he says. "But someday I'll be swimming and it'll all make sense."

Reginald Pike http://www.reginaldpike.com
Reginaldo http://www.reginaldo.tv
Rokkit http://www.rokkit.tv