GUARDIANS of the GALAXY Vol.3

Year of production: 2022-2023

Director: James Gunn
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  When I have to work on a Marvel show I sweat... and I swear, but this show is fun, and the characters are fun to animate. I enjoyed the show? hmm... Nope! I spent 14 weeks animating Groot, Rocket... hmm...ah...and I already forgot the rest. The animation team was really great. A lot of keyframe. Why I never enjoy a Marvel show? I don't know. Weta is an amazing company and I feel grateful to be part of the team.

AVATAR:

Year of production: 2018-2022

Director: James Cameron
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  This is the longest and more challenging project I ever been involved (more than 4 years in total). I started doing creature development work such as cycles for creatures, animation studies and providing animation vignettes for the previs team in LA. The show had a lot of keyframe and not just mocap but you had to stick to the template (previs) at all times. Despite that, this was the best project with the best director and best team ever. We also won an OSCAR for Best VFX in 2023

Year of production: 2020-2021

Director: Chris McKay
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  I wasn't really excited about this project but Avatar 2 got delayed again and I had to spend 12 weeks helping on this show. The best part was that I still had a job and I was able to continue working from home. The show wasn't too bad. I animated ugly alien creatures with tentacles and multiple legs. I enjoyed it most of the time because you just had to follow the rules: Make it look cool, scary, crazy and a fast killing machine... and we could play with ideas which is rare nowadays.

Year of production: 2020

Director: Chris Columbus
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  Due the COVID-19 Pandemic and several delays all the Avatar crew was available to help on other shows during crunch time and I worked during a couple of weeks on this Netflix film. It was an intense race to hit the targets in time but I was pleased to be able to work from home. I enjoyed animating elves despite the show had a lot of problems. We had to deal with really heavy character rigs for such a simple end result.

We can be Heroes

Year of production: 2020

Director: Robert Rodriguez
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  This project was a cheap Netflix film and it came during another break on Avatar 2. It was so silly that it was really fun to do, despite sometimes it was difficult to provide high quality work due the client's poor material that it was given to us. I had a good time animating slimy tentacles and being on the show. It was a more creative experience than in other projects. My time on the show was short but I enjoyed having to do something so different to Avatar.

Jumanji:
The Next Level

Year of production: 2019

Director: Jake Kasdan
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  I worked in the sequence where the heroes are chased by hundreds of mandrills. I did animate lots of mandrills and floating bridges and it was kind of interesting to work with libraries of motions already stablished because I ended up just tweaking timings and compositions instead of animating everything from scratch. It was an easy project that came during a break on the Avatar sequels.

Avengers: Endgame

Year of production: 2019

Director: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  I worked in the final battle where all the heroes are fighting against Thanos' army. I just animated a few shots with  Groot, Rocket Racoon, Iron patriot, Captain America, Falcon and Thanos fighting with Captain Marvel. We had a very tight schedule to do all the work and we were basically matching the previs in most of the cases because we didn´t have time to try new ideas. This project came during a break on the Avatar sequels and I wish I could say it was an interesting one...

Mortal Engines

Year of production: 2018

Director: Christian Rivers
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Weta Digital

ANIMATION:  I landed with my family in New Zealand and a week later I was working in this movie at Weta Digital. It was really interesting to start doing proper shots whilst I was settling up, meeting the team and learning the new tools... It was great to have feedback directly from the director of the film in person. I did animate some of the vehicles and the human-robot Shrike mainly, it was all keyframed so I couldn't complain at all. I had a good time.

Jurassic World
Fallen Kingdom

Year of production: 2017-2018

Director: J.A. Bayona
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION:  When I started this project I knew that this was the last one I would do at ILM. It was a great way to complete the circle because my fascination with the CGI started with Jurassic Park. In this sequel I was in charge of 6 sequences and I did animate a few shots with the Indoraptor, the T-Rex and Blue, the hero raptor. It was a cool experience but I decided to leave UK and move with my family to New Zealand. A new adventure was awaiting.

Star Wars: Ep VIII
The Last Jedi

Year of production: 2016-2017

Director: Rian Johnson
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION:  I worked during 1 year and 8 months, in previs, post-viz and the final animation. I had the chance to go on set when they were filming and I even sat in the cockpit of the real millennium Falcon. I  was in charge of the sequence with Maz Kanata. Despite my role as a Lead in that sequence was uncredited the experience was good, I liked Rian Johnson, he was a nice and humble person. 

T.M. Ninja Turtles:
Out of the Shadows 

Year of production: 2016

Director: Dave Green
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION:  This was the less demanding project in ILM so far. Although I animated all the turtles in a couple of shots (a mocap base was used) it was more fun to animate the two fools of the show; Rocksteady and Bebop (was full keyframe). I've never thought I would enjoy animating a humanoid pig picking his nose. It was the kind of production where the artistic values were not important.

Deepwater Horizon

Year of production: 2016

Director: Peter Berg
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION:  In this movie I worked on a shot only, although it was a long one. I animated the camera inside a pipe and little cement stones flitting while being pushed up by a suction outlet. It was a job without too many complications or challenges but interesting in terms of getting the current underwater effect. At the end I could not even do the last polish on the shot and it was finished by another animator because I was already working on the next project.

Star Wars: Ep VII
The Force Awakens

Year of production: 2015

Director: J.J. Abrams
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION:  It was great to be witness of all the work behind the scenes. I animated classic icons like the Millennium Falcon, R2-D2 as well as the new characters such as Snoke and Maz Kanata (I did also some designs and a real-time rig for this one). The animation for Snoke was half mocap and half keyframed but for Maz was all animated by hand and absolutely nothing of mocap. Was a dream to be part of this new Star Wars adventure.

Ant-Man

Year of production: 2015

Director: Peyton Reed
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION:  I have to confess that the last thing I wanted to do after Avengers was another superhero movie for Marvel despite it was a good experience, but I had the chance of working in the previs and I also did an interesting test of Ant-Man mounting an ant like a horse. Afterwards I did some shots of a fight with one of the Avengers. Animating Ant-Man and The Falcon digi-doubles basically. Nothing as fun as animating the Hulk vs. Hulkbuster.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Year of production: 2014

Director: Joss Whedon
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Industrial Light & Magic

ANIMATION: I joined to Industrial Light & Magic with the hope of working in the best projects in the industry. I did some of the hero shots of the Hulk vs. Hulkbuster sequence and also a couple of shots with Ultron and the Falcon. I didn't use any mocap reference and everything was keyframe animation. Possibly the most exciting experience in my career as animator so far. I felt like a child playing with the best toys.

Hercules

Year of production: 2014

Director: Brett Ratner
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: My contribution to this film is just a walk cycle of a horse and the rider and not much more. I also made renders of all cycles for submission and all retargeting of some mocap clips of horses and riders that we had. At the end the sequence went to another company so none of that work is in the movie. It was exciting at the beginning but disappointing at the end.
It was time for a change for me and decided to look at different companies...

Vampire Academy

Year of production: 2013

Director: Mark Waters
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: I did animate some of the hero shots of the genetically modified dogs that haunt the protagonist. I used plenty of references of angry dogs and wolves. Although it was very interesting to animate, it was a shame that there was no more time to do some good facial rigs and deformations. We had a few limitations but it was the first creature project and that was cool. Not bad job anyway...

The Two Faces Of January

Year of production: 2013

Director: Hossein Amini
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: I worked only in one shot. Although it was something new for me, I can not say it was exciting. I had to animate all the traffic for this shot (about 104 cars and trucks). I didn't used any system of paths because the scene was quite heavy and I did animated all the assets one by one. Each vehicle model had a different color and that was useful to avoid the repetitions of models close to each others. Was tedious.

White House Down

Year of production: 2013

Director: Roland Emmerich
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: Again, digi-doubles animation. This time, soldiers walking, running and throwing themselves to the ground with the gun aiming the enemy. We used our own recordings as a reference to animate, again, no mocap animation. I also animated some debris flying through the air in one of the explosions and some car as well, but nothing remarkable.

Byzantium

Year of production: 2012

Director: Neil Jordan
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: The technical aspect for this job was very important because I had to animate 800 birds in one of the shots. The birds had previously animated and cached their cycles and I had to put them on a path to which I could assign the density of birds. I had to make changes on the timming and position and I animated the path curves to give the feeling of controlled chaos. It was a bit tedious, but also interesting because again, it was something new for me.

Total Recall

Year of production: 2012

Director: Len Wiseman
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: I worked on the animation of the robots. Some shots were roto-animation and others with the robot roughly overlapped with the actor who played the robot, but all was keyframe animation and slighly different than the original source.  I just did an animation where I had to record myself with a toy gun and use the animation to fill some gaps in the background with robots walking and aiming with their guns. It was short but interesting work.

Mirror Mirror:
The Untold Adventures of Snow White

Year of production: 2011

Director: Tarsem Singh
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: I worked on the animation of the living mannequins. It was interesting because it was a kind of puppet with unexpected reactions. I Also animated some secondary stuff, such as a tree falling , some strings being cutted, some potatoes...

RIGGING: I made specific rigs for cutting strings and I helped the rigger with the dynamics of the branches of a cg tree.

Dredd

Year of production: 2011

Director: Pete Travis
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Prime Focus Film UK

ANIMATION: My work consisted in animating digital doubles (people falling from a building basically) but I did animated a head crashing on the floor in slow motion. That was shocking ...

RIGGING: I did the rigs for the digi-doubles and the rig of the head crashing against the floor. I studied how to split a skull and how the skin cuts can be made on the impact. The rig had several layers of simulation and deformers.

Chico & Rita

Year of production: 2009

Director: Javier Mariscal & Fernando Trueba
Imdb: HERE

TASKS: 

Company: Estudio Mariscal

ANIMATION: I did all the animation library (278 animation clips) for all crowds.
RIGGING: I did all the rigs (about 48) for all the crowds of the movie. All rigs could share animation clips using the track editor.
TEXTURES: I textured and unfolded the UV's of the vehicles that appear in the movie.
It was my first movie and a very rewarding and  artistic experience. The film also won a Goya, an European Film award and  was Oscar nominated for best animation film.