MAXI DIAZ Animation blog
01. Tell us brief fly about your professional background up to this day.
Well, since childhood always gave me good drawing, but my dream was to be a biologist and study birds. At the end EGB a friend I sign unwittingly comic course being taught in our school. That was the trigger for all. Gradually I became interested me more and more animation, until the day I saw The Hunchback of Norte Dame Cathedral. After the movie never had anything clearer in my life; wanted to go into animation. My teacher mount a small study of 2D animation in Seville, the city where I was born and where I lived until, after the study and several freelance be closed, me trasladase a Madrid, to join the team of animators movie crowds Planet 51, en Ilion animation studios. At the end I was working there for a year or so at The Spa studios until I got the opportunity to work for the animation industry in Japan, place where I am currently.
Stop by several Japanese companies like Polygon Pictures, Toei animation studios, the Gooneys y finalmente Marza animation planet, company in which currently working meeting me for his second feature, American court even without definitive name.
02. Did you work in any other field before animation? Did it help you in anyway in your professional career?
No, not before. I started as 2D animator. When wearing 8 years or less, I had a crisis; the world of 2D animation collapsed and the few companies offering work was done in a way that was impossible to work without that would affect your mental and physical health. I had contact with the world of tattoos, I caricatures in night clubs, graphic design… ultimately, so I went, always avoiding the animation, until one day a former colleague told me about a course taught in 3dmax and the benefits of 3D, so I gave him one last chance, and until today. It helped me meet many amazing people and to appreciate even more what it means to express ourselves as we do, to love even more animation.
03. Before working as animator . what drew your attention to this field?
All, the beginning was the drawing, the animation itself, fiction, stories, Music, but especially, and beyond the technical or graphic look was struck me as was possible characters that only existed on paper and afectasen magically come to life that way millions of people. Eventually I discovered that what really attracted me was the fact that the animation is the art that brings together more disciplines, not only artistic but humanistic and even math.
04. How did you first land a job in the industry? What do you think was the key to get?
I got into the studio my professor amount just after finishing the course I taught on animation. The key to achieving this was passion and stubbornness, never shuffle the possibility of not dedicate myself to this.
05. If you had to start froms cratch in this profession how would you go about it?
First thing would be to find a good school, invest in it. It is the most important investment you will make in your life, so you have to be very scrupulous. Being self-taught is fine, but you lose a lot of time to discover things in school they explain in the first week. The weather in this profession is beautiful and although it is never too late, it is best to start young, because experience is a major plus here.
06. What’s the most important thing your work has contributed to your personal life?
Sensitivity and empathy. If there is something you must work to be an animator is get into the skin of many different characters, with their traumas, obsessions, their circumstances, but not only that, if you do not work with arcs shape their personalities and their lives. You work with people who change radically and you understand why. They are constant life lessons that make you appreciate the smallest details and evaluate more people and understand. And of course the fellowship, the teamwork, fundamental thing in this work.
07. What if you could exchange within the animation industry?
I think it's not just something that affects the animation, is generally, that we educate and prepare us to be replaced by machines and we realize. The day you have to replace a computer, this change for the company will be so undramatic that neither we imagine. We work schedules subject to sometimes insane, under impossible rhythms and with production schedules immovable, so much so that even the animation is done today is closer than you would a machine that would make a person.
I think the change came, piecemeal. I think those who manage such a mechanistic studies as algebraic form and should understand that animation, even being a business, human factor needs now more than ever, and that there are limits that should not be passed, it is precisely this factor drown as necessary. Not to be pessimistic, today there are companies that are doing amazing things and, After the, the future is ours and it is in our power to stay the same or promote change.
08. What’s the project you’re the most proud of to have worked on?
Of that I'm most proud is perhaps Tron:Uprising, a series in which in a few months I let life years, hehehe. He who has scored more me, clearly, Planet 51, and although my role there was to crowd animator, I can never forget the professionalism and skill of all that wonderful team that made me grow at all levels in a way that could never have imagined.
09. What was the most discouraging moment in your professional career? What helped you overcome it?
My point was more discouragement discuss the crisis and above, when I decided to stop animation. It was prompted by a change globally (excluding Japan, clear) and helped me get over the climb on the bandwagon of change, choose to contribute my knowledge to half again, and realize that, although not reaching the level of freedom to be had in 2D, the steps you take are going in the right direction, and in very short time and break that barrier is overcome, I am quite sure. In short, which helped me to overcome was to hope.
My most discouraging moment was in the crisis I decided to quit 2D animation.
10. What part of the working process do you enjoy the most? What part do you enjoy the less?
With more, the creative process, Search. That's where you learn, is the core of our work. With less, the technical part, although equally necessary, I find it tedious, unnatural and alien. Yes, come from 2d, I'm going to do, There are things that I have yet to adapt…
11. What advice would you give to someone who wishes to get in to this industry?
The artists; to study, looking for a good school. That are open to constructive criticism and know filter that they are not. Self-criticism is included there too. Learn to accept good ideas do not come from them, the use, to be endorsed and seek ways of loving to empower the most. They are passionate at all times and especially, never be conformist. Entrepreneurs; stop doing their work to those who know, I always support the creative process and not drown and especially, to study to understand that is what their workers, to study to understand what is required at all times, in each department.
12. Do you have any personal projects? Could you tell us about any?
I have some ideas, but unfortunately I have no time to devote to them, but everything will come.
