What is your name and your current occupation?
Ana Maria Alvarado, Character Animator.
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
In 1985 I got my first paying job was as an interpreter and guide for an American Journalist in Nicaragua (I grew up in Nicaragua). I was 15, and I made enough money to buy my own radio/boombox after a month of work. I basically just went around Managua with this journalist, helped him navigate the unnamed streets and helped him with his interviews. At one point he asked my parents if I could go north (to the war zone) with him. They gave him a resounding no, but when he returned he asked me to interpret a series of recordings of another American he met in a village up north whom he believed to be a CIA operative. The tapes revealed nothing. Â I also worked at Burger King in Stockholm, for 4 days.
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I loved working on Stuart Little 2 and Open Season, at Sony Imageworks. The bar for the animation was really high, and I learned so much from other animators. Â Recently I also had the privilege to work on Scorcese’s Hugo at Pixomondo. It was a wonderfully collaborative process, and ideas for the animation of the flying paper sequence came from the ground up.
How did you become interested in animation?
I’ve always be interested in visual arts and storytelling. Â I was studying film in Prague (back when it was still Czechoslovakia). A one of my classmates and I were looking at some Preston Blair drawings someone had left behind in a classroom. My friend casually commented that I could probably draw like that. I didn’t think I could. While in Prague we tinkered with Continue reading
