Carlos, first of all let me thank you for being here on CG-Node to answer these questions. I´m sure we all have a lot to ask and we are grateful that you have shared few moments with us to do so.
It's my pleasure. I'll try to answer your questions as good as I can.
You passion for animation started, a long time ago, with comics. This is something that personally interests me about your artistic career. Tell us, how did your interest for comics became an interest in animation?
To tell you the truth, I did started out enjoying comics since I was 10-12, but from then until I started doing animation, many years have passed. For me it was a mix of things I'm sure. One of those that I think had to do with it from early on has been my passion for films since I was really young. Every since I was a little punk I was already following the films of certain directors such as Spielgberg or Lucas, and I'd memorize all their films and information about them (even if they were only producing).
Years later I became heavily involved in skateboarding, and among our friends we did many random videos of us being stupid, acting, whatever. Some of those little videos have performances of qualities beyond human understanding. They are that bad. We were such monkeys. Anyway, I had some of the best times in my life, and I think from that I became interested in acting as well.
So with that, with my love for cinema, drawing, watching cartoons, etc., when I discovered animation, it put together so many things I wanted to try, that the discovery almost felt like a big smack on my face. Until today I love all these things very much. Animation puts together many many things in my opinion. It's an accumulation of different talents, which make the job for me very special and unique.
So we could say that that €œevolution€, if you will, made you move forward and go to United States looking for a place to study animation?. Once you knew you wanted to move into animation, what was your goal and how did you achieve it?
More or less. Travelling to the US was somewhat complicated. First, I went there to study in a school, without knowing exactly what it was I was going to study. This was on 93 or something like that. It was when I was preparing to go over there. It wasn't like there was a major called "Computer Animation" in Spain that I knew about. The first "Jurassic Park" hasn't come out just yet...and it was 2 years away until "Toy Story" came out on the theatres. So, on 93-94 I decided to go to try to study art or film.
I couldn't study none of the two in Spain because of the educational grading system. I just didn't have enough grades to study one or the other. My family was an incredible support, both emotionally and financially, since I was a 17-18 little dwarf without financial resources of any kind. I also had to deal with the visa issues to even be able to come to the US. That was another interesting part. I had to take English exams (TOEFL). I completely failed the first one. It was awesome how bad I did that first exam. The next one I barely passed. So I jumped to the US thinking about studying art. They already started having Digital design classes, like teaching the first version of Photoshop and things like that. So I started exploring things like that for a while.
Through a friend I started knowing more about 3D, and how the use 3D animation in films. That's when I decided to go for that all the way. I talked to the Dean, department directors of both USF and Academy of Art College, and I proposed to them a new "independent" curriculum, more or less including the classes I have already taken, as well as new classes focused only on 3D and Animation. That way I didn't throw away all the money spent in the other classes, and I could start doing 3D/Animation. Even after I did that, I still had to take other classes that weren't my favourite, but that allowed me to graduate...such as Advanced Calculus or C++ Programming classes. I've never felt so useless as when I took those classes. I realized that there are people that are simple naturals for programming...and other people that can flat out forget about it. Like me. :) I only spent the majority of the classes doing drawings on the books, or thinking about which places I would go skateboarding with my friends that day.
Anyway, from 95-97, I went full on with 3D and Animation. By then I was tarting to have knee issues and surgeries due to skateboarding. It was really hard to go through that, but on the upside, I was already starting to be hooked on Film/Animation. By 1997, "Toy Story" had already come out in video, I watched the freaking film like 300 times and I only enjoyed it more and more each time, I had seen people like Pete Docter (Monster's Inc Director) give talks as a Supervising Animator for "Toy Story", or I had spent days and days waiting in line in the theatres to go the new Special Edition Star Wars films with my friends. I well decided by then that's what I wanted to do in my life. Film and Animation. From then...I went learning little by little and practising, etc.
No doubt, there is nothing worse than feeling you don't like whatever you do. Something I've asked myself many times is €“ how was it for Carlos Baena the first time he got in front of his computer and animated a walk cycle? Did you feel passionate about the art of animating or did it take a while to discover it? Did you need to repeat the cycle or did it come out right at your first shot?
To tell you the truth, I don't remember exactly when or what my first walk cycle was...but guaranteed it was a potato of a walk. I don't think it was until I started getting deep into acting stuff, that I realized how much I truly loved this stuff aside from the fact of animation being a very unique and special medium. What I found amazing which I still find it today is the acting aspect of animation. I did back in 98 I believe a little acting test with a dialogue from the movie "The Godfather". I remember closing myself in my room for hours, pretending to be Vito Corleone, and touching my chin in a thousand different ways while saying the line, to see if I could do something different using the dialogue, or trying to caricaturize the action to make it even more entertaining. It was definitely one of those moments that you realize the potential of whatever it is that you are experimenting with, and I had the best time doing that early test and those that followed.
Walks, or walk cycles in general, I've done very few...and they've been done throughout my career...not all of them at the very beginning of my learning. I wish I did more at the beginning. A few weeks ago I actually had to have a character walk from one side of the screen to the other side. When it comes to walks, I believe locomotion should serve the acting of the character. So therefore, you try to find ways so that your cycle doesn't just look like a cycle...but instead, it is the personality, the character, the age,etc, what's motivating the character's walk.
So, when you clearly saw that you wanted to animate, what was your next step right after getting your animation degree in the United States? Did you think about getting back to Spain or did you decide that your future as an animator wasn't there? What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?
For a while I did think about coming back to Spain, as soon as I finished college, to see what would happen. But in the Spring of 1998, I did a 2D short film based on an idea of Quino, a comic book artist from Argentina that I grew up admiring. The short film had many issues in terms of execution, pacing, animation...and I don't even want to talk about the quality of the drawings. I threw in there a bunch of After Effects filters, for it to look like a silent film from the 20's...and still looked like crap. But on the upside, I did learn a lot from doing it.
So the short film was viewed at Will Vinton Studios, in Portland, OR...(currently I believe it's Laika) where they used to do the M&M's commercials back then. They offer me to work on these commercials, and since then, I decided to stay in United States. Knowing at one point I'd like to start working on features, I preferredto stay around here. It's been an incredible sacrifice to be so far away from my culture and my family. But they have supported me in every single moment, and at the sam time, I've seen come true many dreams of mine which is something I'm very thankful for.
Certainly, being away from your relatives is tough and complicated. You've got to be passionate and believe in what you do in those hard times. Did you consider giving up? If so, what helped you to aim on your goal?.
No, I didn't give up. But I did go back to Spain temporarily, around the year 2000 due to visa issues, and that allowed me to take it easy, to spend time with my family which was really nice. I didn't really have a goal in mind...I didn't tell myself "I'll do this, then that". IT just all happened as it came, so as I was working in one place, the other, other things came up. Two things I did wish for, but more from a "wouldn't it be cool to" type of thing. I wanted to work on "Star Wars" since I was little. I grew up with that world. I remember going downstairs to my neighbours house after school when we were little, and playing for hours and hours. So, when I was here in the US and found out they were looking for people to work on the new ones, it became something I really wanted. Then the movies came up, and even though they didn't work well in terms of story, the characters, etc...it was still quite an experience to get to work on it. The other thing I really wanted was to work at Pixar...and well, that took a while...and many many letters of rejection. But that allowed me to work in other places, get more experience, make more friends in other places and learn how to do other things.
