173 -- Pixar’s Animation Sup Gini Santos

Gini Cruz Santos is a Filipina animator at Pixar studios based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked on numerous Pixar animation films including Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Toy Story 3, Up, Lifted and Brave. She was nominated in 2004 for an Annie Award for her animation on Finding Nemo and was nominated by the Visual Effects Society for an award for this project as well. Her animation of Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, was praised for integrating "fish movement, human movement and facial expressions to make them look and feel like real characters".  

Santos was born in Pasay City in the Philippines. She moved to Guam after age three but returned to study in the Philippines. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas with a major in Advertising. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York.

In 1996, she was hired by Pixar after submitting her short feature reel titled The Eclipse without submitting her resume. She was the Supervising Animator on the Pixar short film entitled Lifted. 

In this Podcast, Gini talks about her training and career, how she got her Dream Job at Pixar and the most important part of her job as an Animator -- the STORY.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/173/.