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Pixelatl 2021: We All Need Each Other! This year’s virtual edition features a stellar list of animation creatives and inspiring panels. Jose Iñesta
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his month, Mexico’s famous Pixelatl Festival will be held entirely online for its 10th edition. This popular meet-up of Ibero-American creators, executives and fans of all aspects of animation, gaming and comics is set to take place September 7 to 11. We had a chance to catch up with festival director Jose Iñesta to get the scoop on this year’s five-day animation extravaganza. Here’s what he told us: Can you tell us a bit about this year’s lineup? Jose Iñesta: This year’s Pixelatl will be online for the second year in a row. We are very excited about this edition because it’s our 10th anniversary and we’ll be celebrating the beautiful community that has made Pixelatl what it is. In addition, we will be celebrating many amazing stories, artists and people that have devoted their lives to the craft of animation.
What are some of the highlights and mustsees? There are a lot of things that you can’t miss! First of all, there’s the great Masterclass about Maya and the Three, where Jorge Gutiérrez and Sandra Equihua will be talking about their upcoming Netflix show. Also, another activity that you can’t miss is Sandra’s workshop on character design. Another speaker that you can’t miss is Peter Lord, founder of Aardman Animations studio in Bristol, who will be talking about his life, animation focus and sharing his
experience of working in this industry. We are also pleased to have Chris Prynoski, founder of Titmouse, participating this year. Another important highlight is our production designers panel with Carlos Zaragoza (Sony’s Vivo), Lorelay Bové (Disney’s Encanto) and Harley Jessup (Pixar’s Coco) will talk about creating Latin American stories through art! Of course, another can’t miss is Byron Howard’s conversation about all the features he’s done, ending with the upcoming Disney’s Encanto. Also, all the panels that talk about animation in the Ibero-American region will be interesting, because each country will showcase their best: Peru, Colombia, Chile, Spain, etc. Bento Box’s panels are also a must see, and having studio founder Joel Kuwahara participating in our market is always a highlight. You also won’t want to miss our Official Selection: We received wonderful shorts from all over the world and the program is rich in the variety of techniques as well as stories.
dance. Normally we have around 3,500 people in Cuernavaca, but last year we hit over 4,700 people in our talks. Our closing ceremony had 2,500 unique views during the event. What we noticed from last year is that we were missing interaction among the participants. So, this year we are correcting that and we are giving all the participants the opportunity to speak (chats), share videos and have valuable meetings with each other. This year, we are also launching a platform called elatlas.mx that will help the recruiting part of the event and also for the B2B networking. What do you think worked well virtually last year? The community! Our festival belongs to the local artists and animators and we program what they tell us they need to learn to improve their
How did you prepare for this year’s virtual edition? We learned a lot from last year, and the reason we decided to do it again online was because last year we had a record atten-
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Encanto
september|october 21
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