{"id":655,"date":"2005-04-21T08:19:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-21T08:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pixarplanet.com\/blog\/an-animated-life"},"modified":"2005-04-21T08:19:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-21T08:19:00","slug":"an-animated-life-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pixarplanet.com\/blog\/an-animated-life-2\/","title":{"rendered":"An Animated Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">An Animated Life<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"><span style=\"font-size:100%;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yong B. Chavez, Apr 20, 2005 <span class=\"caps\">LOS<\/span> <span class=\"caps\">ANGELES<\/span> \u2014 When Gini Cruz Santos first got drawn into animation, she knew that she had found the love of her life. The 39-year-old Filipina and Bay Area resident is one of the gifted animators who worked on Pixar\u2019s \u201cThe Incredibles\u201d \u2013 the Oscar-winning animated movie recently released on <span class=\"caps\">DVD<\/span>.\u201cI can\u2019t imagine myself doing anything else,\u201d she said.Born in Manila, her parents moved to Guam when she was three years old. She moved back to the Philippines for high school, and earned her degree in fine arts with a major in advertising from the University of Santo Tomas. She went back to Guam right after. When an advertising job failed to inspire her, she later moved to New York to study computer art at the N.Y. School of Visual Art.It was through her education in the Big Apple that Cruz Santos was able to envision a solid image of her soon-to-be animated future.For her thesis, she did an animation reel called \u201cEclipse\u201d, which she admitted was an artistic as well as a personal statement at that time of her life.\u201cIt was a metaphor for how a lot of people come and go in one\u2019s life, and how most don\u2019t stay,\u201d Santos Cruz, who\u2019s currently single, said.\u201cIt\u2019s the story of my life,\u201d she said in jest with a self-deprecating laugh.She sent her work to various companies, and most of them responded favorably. But the one she dreamt of working for was Pixar, the studio that produces highly acclaimed computer-animated films like \u201cToy Story\u201d.She submitted to them her reel without even a resume.\u201cI submitted it just for the heck of it,\u201d she said. \u201cI never imagined that I would get in.\u201d Rejecting other job offers, she held out and waited a month before hearing the good news from the company where she believed her future lies.Nine years later, she\u2019s still happily employed at Pixar, where a growing number of Filipino animators also work, and getting better and better at her craft. So much so, that for their latest project \u2013 \u201cThe Incredibles\u201d \u2013 Cruz Santos, who\u2019s one of the few successful female animators in the field, was given more responsibilities for the project than ever before.Through the years, she has animated famous characters like Woody and Jesse the Cowgirl in \u201cToy Story 2\u201d, Sulley and Mike in \u201cMonsters, Inc.\u201d and her personal favorite, Dory from \u201cFinding Nemo\u201d. For \u201cThe Incredibles\u201d, she worked on Helen Parr, Dash, Violet, Edna Mode, and Frozone.\u201cI guess I\u2019m more drawn to secondary characters like Dory, and Helen Parr,\u201d she said. As it turned out, Dory, as voiced by Ellen Degeneres, emerged as probably the most popular character out of \u201cFinding Nemo\u201d. Dory was a fully fleshed-out animated character: a funny yet affecting fish with short-term memory problems. Cruz Santos explains that animators are closet actors because through computer images, they \u201cact out\u201d characters\u2019 emotions in each scene. She believes that a character gets its heart from the writer and director, the voice actor and the animator. In working on Elastigirl\/Helen Parr, The Incredibles\u2019 superheroine-turned-suburban mom, Cruz Santos used a muse close to her own heart.\u201cI used my mom as my inspiration for her,\u201d she said. The movie\u2019s creator gave Helen Parr the elastic powers to symbolize the kind of superhuman stretching that a mom like her own mother Celi Cruz Santos does every single day, she said. \u201cShe\u2019s my rock,\u201d she said. Her family, which includes her two siblings, faced a heartbreak together when her dad passed away in 2003.Cruz Santos gives credit to her parents for imbuing in her the traditional Filipino values of discipline and hard work, and for also giving her the chance to live and work in America where opportunities abound for passionate individuals like her. As it turns out, pursuing one\u2019s passion is the exact advice that she gives to aspiring young artists who want to lead an animated life just like hers.\u201cWhen you have finally figured out what you want to do in life, do not be afraid to take a chance and go for it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"tmnf_excerpt\"><p>An Animated Life Yong B. Chavez, Apr 20, 2005 LOS ANGELES \u2014 When Gini Cruz Santos first got drawn into animation, she knew that she had found the love of her life. The 39-year-old Filipina and Bay Area resident is one of the gifted animators who worked on Pixar\u2019s \u201cThe Incredibles\u201d \u2013 the Oscar-winning animated &hellip;<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An Animated Life - Upcoming Pixar<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pixarplanet.com\/blog\/an-animated-life-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Animated Life - Upcoming Pixar\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An Animated Life Yong B. Chavez, Apr 20, 2005 LOS ANGELES \u2014 When Gini Cruz Santos first got drawn into animation, she knew that she had found the love of her life. 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