We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carlos Zapater oliva. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carlos below.

Hi Carlos, thanks for joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

My parents always encouraged me to draw since I was little. From the beginning they saw a potential in me that they wanted me to develop and they wanted to help me from the beginning to achieve it. At that time, I didn’t want to listen to his advice and preferred to do other things like listen to music, hanging out with my friends and be a teenager.
But they never gave up on their goal and they insisted on that idea to me incessantly, as if it were a hammer.
They bought me material, they talked to me about academies, they bought me drawing books, etc.
In one of them my father wrote me a note on the first page that said “To remind you to take drawing seriously once and for all.”
I still didn’t accept his advice from him although, like a fine rain, little by little that idea was penetrating into me.
Until one day, some friends who belonged to a music band asked me to do a drawing for the cover of a single they were going to publish. I accepted without hesitation but at that moment I realized the shortcomings I had when it came to drawing, giving color, applying techniques, etc.
It was at that moment when I began to listen to my parents’ advice and decided to listen to them and sign up for a drawing and painting academy that they advised me so much.
From that moment on I realized that my parents were right and that I should start taking drawing seriously just as my father wrote to me in the dedication of that book.
That book has traveled with me this far and I have never left it to remember how much they loved me and cared about me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Since I was little when I watched a movie, I always felt the need to draw moments from that movie to relive them and to be able to capture them forever. It’s funny, because when he had the opportunity to see the drawings from that time, I realized that he always tried to draw complete sequences that somehow told a story.
I always wanted to make a series of drawings where the important thing was not the drawing itself, but what I wanted to convey with them, that is, I was always looking for something to tell.
After all these years, I have realized that the need to narrate and tell stories has always been part of me.
My beginnings were quite different from those of the people I know. My parents supported my decisions throughout my life, but when it came time to choose what to study for my future, they advised me to study Technical Drawing because, in addition to the artistic aspect, there were more job opportunities later. During that time in Spain, pursuing a career in the arts often meant financial hardship, so working in an architecture studio seemed like the sensible choice at the time.
I studied Technical Drawing and worked in an architecture studio for 4 years. Later, through the CSIC, he collaborated with the European Space Agency (ESA) as a designer, designing mechanical components for satellite antennas. It was a completely different field than architecture.
It’s curious because when I designed those mechanical blocks, I always tried to make various poses so that it was understood how the antenna was deployed. It was something that was not necessary to do but that I always did. My bosses didn’t understand why I wasted time doing it, but they accepted it since I didn’t invest much time in doing it and it helped sell the design as well.
Both in my time as a draftsman in an architectural studio and as a designer of mechanical blocks, I always wanted to give an artistic touch to everything I did.
During this stage of my life I continued drawing in my free time at home. Until one day I saw a commercial for an animation school on television and it caught my attention. I signed up and spent six months learning the fundamentals of animation. It was at that moment that I realized that I had just found what I had always been looking for since I was a child. I felt like this was my path and I needed to follow it to the end. I had finally found my calling.
Shortly after finishing that course, I found myself unemployed and with a mortgage to pay. But at that moment I didn’t doubt it. I decided to invest the compensation I would receive in enrolling in another animation course.
I finished the course ahead of schedule because I was running out of money and still had to keep up with my mortgage payments every month.
I knocked on the doors of several studios in Madrid, but it was at Estudios Moro where I managed to start working on what I loved so much.
This was the beginning of my career. After this study came others later, other challenges to overcome and more things to learn.
As I look back on my beginnings, I am proud to remember my parents for always trying to help, support and encourage me.
And of course, I feel proud of myself for facing my fears, for going out to look for a future without money or bills to pay, but always with self-confidence and a strong belief in what I wanted to do.
I learned that it is essential to believe in yourself and fight for what you love.
Learn that you should never let fear stop you from doing something.
I learned that the most important thing at the end of life is to feel proud of the efforts made rather than the achievements obtained.
All of this helped me visualize my future in the profession and also helped me believe in myself and my abilities. In the end I did it and here I am.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

During my professional career I started as a 2D animator. It was something I learned about thanks to the animation course I attended and I was totally hooked from the beginning. Animation entered my veins like poison and trapped me in such a way that everything I did was done by and for animation. I tried to emulate the great animators of the time, learn from them, improve my drawing to be able to express in my animations everything I wanted to do without limitations of any kind.
I reached a good level, which opened the doors for me to work on the best European productions of that time and on some American ones that came to Spain.
The funny thing is that there came a time when the animation was too small for me. Working alone with a restricted time, such as the duration of a shot, I began to feel that I was limited, that I needed more.
It was at that moment when I began to be interested in Storyboard. I realized that in storyboard not only did you work with a single shot but you could do it with many at the same time, that is, with a complete sequence, where you could decide, in addition to the character’s acting , many more things like composition, narrative, that is, what shots to choose to tell a story, etc.
It was at that moment that the passion for Storyboard began to replace that of animation.
I began to read books on the subject, to become more interested in this matter, and although I had already made my first storyboards at Estudios Moro, it was at this time that I decided to take a turn in my career.
I had the opportunity to start doing it more seriously when I was working at Animagic, the embryo of SPA Studios directed by Sergio Pablos.
From that moment on I decided to make a change in my career that, years later, would mean one of the most important changes of my life.
Thanks to that decision I made, my work as a Storyboard artist caught the attention of other studios, sometimes working as a freelance for some of them or full time for others, such as the case of Ilion Studios in Madrid, which became part of Skydance Animation years later.
Skydance Animation decided to give me the opportunity to come to the USA to continue my work from here and so I did. Today I am happily working in this studio and very proud to belong to it.
I realize that the decision I made to change my profession as an animator to that of a story artist not only had an impact on me artistically but also strongly influenced me to completely change my life years later.
I decided to move with my family almost two years ago to Los Angeles and here we are, living together an experience that I would never have been able to consider if I had not decided at the time to change my profession.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Telling stories and giving my point of view is something that has always been with me and has always interested me. I love when I can work on a sequence in which there is no written script to follow, where I can offer my own point of view, always taking into account, of course, the director’s idea of that sequence. But deciding how to tell it from my point of view is something that always motivates me a lot. That is why one of my goals is to one day have the possibility of directing a short film, to be able to make decisions on many issues, such as script, color, type of animation, music, editing, etc.
This is something that has always attracted me and that on some occasions I have tried it with my own project, but unfortunately the production rates when one is working on a film prevent you from being able to focus on it. Whenever I work on a film I give myself completely to it, and I am unable to focus on a different one.
Not having been able to direct anything is not something that really torments me, but it is true that the idea of being able to be the one to make decisions is something that interests me a lot.
I greatly admire directors, especially those who have the ability to surround themselves with talented people, to know how to listen to the opinions that others give them. I admire them because in the end they are the ones who have to make the last decision, one decision among several that often influences the following ones.
It is a challenge that attracts me, living in a constant gymkhana of decision making.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zapateroliva/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-zapater-oliva-52164710/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnfzYOQFoCY
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2500263/ https://vimeo.com/library-search?q=carlos%20zapater

Image Credits
-LUCK -SMALLFOOT -WISH POLICE