Valentin Amador

Valentin Amador, supervising animator at Walt Disney animation studios. He was born in Cadiz, Spain, in 1973. He wanted to be a Disney animator since he was a kid. According to his parents , he was the only kid awake in the theater when they took him to see Fantasia at 3, and to this day Bill Tytla’s Chernobog form the Night On The Bald Mountain segment is his favorite piece of animation. He grew up in Barcelona, where he started working as a 2D animator in TV series and commercials. His desire to workin features took him to Madrid, where he worked as a supervising animator with Sergio Pablos, and then to London to work in Dreamwork’s Sinbad.

When the industry turned to the computer, he started working in VFX studios like Framestore or Dneg, where he learned CG animation working on films like The Tale of Desperaux, Where The Wild Things Are or Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. He combined it with hand drawn jobs, like senior animator on Sylvain’s Chomet The Illusionist.

He was hired by Disney in late 2012 and early the following year he started working on Frozen. He has been there since then, working on movies like Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana or Frozen 2. His latest job was as supervising animator on Encanto, where he led the characters of Pepa, Camilo and Felix. He still draws for every scene he animates, and has incorporated his dual work flow into his teaching.