Carlos Grangel

Artist Spotlight is a place to showcase new artists as well as revisiting talent.  Enjoy this interview sharing the stories about their work, career, and process for navigating the winding road that artists must take in order to become a professional in such a creative, respected, and sought after career.

This is artist Carlos Grangel. For more about this artist visit their CTN Profile: CLICK HERE

What were your beginnings(childhood and or how you evolved to being a professional artist) as an artist? Where did you grow up and did that influence your art and path to your career? 

I grew up in Barcelona and art had a great influence on me, my mom studied art but couldn't make a living due the hard times of the post Spanish Civil War, my dad also was a good draftsman and drew as a hobby. My beginnings were starting on comics strips and illustration, worked on commercials and did many comics for Disney and also other characters for French and German publishers. Is how my brother and I established Grangel Studio a creative center providing a diversity of services based on design. Studied animation techniques and I moved to London where I started working on my first feature.

Can you talk about your career being a Character Designer? How did you prepare yourself, skills for this career and what is the process you use for projects?

Character design is really one of my passions in life and I love many aspects of it, love to have an script and imagine the look of it...the early process looking for possible reference studying time and period, paying attention to all possible details, it is really interesting and of course the sharing process of animation working on a team, learning and developing the style/look for that particular show, I really like to pay attention to all characters not only main, sometimes secondary and miscellaneous are more interesting to approach.

You have started your own company, how did that evolve and how is that different for you and your work/projects?

As I said before... my brother Jordi and I started Grangel Studio many years ago, Jordi is a great draftsman and sculptor and also drives the business, so I have the freedom to travel and work more at the productions houses, but at the same time I love to go back to my studio where I found the quiet moments to focus and portrait all the notes and directions I've got, need the time to work on my own "cave". The clients had been incredibly nice and open to respect my creative process, and I believe it benefit both sides.

Can you explain a little about keeping the rights to your own work? When you have your own company and how complicated is that? Why do you deem that important?

Keeping the rights is always tricky, even if you had created the idea studios try to get those rights, we are right now in the middle of a negotiation of a project created at my studio and to tell you the truth is a big battle.

Do you have any advice for people starting out?

Passion and hard work are main conditions. First you have to have the drive for and second is time to learn and practice as much as you can, nature observation will help a lot and spend as much time you have visiting exhibits, museums, etc. Seeing other artist work will make you learn ways of doing things different of reinventing yourself on every project you do. Your own imagination and long hours at your desk will do the rest.

How was your first experience with CTN and your interview with Jill Culton?

Was great, normally I do not have much time left for animation events but I must say that I enjoyed that very much, Jill is a person that I respect and did a great job preparing all types of questions, "intimidating"..., also found lovely the interaction with students and piers.

You've done so much with your career already, what would you like accomplish over the next 2 years?

2 years???

I have a weekly schedule that is already pretty crazy...truly right now I would like to go fishing. Seriously I would love to share and keep working with creative people, perhaps directors I never work with before, I also have a few projects so hope to bring them to life.

Interview by Heather M. Shepherd

Heather is an experienced artist, modeler, and CG designer. She has worked at Disney,Dreamworks, Jim Henson and Warner Bros. Recently shehas been writing, directing,and producing her own award winning films.