Interview: Armand Serrano
The Filipino artist tells Gary Evans how he went from failed civil engineer to successful Disney animator, and why it’s time to go freelance…
From failed civil engineer to successful Disney animator – we talk to the artist who’s about to strike out on his own.
A rmand Serrano spent 13 weeks, without much sleep, working up a new portfolio. He made three copies. The first, he took to Warner Bros. – the California studio that had just finished 1996 film Space Jam. Armand sat down with the man who “filtered” portfolios. This man turned the pages, closed the book, and then shook his head. “Sorry, kid,” he told Armand. “You don’t have it.”
Armand emailed the other portfolios. After a week, DreamWorks phoned. The company liked his work. But because Armand worked mainly in TV – at Philippine Animation Studio and Hanna-Barbera’s studio in Manila – DreamWorks wasn’t sure if he’d cut it in film. So it invited him in for a test.
The phone rang again a couple of hours later. Armand had sent the third portfolio to Disney, who loved it. Disney offered him a job in Florida, and because of his TV experience, it wasn’t an entry-level role, but a position as key assistant. “I guess,” Armand says, “the rest is history.”
Hollywood was a long sh ot
Armand’s mother, a teacher, likes to say Armand started drawing at two years old. He grew up in Manila. His dad, an accountant, would bring home used papers from work so Armand could draw on the “clean side”.
I began to understand the process… that’s when I decided this was my career
Armand saw Star Wars at 10. He became aware of concept art and dreamed of working in the movies. Except, he never took it seriously. “Hollywood,” he says, “seemed like a very long shot.”
Armand is also a multiinstrumentalist, so he wanted to do a degree in fine art or music. His dad suggested something more practical. Armand picked civil engineering, but stuck with the music, played in an 80s band, grew his hair long, dyed it red, and skipped his mandatory military service. But university didn’t go well. It took him almost seven years to complete the five-year course. In that final year, Armand says, “I cleaned up my act” – met his wife, did his time in the military and got an engineering apprenticeship – but he still failed his exams to become a working engineer. Then he heard about an animation studio opening up in Manila.
In 1990, Armand got a trainee job at Fil-Cartoons, the Manila studio set up by Hanna-Barbera. Armand worked in animation for a year, then moved to the layout department. He designed backgrounds, characters poses and played around with camera mechanics. He worked on Yogi Bear, The Addams Family, and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. “I loved it,” he says. “I felt I began to have an understanding of design and had a handle on the overall production process. That’s when I decided this was my career of choice.”
Philippine Animation Studio offered him a job in 1994 as head of its layout department for shows by Marvel. He worked on X-Men, Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, and Biker Mice From Mars, now alongside artists from the US and Europe, who encouraged Armand to move to America.
He sent applications to 30 different US studios. Most said the quality of his work wasn’t good enough. But a small video game company called 7th Level offered him a job. Armand moved with his wife and two-year-old daughter to a one-bedroom apartment in Burbank, California.
Alongside the 7th Level job, Armand took a 13-week course at an animation school. The course helped him understand the differences between TV animation and feature film animation. But he spent much of those 13 weeks working on a new portfolio, which he sent out to three different studios.
Oscar-winning movies
Armand took his family to Florida in 1997 to work on the Disney movie that became Mulan. He was promoted to layout journeyman and earned credits on Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear. He learned a lot working alongside some of the best artists in the world. He also began to feel validated in choosing animation.
In 2004, Disney decided to close its Florida studio. But Sony Pictures
That’s where I come in… creating a believable world the characters will live in
Animation offered Armand a job back in Los Angeles. He tried out different fields – visual development artist, conceptual art director and production designer – and worked on more big movies: Surf’s Up, Hotel Transylvania and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.
A big movie takes roughly five years to make. Three years goes into the story and character development, then the visual development team gets to work: the character and environment designers. “That’s where I come in,” Armand says, “creating a believable world that the characters will live in.”
He was still at Sony when he was finally granted US citizenship. This gave him new opportunities – to work in other industries, to travel more widely, and to teach.
Armand returned to Disney in 2013. Many of his old colleagues from Florida now worked as art directors, producers and directors. His second spell was even more successful than the first: he worked on Oscar-winning films Big Hero 6 and Zootopia. Despite all this, Armand decided to leave and become a freelancer. “For the past 20-something years,” Armand says, “I’ve always been known as the Disney guy. I believe it’s now time for me to pursue other creative opportunities.”
An average workday at one of the big studios was spent mostly in his office. But what he liked best was the chance to collaborate with all the other departments. Now he’s a freelancer, he’s in his home studio all day and collaboration happens online. He starts work early and keeps a calendar in his eyeline to stay on top of deadlines. Exercise helps him stay physically fit. In the studio, his Chihuahua keeps him company.
Sanity intact
Many of the things that excite him as a kid excite him now. He’s into history: tanks, aircraft, uniforms. He keeps
a library of photo references, but doesn’t horde. Regular hard-drive clearances feel refreshing. He does have a ton of art supplies, though he doesn’t use them often. For sketches on the go, he uses Procreate with an Apple Pencil on his iPhone or iPad Pro. He keeps plenty of art books within reach on his worktables. He has two stations: one with a MacBook Pro attached to a Wacom Cintiq Pro and a 22-inch HD Dell monitor, and another with Oculus VR gear attached to a 15-inch Alienware gaming laptop.
The best bit of being freelance is the chance to explore new technology. VR speeds up his design process by bringing him inside his art. He finds it “excitingly wild and useful”, the best thing since Photoshop and the drawing tablet. However busy Armand is, he sets aside time for personal work: “It’s a tool to keep my passion burning, my sanity intact and to explore other techniques that could benefit me and help me continue to grow. One thing I never want to happen is for me to stagnate creatively.”
For an aspiring artist, it’s not much use being told: “Sorry, kid, you don’t have it.” A young artist needs to know what it is they don’t have and how they can get it. Armand wants to help.
“The foundations of great art always remain the same,” he explains. “Story or idea, design and execution, through visual storytelling. I want them to feel, and take hold of the message that I want to convey.”
Facing the music
“What makes concept art is the word concept,” continues Armand. “Meaning art with a story or idea. Without concept, it’s just a good piece of art. Sadly, I’d see so much conceptless concept art out there that it pushed me to teach and share my own experiences and what I’ve learned through the years, which a young artist may never learn in an art school.”
As a teacher and mentor, Armand shares the knowledge he built over a 20-year career in animation. But he’s found that his short-lived career as an engineer also helps. His work has strong sense of “functionality and structural believability”.
There’s even a bit of music in there too: “Being a visual storyteller is like music. I have to become a good composer in order to drive my visual composition to affect my audience to grasp the story I want to tell and experience the emotion.”
Being a visual storyteller is like music. I have to become a good composer