SERGIO VALDIVIA

“Pinocchio””

When Valdivia discovered stop-motion animation while at school in Guadalajara, Mexico, there was no turning back. “I found myself ignoring everything else and pouring all of myself into stop-motion,” he says. “I love the imperfectness and the touchy feel of stop-motion,” even though he acknowledges it is “kind of the hardest way to make cinema.”

Growing up in Guadalajara helped. “We have a rich tradition of all this great art,” he says. “I was exposed to this tradition and artists who had been making stop-motion in a very independent way here.”

That tradition got a big boost from director Guillermo del Toro, who founded Centro Internacional de Animación a few years ago to produce stop-motion animation projects there and encourage young artists including Valdivia to embrace the tactile artform.

The 28-year-old artist’s dedication to his craft paid off when he got the opportunity last year to work on del Toro’s stop-motion “Pinocchio” at Guadalajara’s Taller del Chucho animation studio. “His work so impressed our animation supervisor that we brought him up to our main unit [Shadowmachine] in Portland, Ore., where his talent and tenacity has blossomed,” says “Pinocchio” co-producer Melanie Coombs.

Now that production has wrapped on “Pinocchio,” Valdivia is back in Guadalajara, working on his own projects, including an educational series for adults addressing such topics as evolution and racism and a live-action/ stop-motion hybrid documentary on Chicano culture with director Sofia Rosales. But he’ll soon be heading back to Portland, this time to work at Laika on its upcoming movie “Wildwood.” — Terry Flores

I love the imperfectness and the touchy feel of stop-motion.” — Sergio Valdivia