Animating Cultural Identity: Breaking Barriers in the Animation Industry // Episode 8241 - Jorge R. Gutierrez

Original Recording Date: Aug. 1, 2024
Emmy and Annie Award-winning Jorge R. Gutierrez joins us to discuss his remarkable journey in the animation industry. Proudly on the autism spectrum, Jorge shares how his Mexican heritage and passion for pop and folk culture have shaped his creative vision. From directing the Golden Globe-nominated "The Book of Life" to the Emmy-winning series "El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera," Jorge's work redefines storytelling. In this episode, we explore his latest projects, including the Netflix event series "Maya and the Three" and his upcoming feature "I, Chihuahua." Join us for an inspiring conversation about creativity, representation, and breaking barriers in animation.

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Transcript

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Hi, I'm Jorge Gutierrez, director of the Book of Life, creator of El Tigre, and Maya Three, and I'm here on the Breaking the Biz podcast. Stay tuned for today's episode of Breaking the Biz, an informative podcast where we dive into the world of entertainment by interviewing seasoned professionals who have made their mark in the industry, gain invaluable insights as they share their personal journeys, offering advice on navigating the dynamic landscape of the entertainment industry. Whether you're an aspiring actor, musician, filmmaker, author, animator, or any creative soul, tune in for expert career guidance, insider tips, and first hand accounts on breaking into the entertainment industry. Get ready to unlock the secrets behind successful careers and fuel your own passion for the limelight. Please remember to like this video and to subscribe to our channels for more great conversations. Greetings from Breaking the Biz brought to you by Yes I Can Unity Through Music & Education. I'm William Felber, your navigator through the intriguing universe of the entertainment industry as revealed by the visionaries and creators who bring it to life. Stay tuned as we delve into diverse insights from the forefront of entertainment. Hearing from pioneers, creators and agents of change, prepare for a journey filled with tales of innovation, resilience, and the undying quest for artistic brilliance. I want to welcome everyone to Breaking The Biz Podcast with the Yes I Can crew. We have got an amazing guest. We're in for a treat tonight. We have an Emmy and Annie award winning Jorge Gutierrez, who is a Mexican animator, painter, voice actor, writer director who is proud to share that he's on the autism spectrum. A CalArts experimental animation BFA MFA graduate, Gutierrez has completed various films, cartoons, paintings, exploring his love affair with the mexican pop and full culture. Gutierrez was the director and co writer of Guillermo del Toro's produced animated feature the Book of Life, which earned him a 2014 Golden Globe award nomination, along with his wife Sandra, who is his muse, the multiple Emmy award winning animated series el tigre, the adventures of many Riviera for Nickelodeon. Gutierrez most recently created, wrote and directed the event series Maya and the three for Netflix, which won two Annie awards and four Emmy awards. Gutierrez is currently writing and directing a Netflix animated feature named I Chihuahua with Gabriel "Fluffy" Inglesias. So Jorge, we are so excited to have you tonight. Aw, Bret, thank you for inviting me. I'm super honored. I hope you guys like the presentation. I'm just going to jump in if you guys are cool. Let's do it. All right, here we go. So here we go. Ignore April 5. Let's pretend we're back in time for this presentation. Let's do it. It's called fighting with autism. It's kind of my life story. All right, so why should we listen to you? What have you done? As just previously spelled out, my wife and I sent away a tv show called El Tigre. Won five emmys and an Annie. Annies are like the animation industry awards. Book of Life made $100 million, top ten worldwide on Netflix. Then we made mine and the three, most recently four emmys and best show, Annie. And as you guys know, especially in animation, things take a long time to make. So there's seven years between each of these projects. It all began 49 years ago. I was born in Mexico City in 1975. I'm just another kid from Mexico. And ever since I was little, I was different. And I really looked back and realized being different actually became my strength. My dad, who I believe was on the spectrum but never wanted to get tested, it, was an architect from Tijuana, which is a border city. My mom was from Mexico City, played music and sang. So I grew up with two artists parents, and I thought everybody's parents were artists. And then I learned that's not true. I became obsessed with Pinocchio. I got taken to a revival house to watch Pinocchio as a very little kid, and it really affected me. The fact that they killed him made a huge impression on me. I was obsessed with him. I started dressing like Pinocchio. I really wanted to be with him, not just on Halloween. I would dress like this every day. And the catchphrase, I love using Washington. I wanted to be a real boy, which I believe was me basically spelling out, I want to be like everybody else. I want to be normal. All my family thought I was a little weird, but he really likes to draw. And I was pretty aware back then that I'm not like other kids. There's something different about me. And my dad would always ask me, why do you like to draw so much? And I would say, I don't know. And he loved. He loved that answer. So this is what I drew like as a regular six year old. These are kind of the drawings I did back then. I got in big trouble for this one. It was my first nude of Wonder Woman. I was also obsessed with drawing doubles, as you will eventually see. Michael Jackson, the singer, had a music video called Thriller. I was obsessed with that thing. And then I just loved cosplay and dressing up as other things because I was trying to figure out who I was. At nine years old, I moved to the city of Tijuana, which is a city in the border between the US and Mexico. It was the most dangerous city in the world back then. A lot of crime. Tijuana was pretty crazy. A lot of kids in Tijuana, we grew up in one side of the border, and we crossed the border every day into the US to go to school. That's what I was doing, trying to learn English. This is what I drew like when I was ten years old. I love the Simpsons. So I remember when the Simpsons went to Tijuana, I was really excited. At twelve years old, I started making comics as regular twelve year old drawings. At some point, I kept writing and writing. I went to a community college as a 1415 year old kid to learn figure drawing. At 15 years old, I got into a first art show, and I think that's the first time I went. This is my world. This is what I want to do with my life. I want to draw. There's a cultural center down there, and that's where I discovered movies from all over the world, not just Hollywood movies. And I became obsessed with cinema. In high school, I met the love of my life where I'm still with. I proposed two weeks from meeting her because I kind of knew she was the one. And she said no. And eight years later, she finally said yes. It took a while. I went to California, city of the Arts, which is a really hard school to get into for animation. The head of the department was named Jules Engel. He was the head of experimental animation. And he looked at all my drawings and he said, this is crap. He basically tore me a new one. He said, you are not. You don't have a voice. You say nothing. I showed up with drawings that I thought they wanted to see. So I drew Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse and Bart Simpson, all the things Americans I thought wanted to see. And he said, this is terrible. You say nothing. All you're doing is copying a copy machine, cutting mavis, you have no voice. And thankfully, after telling me I wasn't an artist, I accidentally left my painting portfolio on the table. And I had paintings of things that I love about mexican culture. And so when he saw those, this is a painting he saw, and he said, you know, what is this? And I explained to him, oh, it's a painting I did about the border, and this lady and the coyote had a baby. And to me it represents bicultural kids who grow up on both sides of the border and they're half and half. And then, you know, painting of the devil and then basically a lot of, a lot of crazy paintings. And he said, you son of a bitch. He got really happy, even though he insulted me. And he said, this is your voice, you're an artist. Why did you do those things? He asked me exactly how. My dad asked me, why did you do all those drawings? Why did you do all these paintings? And I said, well, I did the drawings because I thought that's what you guys wanted to see. And he said, well, that's not good. Why did you do the paintings? And I said, I don't know. And he said, that's your voice, that's who you are. And he said something that stuck with me. He said, I'd like how you see the world. You see it differently. So I got accepted into the experimental animation program. At 17 years old, this is the earliest idea I could find. Experimental animation accal arts has a lot of famous graduates, but the three that I was really sort of idolizing was Stevie Hillenburg, who created SpongeBob, Henry Selick, who directed the night before Christmas, and then Peter Chung, who did a tv show called Ian Flux that is not very popular anymore. But it really made an impression on me. So I went to the school, I worked really, really hard. I met like minded people, tons of neurodivergent people in the arts, as you guys know. And I think I, my philosophy was, I'm not as talented as everyone here. I'm just going to outwork them. I can hyper focus, I can work on something for 8 hours. So there were two quotes that really affected me. They said, chuck Jones, one of the Looney Tunes geniuses, said it takes 1000 drawings to get to a good drawing. And then a director that I really admired, Robert Rodriguez, who made El Mariachi and Desperado and all these movies, Sin City, he wrote a book when he first started out, and in this book he said, every film student has ten terrible films inside of them. The faster you get those out, the faster you get through the good stuff. So what they're both saying is the same thing, volley. The more you do something, the better you get it, right? So I said, well, I'm just going to do more and that's how I'm going to get better. That's the secret. That's the secret to animation. The more you do it, the better you get at it. So I outworked everybody. I did two years worth of classes in one year. The school gave me a full scholarship after that. So I got to do my bachelor's and my master's and that early, early on, I had been a C minus student. I had been held back in school. My parents were constantly told I wasn't very bright or I wasn't very smart. But when I got to that school and I kind of found my calling, I became an a student. So I would visit my girlfriend Sandra every two weeks for six years. So I graduated from my BFA, which is a bachelor of fine Arts in 1997. My master's of fine arts in the year 2000. This is my first student short. I did cell animation. We were shooting on film back then. I did a stop motion movie in 1988. Sandra became my muse, sort of the girl that inspires me to do everything. I did live action stuff with my parents and her. I got in trouble all over Tijuana with her. We were pretty rowdy kids. In 1999, I became an intern on Stuart Little, the movie with a little CG mouse. And I learned that I didn't want to be a CG animator. I wanted to make my own stuff. I graduated in the year 2001. And the year 2000, I finished my student film, Carmelo. It's an eight minute thesis film for anybody interested. You can find it on YouTube, and it won the student Emmy again. Everything up until this point in my career, the harder I worked, the more good things happened. I got to go to the Cannes film festival, and I remember being there and just realizing, thank you, autism. Thank you for letting me be more focused. Thank you for being. Letting me think differently. Thank you for allowing me to do this really hard thing that is really difficult for others. It just seemed like it was natural for me. So Carmelo wins all these awards and starts getting into all these festivals. An agent signed me and they said, make a movie of your short. So I wrote book of life. He sent me all over Hollywood to pitch Book of Life. And I was told, no one wants to see a film about dead Mexicans. This is the year 2000. And they were right. It was too early. And they said, you're just some kid out of school and we're not going to give you a movie. Go make a tv show. Go make other things. Get experience, and maybe we'll let you make a movie. And that's exactly what I did. I pitched a little Internet cartoon. After going through the school and learning all these skills, I made a little Internet cartoon, put it online. I got 20,000 views. Sony Pictures saw how many views I got and said, we'd love to buy your show, and we hire you to do a bunch of stuff. It's called El Macho. It's super crude and super limited, but literally, it was one person doing it, and it got me a job. So I proposed to Sandra on Day of the dead in the year 2000. We got married in 2001. A year later, I got to make nine episodes of this thing, and we were living the happiest, greatest life you can imagine. And then two months after the wedding boom, they canceled the show. And I think because I'm autistic, I didn't take it personal. And in Hollywood, everybody tells you, don't take things personally, don't take rejection personally. And I think it's really hard for normal people to take that advice. For me, I was really able to separate it and go, thank you for spending literally millions of dollars on making my show. I can't wait to see what I'm going to do next. So every time something bad happened, I somehow managed to figure out how to make it a positive. So when the show got canceled, I said, bring it, hollywood. How hard would it be? We had a web show. How hard would it be to get a tv show? So I got hired to work on a show called Mucha Lucha. And I just said, I'm gonna study how these guys sold their show because it was Buchalucha. For those of you who don't know, who are probably younger, was a show about mexican wrestling created by a guy in England and a girl in Malaysia who'd never been to Mexico. So I said, I'm gonna learn. I'm gonna learn from them. So they hired me, and I worked really hard, and I did tons of freelance everywhere. I was the kid that if you hired to do one thing, I would show up with ten and in color. And I remember being asked to design a character for a show called Chalk Zone, and I did 40 characters, and I ended up being the guest art director for the episode. So after all that happened, Disney called me up and said, hey, we love what we're seeing from you. Pictures of show. So I ended up doing a pilot over there called Pippa the Bowl, and they canceled it, but they loved us so much. I worked on another show there as a designer called the Buzz on Maggie, and I tried to sneak in as many mexican sombreros as I could. They also canceled the show. Again, I felt really motivated. I'm like, well, I've had a show at Disney in development. I could do anything. So three more shows in development died at Cartoon Network, at Warner Brothers, and at Disneyland. And at that point, I was starting to wonder, like, well, maybe the fourth one will happen. And so on the fourth pilot, boom. El Tigre happened. So we did the pilot in 2004. The series was 2006. For those of you who don't know, El PR was a show about a kid whose dad is a superhero. Grandpa's a supervillain, and it's up to him to decide what he wants to become, a hero or a villainous. And he has this crazy best friend named Frida, who is basically an evil sidekick. And so they get in a lot of trouble. This is what we looked like back then. By this point, we had separated who did what? So I design usually the monsters or anything ugly or weird or the male characters. And then my wife Sandra designs all the female characters and anything cute. We work together on the villains of, you know, rogues gallery is super important. If you break El Tigra down is basically about a kid who was born different. So I really, really identified with that. It's office in Nickelodeon. This is some of the images we used to pitch the show. We said, oh, it's the construction of the mexican nuclear family. I love Spaghetti westerns. For those of you who don't know, spaghetti westerns are movies where everybody's evil and the hero is the least evil person. Those are spaghetti westerns, basically. And so. And that feels really mexican to me. So the show's premise, in a nutshell, is super villain grandpa superhero dad. What will our hero choose? Right, good or bad, it's all in the family. And then Manny and Frida, very much inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, but without the murdering and stuff. We are huge lovers of mexican history and mexican art. So the most famous couple in mexican art history is Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, these two very complicated painters. And so we named our characters after them. Mexican folk art became the inspiration. Mexican folk art is very accessible. You can buy it in the market. If you take it home and your kid breaks it, it's not the end of the world. You buy more. So it's very consumable art, which I love. There's no tigers in Mexico, but tigers are completely a part of mexican culture. There's bands and soccer teams and famous bandits and masks. There's tigers everywhere. And so that's why he's a tiger. Dad was inspired by mexican wrestlers from the seventies. The grandpa was inspired by these crazy sombrero villains that I saw in cartoons growing up. He wears a mechsuit. Cause I love Robotech. The girl was inspired by all the punk rock stuff that was happening in the nineties in Mexico. The mom is based on the classic mexican beauties of mexican golden era cinema. At this point, I had written book of life. So Sartana, the villain, is the daughter of La Muerton Cibaldo from the book of life. At Nickelodeon, no one had any idea. They're like, why does this lady look like that? And I was like, don't worry, it's part of mexican folklore. I was really into aztec culture. So as you can see, I was a huge fan of Ren and stimpy. So we did. I hired a ton of artists that had worked on Ren and Stimpy, and the show was really hard to make. We were the first show ever done in flash, which is now called Adobe anime. We were the first show ever to draw storyboards on a Cintiq digital pad. So we were pretty fearless. I've always been, I've always loved embracing new technology. So the show was very, very hard to make. Debuted it in 2007. It attracted 3.7 million viewers, which for that time is crazy. It was a huge hit. Tons of magazine covers. We started getting letters from people dressing up like the characters. Sandra dressed up as Frida. Little kids everywhere started sending us pictures, which was really cool. McDonald's did toys. Nickelodeon put out a blu ray. And then the first year Annie awards, it won for best show. It went for best character design. And then I'm super proud of this. Sandra was the first mexican woman to win an Emmy for designing these characters. So I'm super proud of her. And then altogether, the show won five emmys, two for character design, art, directing, storyboarding, and directing. This is the most emmys ever won for one season of a cartoon. We felt we made it. And then Nickelodeon canceled the show. So again, when they told us, I said, thank you. Thank you for making us even stronger. And they were a little spooked. They were like, most creators get really sad or really angry. You're the first creator to get happy. So I moved on from that. I got a call from DreamWorks, and they said, oh, we heard you have an idea for Day of the dead movie. And I said, yeah, I pitched it to you guys, you know, five Emmys ago, and you guys thought it was terrible. And they said, well, bring it again. So I took and did literally the same idea, removed the COVID of a sheet, put a new sheet with a new date, and they got it back and they said, oh, what an original vision. What unique characters. This is unlike anything we've ever seen. So the big difference was obviously five Emmys. So I worked on Book of Life back then. It was called Matador. For five years. And then one meeting, they said, what if it's a hip hop salsa musical with Lin Manuel Mark? So I did not think that was a good idea. So I quit, and they canceled the movie. My wife was pregnant. And I remember I had a talk with my, with my dad. I was 34 at this time, having worked in the industry a bunch. And he said, all right, Jorge, you're going to have a baby. What are you going to do now? And I said, oh, I'm going to take it easy, dad. I'm going to find more conservative jobs and more stability, and I'm going to take less risks because there's a little baby coming. And my dad said, oh, Jorge, did I raise a coward? And I was kind of shocked. I'm like, what do you mean? And he said, any success you've ever had was because you took chances. Any success that has ever come to you is because you were brave enough to do something different. If you stop that now, what kind of example will you be to your son? What kind of example will you be your family? You need to keep taking risks, and if anything, now is the time to take more risks. So he was absolutely right. So we pitched a new show to Disney. The pilot's on my website, supermarket.com. it's about a rebellious girl who goes to a private school. On this one, Sandra designed most of the characters, and I wrote the pilot. We did this crazy, crazy show. And then Disney at that time said, well, what if it's not about a Latina Batgirl? And we said, well, that's our show, so if you want to take that out, we don't want to be here. And so they canceled the show. And again, I thank them. Thank you for making us stronger. We had a baby in 2009. Our son Luca, who's also on the spectrum, like me. I went back to Nickelodeon. As you guys can see, Sandra no longer wanted to be a part of any of this stuff. She was just happy to design and be a mom. And so I jumped back into the ring. I pitched a show called Supernatural Fighters, Nickelodeon, and it was basically hamlet with wrestlers and video game lore. And it was a pretty crazy show, and we worked on it really hard. And then WWE, the world wrestling entertainment company, wanted the show and wanted to take out all my characters and replace them with their famous wrestlers. And I said, no, thank you. So Nickelodeon killed the show. And again, I thank them for making me stronger. At that point, Mad magazine tv show called me and said, hey, we love your art. We love everything you've done. Come make little shorts, making fun of famous Ip. So I got to do parodies of SpongeBob, and I got to do a skit about the Grim Reaper, and I got to do Final Fantasy. I got to do a bunch of stuff. I got to do street fighter shorts. I was doing these crazy Batman, Mexican Batman, Bat hombre, and Ruben. But the higher ups at Warner Bros. Said, you're kind of making fun of Batman, so can't make those. And then I started painting to relax. So I started painting a bunch, and I started to wonder, like, well, I guess this is my life now. I'll just paint and do little shorts. And then a studio in Dallas, out of nowhere said, hey, we heard you had a movie at Dreamworks. Come make the movie with us. We've never made a movie. But you've never made a movie. So why don't we jump in in good faith and try to do something together? And so I thought about it, and I said, well, the conservative thing would be to stay in LA, where I have a million friends and everything is stable, but the brave thing to do would be to jump and go to Texas. And I'd never been to Texas, so we decided to go to Texas. That's how little our kid was back then. We went over there, we started designing all the characters. Sandra designed all the female characters, male characters. We fought and fought and fought as we were designing La Muerte, a really, really hard character to design. Cibaba was a, you know, I basically did this in a day. It was super fast, and it was really fun. We hired sculptures in El Salvador to help us make a ton of the maquettes, and they look great. We did this, you know, crazy lineup. We started designing the worlds. We hired a production designer and an art director. And so the world started coming together. You know, this is land of the remembered. And again, this is way before Coco. So there was no concept of this stuff in popular culture, so it was a little shocking where people were like, wait, it's a land of the dead, but everybody's happy. So it took a little bit to explain those things. This is land of the forgotten. We did this painting that I think really sold the movie, which is one of the climaxes of the film. And these were the paintings. These were the paintings we got to do. They said, hey, pick your, your dream producer. So, of course, I'm a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro. We got to go to his house. These are pictures in his house. This is what is. He lived in a house with his two daughters and his wife. And then this is a house next door where he has his insane collection of art and sculptures. And Guillermo. It's quite the collector, as you guys can see. And so I pitched him the worst, famously, one of the worst pitches of all time. I wanted to die. It was so terrible, because when I pitched him the movie, there were three leaf blower guys in the mansion next door, and they all turned their leaf blower on at the same time. And so I had to yell the pitch. And it was really, really difficult. It was really hard. But at the end, he said, I have two daughters. On Saturdays, I would watch the book of life. I mean, the El Tigre, your tv show with my daughters. I love your sense of humor. I love how you love Mexico. Of course I want to produce your movie. So he jumped on, and he became the producer of the movie. We worked really hard, you know, at that point, the movie got the funding. Halfway through the movie, our son Luca was diagnosed with autism. So I didn't know I was autistic. We had no idea he was autistic. And when he got diagnosed, we just dived in and learned a ton about what that meant. And I said, I'm going to use all this to get stronger. So we, you know, again, I used my super focus and super hard working jeans to. To work really hard. And we worked really, really hard on the movie. We did paintings. This is still with a movie. What you see on the top are the paintings. At the bottom are stills from the movie. So we got really close. We got to the point where they started to look like a painting. And then we ran out of money, and we had not done the land of the remembered, which is the hardest part of the movie. So, again, we devised a way to do this. Like Legos. We built very. We only had money to do 19 pieces of geometry and 19 pieces of architecture. These are the 19 pieces. No one believed us that we could do it like that. So we put a little video together to show how we did that. So these 19 pieces were different sizes and different scale. So this is the most important shot in the movie, right? The land of the remembered reveal. And if you take out all the lighting and all the matte paintings and all the trickery, these are all the textures and all the local lights, and you turn everything off. These are the 19 pieces. And I think because I'm autistic, I can break things down really fast. And so I was able to process things at a really high speed. People would show me stuff, and I could give my notes instantly. So as a production, love, love having someone like me directing the movie. And then we sold the movie. We went all over the world, promoted the movie. This is the premiere. All the actors showed up. Danny Trejo kissed my cheeks. I didn't take a bath for a long time. So he's. Aldana was eight months pregnant, and she still showed up and wearing high heels, which is crazy to me. The movie came out all over the world. People really embraced the film. They did an article, they did an album. They were bootlegs. I started getting award nominations and won one, Annie for character design. And I was like, thank you for making us even stronger. And I said, you know what? I need to rest. I need to recharge. So I started painting. I got hired to do a mural outside of a biker bar in Dallas, and someone took a picture of it and put it on instagram. So then El Pollo loco hired me to do a mural here in LA. And then I had all this leftover paint. So I just started painting like crazy and pop culture and all the things that Jules Engel, the guy from catalyst, told me not to paint. I basically started painting those. And I said, I'm going to paint until I run out of paint. So every night after work, I would have dinner with my family, and then I would just paint until I passed out. And it was really cathartic and really fun, and I would paint whatever was happening. And so, as you guys can imagine, this trump painting, I painted it when he said some bad stuff about Mexicans before he was president. And all of a sudden, Gary said, we love to show your paintings. And NPR did a whole piece on me about being a painter, and the show was called Border Bang. And then a french publisher made a book about the thing. So I became a painter. I'm officially an art world painter. We started running into people dressed up as our characters. We kept painting. And then the pictures of Book of life started showing up. All over the world, people dressed up as our characters. Not just in Mexico, but all over Latin America, the Philippines, Russia, Egypt. I mean, it's been nuts. We still get pictures all the time, especially around Halloween and around Day of the dead. We get a lot of pictures. The image on the right was a national geographic, and it's a russian person, which is crazy to me. People have gotten married as these characters. Famous people like Camila Cabello dressed up as La Marte. And then the tattoos started showing up. People started getting tattoos of our characters, which is very shocking to me. It's made me really self conscious. Now when I draw a character that, what if someone gets this drawing? There was an illegal musical in Mexico that they did without asking for permission. I wish I got to go to see it because this is amazing. And then Microsoft hired us to do a Super bowl commercial, so we had to pretend we made the movie using their surfers commercial computers, and it was really fun, and I think we made more money doing the commercial than making the movie. And then people started sending us fan art, or El Tigre, and Book of life, connecting. So thank you, Book of Life. And then at 40 years old, I'm 49 now, I was diagnosed with autism. I was diagnosed with ADHD, autism, and I am twice exceptional. This, to me, explain a ton of stuff about what I'm good at, what I'm not very good at, what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses? The way I see it is I'm basically a video game character, and this kind of broke down what I'm really, really, you know, what are my strengths and what are the things I can work on? So, in a weird way, it really opened my eyes that I am technically different. It's not just a feeling. I really am different, and this difference is what makes me me, and I love that. So then Google hired me at that point and said, make us something about virtual reality. So I said, oh, wearing the Google goggles feels like putting on a wrestling mask. So I said, I'm gonna do something about mexican wrestling. So I remembered when I was a kid, I saw this bullfighter who got hit and his leg went flying, and it was a fake leg. And my dad, the bullfighter, stood up and kept bullfighting with one leg, and he said, look, jorge, look what he can do with one leg. What are you gonna do with two legs? So, that was my dad always giving me these challenges. So I started researching athletes that were missing a limb, and I said, that's it. I'm gonna do a mexican wrestler who's going to be missing a limb. So the. The short is called Senate Jaguar, and it's about this jaguar fighter who's missing a leg, and he thinks he's too old, and he thinks he's too weak, and he doesn't think he can win this fight. And so we designed this short, and, you know, we got to do a lot of polygon craziness to imply that he was poor. He couldn't have afforded smooth surfaces. The villain was smoother. You know, I threw in Easter eggs from Book of Life, Easter eggs from Lt. Gray. This is the color script. For those of you who haven't seen him, I'm going to spoil it for you. But basically, in the short, he dies. And then he sees his father, and his father tells him, so what? You are missing a leg. You are stronger than anybody else because of who you are. And so his son, when he wakes up before the end of the short, his son becomes his leg, and the wrestler realizes his family is what makes him stronger. And so the son and the father worked together, and they win the championship. The short was nominated for a bunch of stuff, but it never won anything. So then what? Life went on because I had done voices in all my stuff, and people became fans of things. I got hired to be a voice actor, and so I got to do ninja Turtles and Victor and Valentino. I'm about to do big city greens. I did. I just did Star Trek. I'm doing a Star wars voice. It's pretty crazy that people pay me to do voices because it's. It's not something I thought would ever happen to somebody like me. So it's pretty crazy. 2018, I went to Netflix. I signed up giant overall over there to do series and features. I said, I'm ready to fight. At a very famous pizza party over there. They told me, picture something you don't think you can get made anywhere but here. And so I remember as a kid going to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, and there's this mural that I've always loved, and I said, you know, all the heroes and everything I made are male. I want to do something to honor the women in my life. And I think my wife and my mom and my sister are all warriors, and they've all had these insane journeys. So I pitched my end three, which is a show about this crazy princess who goes on a journey to save the world and dies in the process. So sorry to spoil it for you. It was a movie event at that time, Covid hit, and so we worked from home. These were the very early sketches, and at that time, people were like, oh, so you're a dungeons and dragons player. I never played dungeons and dragons, so I started playing dungeons and dragons as we were making this, and this was our process. At this point, I draw and I paint, and then I just hire a model to model things, and so I can get stuff done really, really, really fast. We're famous for being ridiculously fast with stuff. I based the character of Maya on my wife Sandra. When I met her, she looked like, in the museum, I saw this piece, and that kind of inspired the helmet. You know, I went to Machu Picchu, and that really inspired this character. And then this is Chimi. I got to voice the king, and I got to base them on myself. And this is kind of our process. So send her will sketch still in flash, colors, textures, and then it goes to model. She got the voice of mom. I got to make all these crazy characters. And because of all the actors that I loved on Book of life, I got to ask him to do voices again. So Diego Luna got the dual voice, and I love Diego Luna. And again, I did not wash my cheek after he kissed me. The villain was pretty nuts. This is the goddess of death. I mean, we were nuts with these characters. This is pretty crazy for any of you who have seen Maya and the three. It's kind of the wizard of Oz. It's this girl who goes on a journey and teams up with three other people to kill a monster, which is the wizard of Oz. So this is pretty nuts. We had a lot of fun making the show. It was pretty insane. Sandra did not design this crazy looking character. That was definitely me. So if you break these down, Maya is Dorothy. Rico the wizard is the scarecrow. Jamie the Archer is the tin man, and Pichu the barbarian is the lion. So it really is the wizard of Oz. Got to do insane, crazy stuff. We got to design Mesoamerica, but a fantasy version of Mesoamerica. I was a big fan of the Monkey King and a big fan of Lord of the Rings. So taking european lore and doing fantasy versions of it, I think is fantastic. And I said, why doesn't anybody do that with Latin America and especially Mesoamerica? So I got to do. I got to do my version of all these things and work with all these incredible artists from all over the world to reinterpret this world for this show. It was a pretty crazy, unique experience making this thing from home. This is one of the early paintings. The composer was in Argentina, Gustavo Santoria, who did the music for Book of Life, who won two oscars for Brockback Mountain and Babel. The show came out, got magazine covers. They did an art of book. And then we started getting pictures from kids from all over the world having parties. And then the fan art began. The show was seen all over the world. It was pretty insane. It did really well in Japan, which I'm really excited about because I love anime. So I love that anime fans really embraced the show. We started getting pictures of people dressing up as a characters all over the US, all over the world. It's been pretty nuts to get these pictures. Tattoos have just started showing up murals all over Mexico City at the Annie awards. It was nominated for seven Annie awards. Unfortunately, we lost to Arkane. Arkane won that year and swept, so we only won two Annie's seven out of seven, including best show, which I'm super proud of. But the big, big news was it was top ten in 55 countries all over the world on Netflix, which is a huge deal. That means more people saw Maya in the three than people who live in the US. That's how crazy that number is. And then it won four Emmys out of five nominations. And I stabbed myself in the eye because I was so excited. So thank you, Maya. I started doing vinyl toys. I started doing murals for schools. Festivals started inviting me to do posters. Apple music got me to do illustrations. People who grew up with El Tigre started asking for a toy. So we started designing what the show would look like in CG. Got milk. Got me to do a bunch of illustrations for them. The Obamas asked me to do a music video. It's on Netflix, and it's about people from all over the world becoming us citizens. So it was pretty cool. It was my first and only music video I've ever done, and it won an Emmy, so I got really excited. Then Guillermo del Toro said, hey, let's go to Annecy. Annecy is the biggest animation festival in the world, and in the year 2023, they invited Mexico as the guest country. So I got to design the poster, and when I turned it in, they said, wait, wait, wait. This is really weird looking. How is this Mexican? And so I explained to them where everything came, and then at that point, the Simpsons said, hey, what if you do the opening to the Simpsons and you do the horror Halloween treehouse of terror opening? And I said, sure. So I sent them all this stuff, and they loved it. And that's basically what I'm working on now. I think it's been announced they show a bunch of stuff at Comic Con. So what am I doing now? Working at Netflix Animation? So I'm developing a movie called Aichihua with Gabriel Iglesia as a comedian. It's a pretty crazy movie. We're doing tons of crazy stuff on it. But there is more. I'm also doing my first ever adult animated limited series because I love Kenny Tartakovsky's primal. I'm developing a brand new limited series that takes place in the mayan book of Life universe. It's in development. And then a bunch of other stuff that I can't talk about because I'll get in big trouble. But in conclusion, I think I really believe this. I think the people who are different, those are the people that tend to change the world. When you look at history, when things changed, it was never because people did the same thing. It was because people thought differently. So I really, really believe that this is something that's in our wheelhouse. And because a lot of us that are neurodivergent, a lot of us are autistic, we have been blessed to think differently, and so we are not going to approach things like others. And I think that could be a really, really, really unique strength we have, and it certainly has worked with me and in my life. And so when people see this presentation, they go, oh, fighting with autism. They assume I'm fighting with autism. What they don't realize is I'm not against autism. I fight with autism. It's like mexican. Being mexican, to me, has made my life better. It's basically how I make a living. Same thing with autism. It's made me who I am. And so any success I have, I credit it to the fact that I am different. So being autistic is, it's not something I'm ashamed of. I'm super proud of it. I'm very open about it. It's a huge part of who I am, and it's a part of me. And so I'm very thankful. I'm very thankful to the autism. Obviously, I'm a lot older than you guys at 49, but having gone on this journey in my life, it's definitely made a difference for the better. And so I thank autism, and I thank you for making me special. So thank you, guys. Absolutely amazing, Jorge. All right, before we got a lot of. I got some questions. Before you guys get questions, one thing I want to point out, Jorge, is we talk about growth mindset in our program here, and we've found that those with a growth mindset, those who are willing to take chances, those who are willing to do things that they've never done before, you're the prime example of that. You know, I was so excited when you agreed to come on with us tonight because doing a music video, doing a painting for El Pollo loco, like, you know, the fact of even when indeed. Canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, most people are like, they're, they're about to find success on, on the other side of the comfort zone, right? And you never gave up. Your resiliency is amazing. And everything in life, you approach it as a way to learn. And that speaks on that growth mindset because you're willing to take those chances. You're willing to, you know, to find that success. We found that people with that growth mindset are the most creative individuals. They're the people that businesses and companies want to hire. Oh, yeah. So I think for sure that that's amazing. I want to ask you, obviously, someone who puts in 10,000 hours, you know, you've heard that, like, you put in that 10,000 hours. You're the master, right? You definitely have put in 10,000 hours. I want to know when. When did you hit that 10,000 hours? Because I think it's like, in the, in the rear view, but you're still that person who continues to learn and embrace, like, the technology. But when did you hit that 10,000 hours? I mean, early on in school, I will tell you, like, they would ask us, do a character design. And I said, I'm going to cheat. I'm going to do ten, and then I'm going to pick the best one and turn that one in. So I'm going to get better when no one's looking. So it definitely was this idea that, all right, if I know the path is work, how do I make the work digestible, eat and process become as important to me as a result. And, I mean, I break this down all the time. To me, the big hack, the brain hack I did to myself in college was I said, I can't put the emphasis on the result because if I only put the emphasis on the result, these things take so long, I'm going to be really miserable. But if I put the emphasis on the process, I'm going to be happy because the process never ends. So when things end, I go, oh, my God, they paid me to do all this stuff. It didn't go through. Doesn't matter. I got to have a ton of fun and do all this amazing stuff with people I love. So to me, the process, you know, the journey and the destination metaphor is a cliche for a reason. The journey is more important than the destination because that's where you're going to spend most of your life in the journey. I'll tell you a quick story. So when I was a kid, I got in a fight and I got expelled from school. And I came home and I thought my dad was going to be really angry at me. And he sat down with me. I think I was in third grade, and he sat down with me and he said, all right, Jorge, I have questions. One was the kid you fought bigger than you. And I was like, yes. Two. Did you lose? Yes. Three. Why did you get in a fight? I said, well, because he was bullying my friends who were smaller, and he got a big grin, and he said, all right, Jorge, when you were born, you were born a puma. Every experience in your life is a stripe, and you become a tiger. When you die, I want you to die a panther because you've experienced everything. Every experience, good and bad, will teach you something. Even if you know you're going to lose, that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight, because you could win. So in life, Jorge, experience everything. So, to me, that metaphor stayed forever. Anytime I would go, but I've never done that. Oh, man, I want to get a stripe. I want to get closer to being a panther. And I'm telling you guys, it's just as easy to say yes as it is to say no. And I catch myself when people ask me to do stuff. My knee jerk reaction is to say no, like everybody. But then I go, no, I'll do it. And then once you do it and things go, well, guess what? Next time you get asked to do something, you say yes again. So it's a self fulfilling prophecy. It's absolutely beautiful saying yes. That's something that we talk about in our program, too, because you never know what opportunity is going to come your way. Maybe you say yes, and another door opens up. And so that's very important. I love when you talk about your father because he seems like the man of many little words that just, like. But when he speaks it, like, it has that impact. And when you talked about, you know, your dad going, like, you're really going to go for something stable, and you're not going to use your creativity and the God gift that you've been given and what you've worked so hard, you know, like, that's enough to change the course of someone's life, right? So I love your father. I feel like I know your father, but what an amazing mentor right there. I'm sure you've had thousands of mentors in different realms of animation and painting and so forth, but those. Just those simple words of no, like, you know, you got to keep going, don't give up. And so that it just gives me absolute chills. I also love the fact that with technology, how you mentioned new technology came along, and you've always been one to embrace technology. Like, you can't be the rage against the machine and go, like, oh, I'm not going to do AI, right? Like, you seem like that type of person that goes, okay, we got AI. It takes someone to orchestrate it and be the maestro. I'm going to figure it out and use it to my advantage. To me, AI is a dragon. Yeah. I can pretend it's not there and it will burn the village down. I can fight the dragon, probably going to get burnt. Or I can ride the dragon. Absolutely beautiful, right? We talk about certain skill sets in the 21st century that you need to be successful. Everyone talks about, you need your degree, you need this and that. But bunch of Fortune 500 companies got together and they said, if you have self awareness, if you have adaptability, you know, problem solving, collaboration, communication, you embody all of that, right? Like, you know yourself, the self awareness of knowing your skills. You know, when you put that chart together and go, these are my gifts, these are my strengths. These are my areas that I need to work on. But you don't dwell on the areas you need to work on. You focus on the gifts that you have and you let that drive the car. And I think that's very important when you're speaking to a group here of very talented individuals with disabilities who are the next generation of creatives. And I love how you just go, autism is who I am. You know, there is no reason to go, oh, poor me. And the way you see autism and just being you, I hope, inspires everyone that's listening, that goes, okay. Like, that's who I am. I got gifts like disability. Let's focus on the ability, not the disability. So I have to give you kudos there. I want to ask, with autism, how are you with networking? You know, a lot of people on this call go, oh, networking is so hard due to my autism. And I can just see you being that individual who, like, if I'm talking about art, if I'm talking about culture, if I, you know, this, this is stuff that I love. Is it hard for you to network? I'm. I'm going to tell you guys, I hated public speaking, and I was terrible at meeting new people, and I was terrible at speaking to a group. And I realized if I want to make cartoons and I want to be a director and I want to deal with these things, sorry, I'm going to have to get good at that. And I'm going to treat that just like I treat drawing and just like I treat writing, I'm just going to acknowledge that I'm going to suck at it first. Right? The sucking at something is the first step to getting good at it. I think that's from adventure time. And so I'm a big fan of stand up comedians. And when I would hear their stories and their podcasts and their interviews, every comedian you love, every single one of them has the same story where they go, I was terrible at first. I had stage fright. I had panic attacks. And then the more I did it, the more I got to it. So I said, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. And so I would volunteer, you know, any awards and a CIFA, any event I could. And I forced myself to go to public events. Anytime there was an opportunity to talk, I, you know, people would ask questions of the audience. I would force myself to pick the question just to get more comfortable to speaking in public. And now I don't even think about that stuff. I can. I can just do it with my eyes closed. Cause I did 10,000 hours of it. But those first steps in getting into it, really, really, it was a struggle. But I'm here to tell all of you they're worth it. When I first met my girlfriend, who turned out to be my wife, that was one of those moments where I was like, I'm terrified of her. She's so out of my league. And I remember having this conversation in my head. I'm like, the worst thing that can happen is she says, no. It's not like she's going to shoot me or I'm going to die in that instant. The worst thing she can say is no. And that's what I do to myself now. I go, what's the worst thing that can happen? They don't like what I talk about. I'm not the end of the world. So I kind of diffused that bomb early on. But networking is hard when you're starting out, and you should. My advice to everybody who's starting out is find like minded people. You guys have a community now. Like, you all know each other, and you help each other go up and you give and take. You show your work to somebody, they give you advice, then it should be reciprocal and do the same thing, vice versa. And you grow with the community. And that is a really fundamental part of this in animation. I'm going to guess, at least in my career, I'm going to guess 40% of the people I've ever worked with are neurodivergent. As far as directors and creators, there's a lot of them that are very open about being on the spectrum. Like, Dan Harmon is open about it, and the creator of Billy and Mandy Maxwell autumn is very open about it. And then there's a bunch who think they're on the spectrum, but they've never been tested. And then there's a ton of directors that are pretty, pretty sure they're on the spectrum. So in the animation, I would say it's a very welcoming industry to people on the spectrum because we get to do stuff that most people can't do. We get to focus on these things. We get to draw endlessly. We get to remember things. We get to be really, really analytical. I think part of what makes me a good animation director is I'm constantly studying people, and I'm constantly breaking down expressions, and I'm constantly breaking down how people act. And guess what? That makes you a really good director. That's that job. So if you internally already do that, then it makes it really good. The thing that is frustrating, and it was frustrating for me as a student was my skills and my taste were like this. I imagine things really cool and I couldn't do them. And my drawings didn't look like my ideas. And I remember a teacher going, your ideas not looking like what you want them to look is just volume of work. And he said something that stuck with me. He said, jorge, consistency. Listen to this. Write this one down. If any of you are taking notes, write this one down because it's so true. Consistency and discipline beat talent every time. And it worked. That's my favorite advice. When the advice, you look back like five years later, you're like, son of a gun. That totally worked. You know what's awesome, too, is you. You internally, you know, some, you understand constructive criticism, and that comes with that self awareness. Wherever others just go, oh, man, they, they don't see what I see. And, you know, you, you get that. And I love that. You know, I even myself wrote that down. Like, it's, it's amazing. Is there a mantra that you find yourself saying every day that keeps you positive or focused? You guys are not going to like it, but it's do it for the story. And by the way, it's gotten me a lot of trouble because sometimes I know I shouldn't do a thing, but I'm like, man, this story is going to be great. I jump into stuff, but I'm a lover of trying new things, trying to do the same thing differently, trying to work with people I've never worked before. I see them all like, I want to get another tiger stripe. It's beautiful. Absolutely. We don't always get individuals as intelligent as you I want to ask what is the biggest piece of advice you would give to a younger jorge with all that you've experienced in this career? That's a great question. If I got to meet younger Jorge, I would tell him, your health, because I got in trouble, I was pretty unhealthy. Your health is as important as the fun stuff. And, you know, I'm 49, you guys, the time charges you, all those late nights, working, all those all nighters, at some point you get in trouble for those things. So balance, balancing a healthy lifestyle, healthy mental health, is really, really important. I think my generation, maybe we didn't put that much emphasis in it. It seems to be like younger generations are of, are a lot more aware how important that is. But I think that's what I would tell my younger self. Hey, man, you gotta, you gotta eat healthier and you gotta sleep because you definitely outwork everyone. And that's true, right? Like, you gotta have, everything has to be in sync. And, uh, that makes absolute sense. I just. Let me tell you, like, my, my, uh, so I have a therapist. Like, I'm sure a lot of you might or might not have, but my therapist said the way you have ADHD. And so what I ended up doing was because I get bored off of stuff so fast. I just work on a million things, and that way I never get bored. So he's like, you figured out how to use this to your advantage. He's like, you know, it's so funny. It's so funny that you brought that up because that was some, that was my next comment was that I love the fact because everyone at some point hits that. Like, I don't know where I'm going with this, that creative block. And when I heard you talk and you said, well, as soon as I get that block, I just move on to the next project, right? Yeah. And the stuff that you do, like, even when you're creating and painting for to relax, you're still creating dope ass cool stuff. Like, so just. I'm amazed by you. I'm so glad, you know, I too had that, like, can I ask him to be with us for a night? You know, what if he says no, right? And then I said, what's the worst? Like, maybe he just says no, right? But so glad that, that you made it. I'm going to open it up to some questions. Thank you very much, Gordo. Pleasure to have you with us today. Honestly, you are a gemdez and you are an impact on the world. You are the difference that makes a difference I do have a comment that maybe you can expand upon. Sure. Thank you. I know we spoke a little bit about some of your maybe mentors and influences. I know from speaking with you in the past that one of your influences is Sergio Aragones, which. Which went to school with, I believe, your father. Yep. So that idea of having mentors or influences that you have sometimes are closer to you or to your circle than you realize. And it kind of gives you that ability to open your eyes a little bit more and have a little bit more depth into it. It's phenomenal. I didn't know if there's more that you can expand upon about the surroundings you're in or that everyone goes through. Absolutely. So for those of you guys who don't know, Sergio is a very famous cartoonist from Mexico who worked for Mad magazine. And as a kid, I idolized his drawings, and I really gravitated towards him because his name sounded like he was mexican. And then I found out he was mexican. And then my dad one day said, oh, I know this guy. I went to school with him. And so, literally, knowing that fact made me go, this is something that maybe I can do because someone that looks like me and who's where I'm from can make a living doing this. Maybe I can make a living doing this. So that, for me, really anchored the reality of, you can do this. It's like, if you find out your dad is friends with Batman, you're like, well, one, Batman's real, and maybe I can be Batman someday. Like, that's how realistic it made it. And I think talking to people who are successful and have done the thing you want to do and getting their input and advice means so much because they've gone through the journey, they're further along the journey, and they can see where you start and go, hey, if I could go back in time, just like the question I got asked, what would you change? And I really believe that every one of us who idolize somebody, famous movie director, famous cartoon creator, famous cartoonist, they literally all started as kids who drew and as kids who wanted to do this type of stuff, and they all got to do their thing in completely different ways. There's no set ways. Some people went to school, some people didn't go to school. Some people started doing their own thing, and then the studio found them. Some people never found the studio, and they just did their own thing, and it became great. So there's a million ways for these things to happen, but the more you learn about how others did it, the more it can inform your journey. So go on Wikipedia. Everybody's life story is pretty much there. And look up your favorite movies, favorite cartoons, look up who the creator was, and they just look up their history, how they did it. It's all there for you. It's a beautiful, you know, and that's one of the other reasons why I'm so excited to have you, is you share the downs and the ups. You share the victories, and, you know, the times where it was hard, where others sometimes just kind of, like, show that trajectory like that, but you are not afraid to share the truth behind it. And I really respect that. I'm gonna go to Noah. I'm gonna get all your questions, guys. Don't worry, Noah, go for it. Go, go. I'm hoping to. I'm currently writing a couple scripts for movies, and they're more adult oriented. Like, one of them is kind of like Thelma and Louise meet Steven universe, and it's like licorice recoil. And another one I'm writing is kind of like, another one I'm writing is kind of like a horror film of what happens if you're obsessed with your anime Waifu, but it turns out to become the life, but it's a murderous character. And I'm thinking about. And what are your advice when you're working in animation and when you're pitching scripts and stories and stuff? Stuff. And I also. And what's your advice regarding independent animation? Like working at indie studios? So my. Because I. Oh, go ahead. Let him answer the question, Noah. Sorry. No worries. So my. My advice in writing is, writing is like drawing you. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Right? It's like going to a restaurant and you go, hey, this dish isn't very good. That doesn't mean you can go in the kitchen and cook it better, right? That's the problem with writing. Figuring out when something could be better is easy. Making it better is really hard. So I'll give you an example. When I started out, I unfortunately thought, oh, I'm so good at drawing now. Of course I'm good at story, and of course I'm good at writing. And I wasn't because I hadn't put in the 10,000 hours. So by the time I wrote Book of Life, I had written nine features. So Book of life was feature number ten. The other nine never got made. By the time Lt. Gray happened, I had written 14 pilots. So it's really hard that the first thing you do gets made, because when you're starting out your first thing, probably it's going to be the weakest one. If you do ten of them, right, every one of them gets better. So I would say use these things. Work as hard as you can on them. Writing is about rewriting, just like drawing is about fundamentals. And so write, write, write, read screenplays of movies you like, right? Like, I love the movie aliens, and pretty much memorize that script. It's a really famous, great script to study and then watch movies with the screenplay so you can break down how they're written. And if you can, try to get into writing groups because you want to get writing advice from other writers, if you're only getting advice from your friends and your family, they're not really writers, so you're not going to get the harsh stuff to make it better. And then think about genre. If you're writing a horror movie, just go, all right, what are the big horror movies happening right now? Track down those scripts, read those scripts, get really familiar with all what's happening, and then go, how does my movie exist in this world as far as indie animation? It's a boom. Right now in Indiana animation, there's a lot of success stories where people make something crowdfunded on the Internet and then put it on YouTube, and then it blows up on YouTube has been hotel. That's how that happened. So it's, we're in an era where creators can bypass the studios, but you are competing with the entire planet, so your thing better be really, really good and really unique. So I think we're in an incredible time for independent animation and incredible time for creatives coming from not the traditional places. I do think the experience of working on somebody else's thing is still really important because you get to see how people make other shows and you go, well, I'm not going to do it like that, or I'm going to do it exactly like that. So all that is really important. But my writing is just right, like, crazy. Hold on, Noah. Just take it all in. I got to make sure everyone gets their question in. We gotta be really respectful of time. Noah, real quickly. Question darting. Oh, it's just saying. It's not a question. It's just that I wanted to say that I'm gonna, I'm gonna watch. Gonna rewatch the book of life at some point after this. Aw, thank you. I watched it with my five year old yesterday. It's amazing. Christian Batista. Go for it. Quick question, dude. Dude, I am a freaking big fan of your work. I have been watching Altigra ever since I washed and fetus in the womb. I really want to connect after this, man. Dude, if you connect, I would love to freaking connect. I would love to discuss your show. My question, my question. Sorry, sorry. Sorry for fanboying. All right. When it comes to Netflix animation, so is it a lot more. Less constrictive again, than, like, what networks usually do? Because I heard, like, you get a lot more, you know, freedom when it comes to your work, when you start working with Netflix. Is that true? I think it was true for a little bit. I think we're now in the. Netflix has become a regular studio, and it's become just as conservative. But for a little while, when they were starting out, they were so new, they didn't know what they were doing. And I think that's when people like me took advantage of them and got them in crazy stuff. I think the grownups are. Are back in control, and they're definitely bringing stuff in. But I do think there's still. It's the most consumed thing on the planet right now. Netflix animation. A third of Netflix is animation. So it's still, to me, the place where you can do the most original things right now. Perfect. Love it. Thank you. One more question. One more real, super fast. Come on. Okay. Okay. All right, all right. Lt grade versus omni man. Who would win? I'm gonna get in trouble for this. I think. I think Omni man can take El Tigre. You can quote me on that. You can take Lt. Gray. Oh, yeah. It's a matter of power levels. No. Okay, here's some better stakes. Lt Gray versus Mister virtual one. V one. Oh, that'll be great. Yes. There you go. All right. Christian. Mute. I told you this community loves you. All right, Kimmy, go for it. Ask your question real quickly. Okay. You said that your model is game, is you had to get stronger, and you sponsor criticisms of where you felt. And I know that the others kind of talked about the inspirations and the influences that inspire you on your art. And I myself is an artist as well. And sometimes when I usually get. Also have myself some setbacks regarding my autism, like meltdowns and my emotional behaviors. But that's just a separate thing. How do you even manage to get through all this and still be successful despite the disabilities? Because I have myself a disability, and sometimes I always struggle. So, I mean, that's a really good question. So my parents said when I was three years old, I almost died, and I was pretty much a regular kid, and my blood started thinning, and I was in the hospital for, like, three months, and they said something happened to me where I just became incredibly optimistic after that. And my grandma used to say, oh, it's because you lived and now you value your life. And I think that's what's allowed me to stay, even in the grimmest of moments, pretty positive. So I'm the guy who. I don't know, and it may probably my autism, by the way, when something really bad happens, I immediately try to find the positive. So it's something that's really helped me. And I've never had anxiety. I've never had panic attacks. I've never had a lot of things that I think I probably should have had. So I don't know what to. Honestly, I don't know how to answer your question because I've been really lucky. Even when people break my heart, I'm like, man, that felt really terrible. I can't wait to put that in a movie. That's how fast I can process those things. My favorite villain. I know it's not a popular one. I'm sorry, but I love Bane. When I first saw Bane in Batman, the animated series, he looked like a mexican wrestler, and I loved him. And then, you know, he turns into Tom Hardy, and he's british, so I was a little disappointed with that one. But I love Bane. I'm a big fan of bane. Perfect. Good question, Aidan. Last question. I lied. Go for it. Okay. So I thought it was very interesting when you talked about the aspect of, like, finding your voice in your presentation. And I just think that's really interesting because a lot of us take inspiration from multiple things, and it's like, I mean, if I could ask a quick question about, like, how you found your voice, like, when it came to, like, art direction, I think that'd be very interesting. So the way you find your style and your voice, the way I processed it was there's a really famous quote from Picasso, right? Pablo Picasso, incredible artist, one of my favorite artists. And he said something really interesting. He said, inspiration exists, but it only finds you working. Right. The way I approach that to finding my voice and finding my style is you will develop a voice, and you will develop a style, not because you look for it, but because you do the work. And at some point, it will shine. Right. So you will find your voice and your style on the journey. You can't go looking for it. It finds you. So that's how I approach that. So the more you do stuff, I think style is a mix of three things. Everything you love everything you are and the big one, which took me a while to figure out, everything you don't like. Now, I'll give you the perfect example. I love Hellboy. I'm a big fan of Mike McNola and Hellboy. I got really lucky, and I had lunch with them, and I told him, hey, Mike, I love the name your comic and the Hellboy comic characters come out of the darkest beautiful. And I love that you never see their feet because it's all mysterious. And I love that you imply that the world is complicated and they don't know where to stand and that life is dark and these characters can come out of the light. And he was eating a sandwich when I was telling him that, and he goes, Jorge, I hate drawing feet. And then he kept eating a sandwich, and he goes, and I hate drawing backgrounds. So it just opens a new level of, like, understanding for the art. Yeah. So it became like, oh, it wasn't that he was being mysterious or he was trying to say something, is that he doesn't like to do those things. And so he's compensating by making the art so beautiful, and he's putting all his emphasis on drawing monsters and all the things he loves because he doesn't want to draw buildings. So that's part of your style. What you love to do and what you don't love to do, you will be guided by those things. Very insightful. Thank you very much. All right. On that note, wisdom. You guys are getting wisdom right here from Jorge. I'm going to go to closing. I have to say, you are one special human being. You have got an amazing heart. I'm so glad we connected and we were able to do this and share your journey with the talented individuals here that are listening. I just want to wish you continued success. I owe you a sandwich. I would love to hear, to hear more. I just can't get enough continued success. Good health to you. And we are just excited to see what comes next. I know you can't talk about it, but we will all be watching and supporting. So on that note, thank you again for being our guest here on breaking the biz. Oh, Brett, thank you so much for having me. You guys are the next generation. If I can do it, you guys can do it. As we conclude another enriching episode, we hope you found inspiration in the stories shared today. Let's take a moment to honor yes, I can's role in bringing breaking the biz to life. Yes, I can's commitment to empowering young people with disabilities through education, advocacy, and mentorship shines brightly, paving paths of opportunity and dialogue. This podcast celebrates the organizations dedication to nurturing talent and facilitating impactful discussions. Breaking the Biz is more than a podcast. It's a part of Yes, I can's broader mission to amplify voices, dismantle barriers, and craft a world that's more inclusive and accessible for everyone. Each episode is a chapter in our shared narrative of progress, education, and empowerment, driven by the spirit of Yes I Can. Thank you for spending your time with us on breaking the biz. Continue to challenge the status quo, and share stories that resonate until our paths cross again. Let's keep transforming aspirations into achievements and infuse every endeavor with optimism. Here's to advancing the landscape of the entertainment industry, one episode at a time. Time I'm your host, William Felber. See you next time.