Bill Diaz Email & Phone Number

For almost 30 years I have been pursuing my passion for film and animation as a professional computer animator. During that time I have held lead or supervising character animator positions for Sony Pictures Imageworks, Centropolis Fx, and DreamWorks Animation in Glendale. My passion for film, visual effects and animation started as a young high school student who enjoyed watching movies and making short films with friends. Seeing the dawn of computer animation was fascinating to me and started me on a path making sprite animations using basic programming. This spark to create "life" lead me to experimenting with 3d cad animation software in the early 90's. While pursuing a degree in Graphic Arts and Computer Animation at UCLA in 1995 I was recruited by Sony Pictures Imageworks. I spent 8 years with Sony pushing the limits of computer visual effects and animation as the company grew from 50 artists to close to 1000. My career started as a digital artist with strengths in modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting and animation, but my passion was for animation. In 1996 I was asked to become one of the first few members to start the digital character animators group at Sony Imageworks. I became a Supervising animator on such films as Spider-Man (2002), Big Fish, Stuart Little, Men in BLACK 2, Charlies Angels 2, The Patriot and Godzilla, and later received nominations for the VES and Annie Awards for my work done on Tim Burtons "Big Fish". In 2003 I was contacted directly by Jeffery Katzenburg and invited to become a part of the new computer animation team at DreamWorks, which was started by Steven Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenburg, and David Geffen. I joined DreamWorks in 2003 as a Lead/Supervising Character Animator and have since worked on close to 30 of Dreamworks most popular films like the How to Train your Dragon Trilogy, Kung Fu Panda Series , Abominable, Trolls Series, Ruby Gillman, Penguins of Madagascar, Peabody and Sherman, The Croods, Puss in Boots The Last Wish, Puss in boots, Madagascar Series, Bee Movie starring Jerry Seinfeld, Over the Hedge, Shark Tale, Flushed Away, and Monsters vs Aliens.My reputations as a "firefighter" and a technical artist has also allowed me to be recognized as someone who can tackle the most difficult and demanding work on any production. Yet also handle the more subtle and emotional acting scenes with ease. Even with close to 30 years experience and over 35 movie credits my passion as an artist continues to grow!

Listed skills include Character Animation, Animation, Facial Animation, Computer Animation, and 9 others.

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  University Of California, Los Angeles

  Graphic Design / Media Arts