BOBBY Rubio, a Filipino-American (Fil-Am) story artist at Pixar Animation Studios, on Tuesday, January 15, announced the first-ever CGI Fil-Am characters in short animated film.
They will be featured in "Float," one of the short films in an experimental storytelling initiative by Pixar called SparkShorts.
Rubio who is the writer and director of Float said in his Facebook post, the two characters are Pixar's first computer generated imagery (CGI) Filipinos, thus he technically called them "Pixnoys."
He said, "I'm so grateful for this opportunity to tell our stories and share them with the world! When I was growing up, I didn't see much characters that looked like me on #television or #movies and I am thrilled that my children will have these guys and hopefully they are just the beginning and will inspire more #FilAm stories to come!"
Rubio was born and raised in San Diego who had a love for drawing and pursued a career in animation. Some of his works with the Walt Disney Feature animation as storyboard artist are "Tarzan" and "Treasure Planet."
He also worked for Nickelodeon Animation Studios as an assistant director/storyboard artist on the series "Avatar: The Last Airbender."
The Disney Pixar announced that the first three short films of the SparkShorts program will premiere on January 18 in Hollywood, to be followed in the next few weeks by an exclusive launch on YouTube.
(CID/SunStar Philippines)