Today we’d like to introduce you to Valentín Palombo.
Hi Valentín, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And I’ve been drawing through my whole life as far as i can tell; i just can’t figure a right time when i started drawing, all I can remember is myself, always trying to make something out of a blank piece of a paper, with whatever I had on hand, wherever I was, and here I am- still grateful and so proud to call this a journey, with the ups and the downs.
I wanted to be an artist since I can remember, and do this job for the rest of my life- I’m very self-critical and perfectionist, so I always thought that if I’m willing to live my life as an artist, what I want is to become really, really good at it, be the best version of myself that I was yesterday or last week, last year and so on and on keep on getting better. I wanted to be deeply disciplined to myself in order to find my true potential.
The greater advantage of keep growing as an artist is the power to visually enjoy life. I just love to be outside and feel like my surroundings tell a story to my eyes, a lot of key inspiration always stems from my own experiences. I love poetry, also photography, or sculpting, anything that tells a story, visually or verbally. If a story isn’t there, if it means nothing, I’m not interested, period; nothing makes me feel more in a deep state of relaxation and mindfulness as creating art allows me to, in so many ways that I didn’t acknowledge when I was younger.
I simply grew up as a cartoon watcher, surrounded by several shows so much as Pink Panther, Yogi Bear, Looney Tunes, Popeye- great classic stuff our parents used to enjoy before us that was related to Hannah-Barbera or Tex Avery and so many others in my list. But then of course I started watching classical Disney animated films from every era, and I felt each film was speaking to me, sometimes these moments just find you when the timing cannot be more perfect.
I’ve been inspired since then by so many of these different animations in their own languages, so much as 2D, CG and stop motion- And I was quite a huge Aardman fan, I learned to ‘marionette’ with my storytelling the way I learned from Wallace & Gromit classic films. Never really thought which one of the sources was better (I had no favoritisms) but lucky me, Toy Story (my FIRST big movie) was like my pivot, it impacted so hard in my entire childhood, I literally lost my mind because of Pixar, I wanted to move people, my friends and my family with stories of my own, just like I felt the day I saw a triumphant Woody crying “To infinity and Beyond” carried in the arms of a soaring Buzz Lightyear at the end. My love for animation was real.
But… the first thing you need to know about me, is that i NEVER actually planned to approach a future in animation, I wanted to become a comic book artist, just like all my heroes I grew up with in my country. Argentina was (and still is) full of amazing talented and growing illustrators who crushed it in the comic book industry, for me at the age of 6, or maybe 7 i completely fell in love with the art of Hector G. Oesterheld, and the legendary late Quino. It was hard at that age to find people who loved comics as much as I did, so while most kids of my time would go to football practice, hang out or go to parties I would just run back home and read an entire Mafalda book collection with a flashlight under my bed sheets, or otherwise MAKE my own comic books in my desk. I was quite a geeky kid- always very isolated and extremely introverted, but I was happy.
One time in my class room just right after bell ringed, everyone else was leaving, and my art teacher was always casually locking his eyes into my work (not even class stuff, it was regular art of my own) anyway, i was the last student who didn’t leave the room, casually trying to collect all of my drawings and see if I take it home, or leave it in some safe place, but that day I finally took enough courage to come forward to my teacher and show him a good chunk of my latest drawings. He kept watching until he turned to me and said “These are wonderful- if you keep going, there might be a great future as an artist ahead of you” and I was completely warm and frozen at the same time, i went stiff.. i didn’t know how to answer to that, because heck- it was literally THE FIRST time someone actually said that to me. I really keep thinking of that day, it echoes in my head permanently like i carry a badge of honor. I’m sure that I’m here because of him.
We call animation the Illusion of Life itself (which is our fancy title for imitating life) I watch hand-drawn characters as if there was nobody who actually made them, just accepting them as living things making decisions on their own. I fell in love with it because I was alive, i believed in it, even when they’re not existing beings in the same room with us, those memories eventually become entities over time. When you’re the kid before the artist, life feels so simple in many ways, your innocence is a gift- there are no Tik Toks, no Instagram reels, or likes, no followers, just you and the pencil, against the paper, and when we’re kids just playing piano, or reading, writing, nothing stop us from believing, because creativity means believing and make others believe. That’s what made my childhood so special- I didn’t care what names people called me for having a vision, and I feel like every kid should be given the chance to explore so many arts, to make a fool out of themselves more often instead of trying so hard to be perfect, and just believe in what they’re doing.
However, when it was time to re-think what I wanted to do, for me it was difficult to transition from comic books to jumping into animation in Argentina. So I kept this old magazine that I bought in the mall one night while I was still in high school- what I found was an ad, promoting our multimedia Da Vinci School ‘Escuela Da Vinci’, and you now, at that time, to me that was the one place to significantly study animation with the strongest technological infrastructure available, so a high school art teacher who loved animation learned that i was interested in there, so he gladly took me there to show me the sights and have an orientation chat at the school. The challenges of an animation path were seemingly intimidating, but I wanted to give it my shot, with all the best i had.
So at the age of 18, I definitely took the lap for initiating as an animation student, where i finally started my journey to become a professional, it prepared me to formally become the artist I’m here at this point, and I was a student in Da Vinci for four years. I was in the middle of a very rough transition from high school to a very much more serious and, you know- more down-to-earth competitive grounds.
I went to study animation, without knowing if I was making the right turn. Deep down I knew I had a reason. I spent my first months just working on myself, obsessed with studying principles, storyboarding and screenwriting. That’s when i officially jumped into digital painting using Intuos tablets. (I was more of a pencil guy) I loved learning how animated films were built inside and outside, but what I was lacking was a direction to know where would I exactly fit. We even had to learn the ‘art of pitching’ through our own projects in front of class, and no matter how much love I put into it, all I felt was like failing all the time. First year in animation was real tough, everything felt so much bigger than me. At some points that was frustrating. Back then, drawing was the only thing I felt truly confident doing, so I wasn’t sure if that was enough to fit into the industry and keeping up with my peers in such a road. Then, during an animation 101 class one of our instructors would bring many of his documentaries or references to show us examples of big animators from the old days, there was primarily so much strong Walt Disney work from the Nine Old Men- animation stuff by the great Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, John Lounsbery (nothing but gold) it was my first time witnessing that kind of artwork by real animators, my heart was racing!
Then finally, at the end of those classes, just among those slides, a frame absolutely caught my attention- it was this beautiful woman’s drawing of Tarzan’s art production made in Paris, (That was Tarzan’s mom) by nobody else but Glen Keane himself. I could go on and on about Glen just because of that sketch. It was quite a simple one, very loose, few line strokes, with the purest human soul, perfectly encapsulated. And there I was, just sitting tight, felt like my body froze, and melted from the inside; it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I was transfixed! I kept looking at that drawing and I couldn’t help but say “You mean somebody can actually draw like this??” Went back home and researched the hell out of Glen Keane, who he was, what he did, what is he doing now, etc. I would play hundreds of his pencil tests and try to copy what I saw, he did such a remarkable job on films like Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Beauty and the Beast, Treasure Planet (probably the best ones he’s done at Disney); then when I was getting better, I started to study real human gesture on my own like the ones I saw from Glen, sketching everything and everyone around me, sitting at the subway, or at Starbucks sketching my life away, finding the animator in me. I was no longer an enthusiast. I mean, i was still learning but finally becoming an artist, the one I didn’t know I wanted to be, and throughout that, my efforts to become an animator got better and better, it taught me where my real heart is, and I never lost the passion for it. My journey was at last having a real start.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
That’s a real good question, maybe the most important one. No, it definitely wasn’t a soft road, not for me and it sure wasn’t for any other artist I’ve known so far, nor for my peers and colleagues. I’ve been an artist long enough to accept that you can’t always be fully in control of staying productive, and believe me, the passion doesn’t pay the bills, which is why I had to prioritize stability, client work, and day-to-day responsibilities while still trying to figure out how to keep growing as an artist. It’s just like juggling with different timeframes; if you want everything to click into place, you need to become some kind of robot and get used to the hard times. (*scratch that, LOVE the hard times)
The biggest challenge you can face in this path is learning to trust the process. Creative careers rarely follow a straight line; try to picture every step in this journey as a wave, all different shapes and sizes. There are moments of excitement, opportunities that seem life-changing, and periods where things move much slower than expected. I’ve had to learn patience, persistence, and the importance of continuing to improve my craft even if I wasn’t seeing immediate results, so when the industry gets hard (because it will) let it be hard- the struggle IS part of the job. But you know, I think that’s just what I love mostly about my career, I didn’t end up hating the struggles, I actually learned the one art form bigger than anything I trained for as an artist; and that is the art of patience. I currently consider myself my own long-term project without a definitive timeframe. I remember myself since day one, ready to scour the internet with my first portfolio on hand, with the best of my work at that time, and of course, every studio’s door.. shutting flat on my face, until one day… back in college I was hired by an indie short film where I wasn’t even an artist, they wanted me to animate a couple of cgi scenes for a slight fraction of seconds (it was obligatory to learn softwares like Maya, Substance, ZBrush and 3ds Max) so luckily I had my own knowledge of how 3D animation worked, and how to use it, I just wasn’t a master on it, so there I was, all like “oh, ok- here goes nothing”. I had no idea what I was doing. But after quite a few weeks of careful work.. the director LOVED my animation, they weren’t perfect, but that to me was like a miracle. That credit alone really didn’t get me another job, i didn’t see myself to build a future as a cgi animator, but I definitely wanted more, I wanted to keep on submitting my portfolio and reels to every studio, again, and again, and again. The combination of rejection and perseverance are a great teacher.
I didn’t really know what struggle really was, until at the start of pandemic, just like everyone else worldwide I was trying to get through my confinement at home. Nothing to do at that time, just wait until the world gets back to “normal” I guess (The ‘Zoom Era’) It was just unfortunate. I found rarely conceivable to keep growing as an artist in such a fragile point. I was terrified, not only for my plans to becoming an artist, but also for my personal life. I would just wake up and live a day at once just as always, but not being able to see my friends and family for quite a long time absolutely destroyed me. But you know, then I kept watching so many creative people in the media. These young artists kept sharing all new kinds of videos, started out tutorials, teaching music and opened up their own online courses. I didn’t realize that in such a mean time, art was more important than ever to be present, maybe it was the best of times, it wasn’t all in vain; not because it was my sole thing left to do, it reminded me that in our darkest time, what we do best, inspires and brings so much light to people, that’s what being an artist is all about. Life was still going on, but slower- It sure wasn’t easy but I moved on with new eyes. Maybe Covid changed us all for the better.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m arguably versatile in everything that I do (or at least i try to be) that is inside our outside animation- I’m always drawing and painting, or designing characters, which is definitely the strongest of all my foundations. While I’m primarily a freelance illustrator working within the industry, I got to contribute to the many multiple areas of production and in-between jobs over the past seven years.
I’ve been active since then in Story Art, Character Design, Visual Development, Layout, Background Design, and several other creative disciplines. Whether locally in Argentina or remotely with clients around the world, (including mostly USA, Canada, then Europe, also Middle East, many other clients) I love the idea of exploring my capacities in as many angles as possible, so yes, I do a percentage of everything. My first real job in animation took place in Mundoloco Studio, created by our legendary director from Argentina, Juan Jose Campanella who also directed the movie Metegol (aka Underdogs) long before I even got there. I was hired by the start of 2021- the recovery from Covid was moving really slow, people were finally allowed to go places outside, but the base of our survival was still managing the safety protocols and work from home. However, that sure didn’t stop me from starting as an artist through a camera. And so I kept jumping from studio to studio in Argentina, all opportunities were local. Not one single contract from outside the country and I was excited to see how my efforts would turn out internationally. But how?
I loved making art for the social media, but I had no knowledge of how the audience worked in such an environment if I wanted to stand out as a real professional. So for a long time, I was simply reduced to share all my art in private feeds, where activity was obviously very low; over time I realized it was just pointless. Most people take the internet for granted, but i wanted to give it a great use to connect with new people in the profession, and I was ready to roll the dice on it. Anybody can create a YouTube channel, but the hardest part is to gain enough confidence to let yourself be seen. All I believed is that maybe the internet has its favorites, and I sure wasn’t meant to be one of them, so I quitted all social apps. Not sure how it all started, but one day I was sharing studies of mine on famous Disney animators, or just some random work of my own. I saw no hope on those drawings, so i went to bed. The next morning, I picked up my phone and… the likes and followers finally started to come in. It was incredible. I couldn’t believe it- after a lifetime of struggling to fit in the internet, my recognition was finally going somewhere. The system worked, but there was a great battle ahead of me, so i had no choice but to start all over in the media, sharing drawings everyday, connecting with different profiles all across Linked In, Instagram, ArtStation, anywhere where art could be enjoyed. Year after year, my content in the profiles were getting better, and more studios outside Argentina like Europe and USA started to reach out. That’s how Ravensburger found me as well. So that was just it, the better times come to those who wait.
One of my most current projects I’m especially proud of is Disney Lorcana. I’ve been an artist in the game for about three years now, and working for Disney was my dream since I was a kid, I just couldn’t feel more honored for such a role.
In an intimate space of mine I work on my own personal projects, such as full-length and short films all at home by myself- and I mean LITERALLY all of it: I write my own scripts, board my own panels, design the characters, concepts and layout pages, I animate all my scenes etc. I love spending a good time of my life in silence just to tell the right story. I am unironically my own boss, that’s what really helps me stay in shape if I want to become a good director.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Yes- if you want to grow as an artist is important that you appreciate every opportunity when it knocks at your door, no matter how small it may seems, don’t underestimate the weight of your breaks. If I could go back in time, so I could fix a moment where I wasn’t thinking straight (heck, I was too arrogant, too ambitious) I would definitely take one or two chances where I could have say ‘YES’ more often. The offers that you decline, they can’t haunt you for the rest of your days, nobody has all the answers, so, you’ll certainly never know how hard could that possibly have resonated in your experience, until you take it. Starting out as a creative professional means starting small. Don’t worry if this opportunity makes you feel “THIS ISN’T ME, I’M MEANT FOR MORE” Nobody knows what’s gonna happen. Is it small money? Well, DO IT ANYWAY! The big breaks, and the larger breaks will come, but keep saying yes, build relationships, go places, talk to people and keep learning from the smaller steps.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://valpalart.wixsite.com/website/work
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valenpalart/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentin-palombo-768b22196/
