Salvador Simó

Salvador Simo started working in traditional animation at Pegbar Studio, Barcelona, in 1991, painting cells and making Xerox copies. He then went on to study at the American Animation Institute in LA, taking an evening course for six months and working during the day as assistant animator at Bill Melendez Prod, on the Peanuts shows.

Upon returning to Spain, he started a career as freelance animator for several studios in Madrid and Barcelona, and a year later joined Disney Studios in Paris as assistant animator for the feature film Goofy & Max. Afterwards, he stayed in Paris to work as an artist for Disney’s department of Publishing and Consumer Products.

A year later, he went back to Barcelona while still working for Disney as a freelancer and created a small studio with Disney as main client for over four years. That allowed him to study directing at Barcelona’s CECC Film School, where he began to learn about 3D animation.

He directed a couple of animated shorts, the second supported by Open Workshop, in the Animation Workshop in Viborg (Denmark), and also taught for a year and a half.

He then decided to delve into the VFX world, joining the Revisualisation and Layout Department at MPC London, where he put to use his storytelling and cinematography skills in films such as Narnia, Prince Caspian, Wolfman, Prince of Persia, and James Bond, Skyfall, among others.

In 2008, he started directing a TV show in Bangkok for one season and eventually ended up doing 4 seasons of Max Adventures with more than 500 min of CG animation.

When he returned to Spain he directed some small projects and, in 2014, was asked by MPC to lead some sequences in the layout department for Disney’s new Jungle Book, which won the Oscar for Best VFX. After that, he collaborated with the team in MPC Montreal on Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales.

He was then commissioned to co-write and direct the film Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, for which he moved back to Spain.