Ana Maria Alvarado was born in Managua, Nicaragua, in the 70s. She grew up speaking Spanish, English and Croatian at home, as well as drawing with both hands. Her father is the Nicaraguan writer Enrique Alvarado Martinez. Her mother, of Croatian-American origin, was a university professor.

Ana traveled and lived in Austin, Texas, then Managua again (during the Sandinista Revolution), and then Stockholm, Sweden. After graduating with an International Baccalaureate in Stockholm, Ana was offered a full scholarship to study film in Czechoslovakia. At FAMU in Prague, she learned the basics of filmmaking and saw the country change radically...

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The first shot of every project strikes me as being the most difficult. What do I do with this shot? Choices need to be made and a lot of it depends on you, the character, and the director's idea of how the character will take shape.

From Stuart Little 2 to some of the Warner Bros shorts I've worked on recently, I always think twice before committing to a course on the first shot. The reason it's so hard to get started, beyond the fact that you're still learning about your character(s), is of course that you are dealing with an art form. There isn't one path, one way to convey what you need in your shot. It's up to you to pick a course...

→ To read full text, download the Animation Insiders eBook for free

→ Download the Animation Insiders eBook for free