SUGAR RUSH! There’s so much cotton-candy-rainbow-love-heart-psychedelic-magic in Juan Carlos Lopez de la Torre’s film Airborne Love that that we really can’t resist it. But it’s not all psychedelic cartoons – his recent animation Pas De Deux reveals a quiet, melancholic side to the animator. Intrigued, Laura Swinton decided to track down the mexican animator/illustrator and Vancouver Films School student to find out more. Juan Carlos tells the YA blog about the power of traditional animation and why he’s a hopeless romantic.

What is it about the medium of animation that appeals to you so much?
Animation is one of the most powerful mediums of expression there is, it freely integrates the most important techniques and ideas from all of the fine arts, but without stop being a craft made for comunication, having this powerful quality of expressing clearly and truthfully the most complex concepts, stories and ideas.

No matter what the visual style or technique is used to tell a story, animation can always challenge the narrative language of cinema,dance with the rhythm of music and play with the the beauty of painting, without forgetting how evokative a doodle can be.

In the days of CG technology, why did you choose to study traditional animation?
I deeply admire films that are committed with story and characters, no matter if they are CG, classically animated, live action or something completely in between; but, when you take a look to film and animation history, you can find all this beautifull examples of classically animated stories made in the most adverse social environments, elluding crisis through letting inventivness to persist.

Even though I try to use technology to speed up the animation process, I like to believe that I do not depend on this or that software, but of my own hand and pencil to tell stories, limited only by what me and my team are able to draw. Besides of always keeping room for artistic self improvement, this leaves the door open for creation, regardless of my country’s economics, a low budget production, or any world crisis there might be.

Where do you get your ideas from?
I always try to have a deep involvement with the most simple things in life, most of my ideas are a mixture between the wonders I´ve found, the people I´ve loved, and the artists I admire; a constant interpretation of life, nurtured by friends, the work of my collleagues and their different opinions and points of view on life itself.

I love Airborne Love – where did that candy-pop-meets-psychedelia aesthetic come from?
I think it comes from letting my imagination do whatever it pleased, mixing and distorting the cartoons I watched as a kid, my love life and every bright color I found, I don´t think that Xun Xun or Princess Pio-pó could have lived somewhere else but this cotton candy skies that constantly reinforce their personalities.

At the time of doing this film I was deeply inspired by the work of Marv Newland, Sally Cruikshank and Mexican illustrator Alejandro Magallanes, I really wanted to achieve the level of freedom they have in their work.

On the other hand Pas De Deux has a kind of melancholy to it – how did you come up with the story?
The time of production of this film was really, really short, leaving me no time to think, but only to feel. It talks about those special people that reach you deeply in dark times, but have to leave before you would like to, leaving you only with the dim light of memories. This is a film I really enjoyed doing because of its honesty.

Both of these films are about love – are you a hopeless romantic?
Of course I am, I think you can really tell by now, my life would be too boring without romance and passion.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
I see myself in México city, pushing the boundaries of what animation can socially achieve, being part of the constant development needed in my country, in order to achieve an international level of quality and content, making us able to succesfully share our stories and films with the world.

To find out more about Juan Carlos Lopez de la Torre and to check out hiw AMAZING illustrations, visit his blog.