EXCLUSIVE: Henry Selick, Hal Hickel, Jhonen Vasquez, and Jenny Goldberg Join Pixelatl 2017 Line-Up

Coraline director Henry Selick and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story animation supervisor Hal Hickel will be presenters at the 2017 edition of Mexico’s Pixelatl Festival, set to take place September 5-10 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the organizers announced today.

Two other special guests announced today are Jhonen Vasquez, creator of Invader Zim, and Jenny Goldberg, art director of the upcoming Invader Zim movie.

Selick, who also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, will notably be involved with three talks/presentations at Pixelatl this year:

• “Creativity in Animated Feature Films: Battles Won and Lost”
• A screening of his early short films and commercial work
• A talk about storytelling in animation

Hickel will offer conference attendees a unique perspective on top-level cg animation. In addition to supervising animation on Rogue One at ILM, he has also served as animation supervisor on Pacific Rim, Iron Man, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and the first three films in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Additionally, he was the animation director of Rango, the only non-Disney produced animated feature to win an Academy Award in the last decade.

Other featured speakers for 2017 who have been previously announced include Jorge Gutierrez (The Book of Life), David Feiss (Cow and Chicken), Alan Ituriel (Villainous), Alberto Vázquez (Psiconautas, Decorado), Dana Terrace (director, Ducktales reboot), Mike Hollingsworth (supervising director, Bojack Horseman), and Linda Simensky (vice-president of children’s programming, PBS).

For more details on attending and a full list of guest speakers, visit ElFestival.mx.