Sandra Rabins, Andrea Fernandez, Anna Hollingsworth To Speak At Pixelatl 2019 (Exclusive)

Pixelatl, Mexico’s buzzy animation conference, has started announcing guests for its next edition (September 3–7). Cartoon Brew can reveal three of those names exclusively: Sandra Rabins, executive vice president at Paramount Animation; Andrea Fernandez, art director at Netflix Animation; and Anna Hollingsworth, animation director at Warner Bros. Animation.

Rabins is a veteran animation producer, who alongside Penney Finkelman Cox, was instrumental in setting up both DreamWorks’s and Sony’s feature animation units, overseeing such films as Antz, The Prince of Egypt, Shrek, Chicken Run, and Surf’s Up to the screen. Rabin subsequently helped to oversee Chinese cg animation studio Original Force’s expansion into Hollywood. She has been at Paramount since last year.

Fernandez is art director on The Cuphead Show!, Netflix’s upcoming series based on the video game Cuphead. She previously served as art director on Warner Bros.’s Unikitty, a spinoff series starring the emotionally volatile cat from The Lego Movie. Hollingsworth is animation director on Unikitty. Her previous credits include animation director on Bojack Horseman and lead animator on The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

Pixelatl will be announcing more than 80 guests over the coming weeks. The other confirmed names so far are:

• Adam Elliot — stop-motion director, who will be at Pixelatl to mark the 10th anniversary of his feature Mary and Max
• Javi Recio — storyboard artist at DreamWorks Animation
• Stu Livingston — animation director and storyboard artist (The Owl House, Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie)
• Ollie Green — vice president, animated production at Adult Swim
• Kait Tremblay — team lead narrative designer at Ubisoft Toronto; video game writer and developer

In recent years, Pixelatl has established itself as the premier industry get-together in Mexico. It draws top talent from the animation, video game, vfx, and comics sectors to its annual conference in Cuernavaca, serving as a crucial bridge between artists from the region and overseas studios and production companies. Aside from the event proper, it also helps run the education conference La Cumbre, the Ideatoon bootcamp and pitching program, and Girl Power: Pitch Me The Future, another pitching event targeted at female creators.

For more information on this year’s Pixelatl, head to the official website.

(Image at top, left to right: Sandra Rabins, Andrea Fernandez, Anna Hollingsworth.)