Story Development Workshop, Friday, October 18, 1 – 4 PM, RSVP
Artist Talk, Saturday, October 19, 7:00 PM, Falvey Hall at Maryland Institute College of Art, co-hosted by Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival
Director at Sony Pictures Animation Miguel Jiron will give a masterclass on storyboarding and story development, sharing story pitches and outlining the progression from initial ideas to final animation. A live pitch and feedback session of selected UMBC student projects will follow. At the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival, he will give a talk about his personal, roundabout journey from the independent and fine art world to the feature animation industry, along with a screening of his shorts.
Miguel Jiron is a Nicaraguan American director at Sony Pictures Animation. Most recently he worked as a Head of Story on “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the sequel to the Academy Award-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” on which he was a story artist. Additionally, Jiron wrote and directed an original short titled “Spider-Ham: Caught in a Ham” for the home entertainment release of “Into the Spider-Verse”. Jiron has also worked as a storyboard artist on several other feature films. Jiron has directed and written several animated shorts, which have screened at film festivals around the world including SXSW, Toronto International Film Festival, Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Ottawa International Animated FIlm Festival. In 2015, Jiron was named one of Variety’s Top Animators to Watch, and in 2018, one of Animation Magazine’s Rising Stars. Prior to his work in animation Jiron was a painter for artist Takashi Murakami. He was born in Baton Rouge, LA and holds a BA from Northwestern University and MFA from USC.