José "Quique" Rivera

José "Quique" Rivera is a contemporary photographer, sculptor, self-taught stop-motion animator, and filmmaker born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1986. He is currently based in Glendale, California and is the CEO and founder of Acho Studio, an animation studio in Los Angeles that focuses on stop-motion animation.

Biography Rivera has served on multiple juries at film and animation festivals, including the New Orleans Film Festival in 2013, where his film "El Delirio Del Pez León" won the Grand Juror Award the previous year. He has also worked as a workshop instructor at Atlantic University College. He has collaborated with or been commissioned by brands including Disney, Dasani, PES film, Recently, Rivera worked as the stop-motion supervisor on the television series Wandavision, creating the "YoMagic commercial" seen in season 1 episode 6.

Education Rivera attended the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus where he received a Bachelor's degree in Audiovisual Communication with a minor in Sculpture in 2008, graduation Summa Cum Laude. Later, he moved from Puerto Rico to California to have a better chance at an animation career, and continued on to obtain a Master's degree in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts in 2014.

Artworks

RIvera implements a mix of sculpture and stop-motion animation to present surreal narratives of real world circumstances and issues. The film took 70 days to complete, using figures made from plasticine, resin molds, silicone, wire, thread, and epoxy resin, alongside other recycled and reused objects such as food cans. The completed project consisted of over 7,200 still photographs taken from October 2013 to March 2014, that were then combined to create the stop motion film. The video has been screened at over 40 film festivals and earned awards such as the Best Animation award at both the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and the Rincón Film Festival, The film won the Grand Jury's Animated Short Award at the New Orleans Film Festival, as well as Best Animation at both the Cinefiesta: International Short Film Festival and Rincón International Film Festival.

"Menuda Urbe" (What a City), 2010, is a short stop-motion film created out of photos Rivera took in Puerto Rico alongside recycled objects and materials such as paper and wire, and was finished in California. Other awards include, but are not limited to: as well as a silver award for Product/Service Animation at the 2016 Clio Awards. The animation was also nominated for an Emmy Award under the Outstanding Commercial category.

Rivera has also received multiple nominations and honorable mentions, the most notable of which being the nomination of his film "Así de grandes son las ideas" for a Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.