Born and raised in Spain, Carlos Baena came to the United States in 1994. He’s worked at Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar Animation Studios, on the highly successful JURASSIC PARK, STAR WARS and TOY STORY franchises as well as the films such as ‘FINDING NEMO’, ‘THE INCREDIBLES’, ‘CARS’, ‘RATATOUILLE’ and ‘WALL-E’. For his work in the film ‘CARS’, Carlos received a 2007 Annie Award nomination for Best Character Animation.
Carlos directed the acclaimed short films ‘PLAY BY PLAY’ (2011) and ‘LA NORIA’ (2018). ‘LA NORIA’, a Tribeca Film Festival nominated short film, won over a hundred awards including best animated short film at Shanghai Film Festival, Short Shorts Asia Film Festival, Malaga International Film Festival, Screamfest and received both a Silver Méliès Award to Best European Short Film at Molins de Rei in 2018. It also won a Webby Award for Best Animation in 2020. In 2017, Carlos helped develop David Fincher’s Animated Anthology “LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS”. He is also Co-Founder of AnimationMentor, the Online Animation School as well as the cloud based virtual platform, Artella.