Father of 6 children and hundreds of fictional characters Madrid born Borja Montoro was, fascinatingly enough, never planning to have a career in art, enrolling and graduating instead from the Law University. By a lucky twist of fate, at Law School he met somebody that saw his hobby drawings and prompted Borja to enrol in a freshly launched school of animation. The rest was history because once he discovered his true passion and calling – animation – he became unstoppable.
Soon after embarking on his animation adventure, Borja landed a job first at Overlay and then at Manolo Galiana’s animation studio where he also worked on feature films. In 1995 he decided to move to Dublin and got the chance to work for All Dofs Go To Heaven II. The next natural step was Disney. There he spent 7 years working among others for Hercules, Tarzan, The Jungle Book II and The Emperor’s New Groove.
In 2002 he experienced another turning point when former Disney supervisor Sergio Pablos invited Borja to join him in Madrid, at SPA Studios, for the feature project Giacomo’s Secret. The two of them worked together for the script, visual development and character design. Many more SPA projects followed including Twambo, Blue Sky’s Rio, Asterix and the Vikings and Nocturna among others.
Apart from collaborating with SPA, Borja Montoro engaged in a series of freelance projects for Sony Pictures, Dreamworks, Paramount and Walt Disney. He worked as a character designer for Zootopia, Moana, Wreck it Ralph 2, Despicable Me 3 and many more.
In his ‘spare’ time he was also Director of Postgraduate Degree on Character Design and Teacher of Character Design and Animation Principles at U-tad as well as a TEDx speaker for the “Plaza de Santa Bárbara” event in Madrid.