Nathalie Martínez, when animation has a woman's name

La valenciana Nathalie Martínez, CEO de Wise Blue Studios, ha estado al frente de producciones de éxito como ‘Animal Crackers’, ‘Blue & Malone’ o ‘Hero Dad’. En la actualidad desarrolla varios proyectos de series y películas para algunas de las principales majors americanas.

Few people know that the summer animation premiere in Netflix, which will be broadcast simultaneously in 200 countries, was produced in the Paterna Technology Park with a Valencian woman leading the team.

20 million budget, 36 months of production working with 5 countries and 6 time zones, 200 artists, 150 simultaneously during peak production, which generated 70 terabytes of information in 21 million files for 100 minutes of animation. These are some of the impressive numbers of Animal Crackers, the American animated feature film co-produced in Valencia, and in charge of the entire production, a Valencian production company, Nathalie Martínez.

She has been telling stories through film and, in the last decade, animation for almost twenty years: “I think there can be no greater satisfaction than working on what you are passionate about,” said the CEO and founder of Wise Blue Studios. Little by little, this Valencian born in France made her way in a mostly male sector until she became one of the most recognized animation producers in Spain.

Member of the Board of Directors of Back, the federation of animation producers; Member of the Film Academy and one of the promoters of the MIA Association (Women in the Animation Industry) in its beginnings, always had in mind the objective of addressing the international market, which is why, in 2014, it created Blue Dream Studios Spain, the Spanish studio responsible for Animal Crackers.

The animated feature film premiered in 2017 to rave reviews in the official Cannes section of world animation, the Annecy Festival, and opened the Cinema Jove Festival in Valencia that same year. The film, which in its original version features the voices of actors of the stature of Ian McKellen, Sylvester Stallone, Danny de Vito, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, will be released on July 24, simultaneously in 200 countries, on the platform of the American giant Netflix.

At the same time, with the premise of conveying entertainment to bring great stories and universal values ​​to society, Nathalie Martinez, through Wise Blue Studios, her new studio founded in 2017, has produced and co-directed with Maxi Valero the innovative animated series for preschoolers Hero Dad, which is also now beginning its worldwide distribution through the prestigious Wildbrain (formerly DHX Media). Furthermore, Martínez has embarked on a joint adventure with other Spanish production companies with an international vocation such as EVIPC, to make the feature film The Imposible Journeand or as ESDIP Animation Studio, with whom he has made Blue & Malone: Casos Imposibles, the only Spanish short film that mixes real image and 3D animation and which, in addition to premiering last May on Movistar +, is on its way to becoming a series for the international market.

A Valencian co-production

In 2014, the American Scott Christian Sava, creator and director of the project, trusted Nathalie Martínez to be in charge of the production of this feature film with American roots but produced entirely in Valencia. Animal Crackers tells the story of a family whose life is turned upside down when they inherit an old circus and a mysterious box of animal crackers that, by magic, turns the person who eats them into the animal they just ingested.

During the three years that the production of the film lasted in Spain, Nathalie worked for endless days that began in the morning in the studio in Valencia and ended well into the early hours of the morning via video call with Los Angeles: "I usually say that I invented the 27-hour days," she jokes - "Being the only woman in the quintet of producers and the only Spanish one, was not an easy task. I remember arriving at the first business meetings in Los Angeles and sitting in the least visible corner of the table to listen and understand how producers and investors in Hollywood thought. I used to be the only woman at the table or at least the only one with my responsibility,” explains Nathalie. “But little by little I learned and became comfortable and I ended up managing both teams, on both sides of the ocean.”

Blue & Malone

The hangover wasn't over yet. Animal Crackers when Nathalie embarked on another adventure: co-producing the second part of Blue & Malone, the short that in 2014 was a finalist in the twenty-eighth edition of the Goya Awards. The only productions in Spain of animated short films mixed with real images, Blue & Malone. Casos Imposibles tells the story of Berta (role played by Aura Garrido), a journalist overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the adult world who returns to the theater where her grandmother took her as a child the night before it is demolished. What he doesn't know is that two detectives, his now-forgotten imaginary childhood friends Mortando Malone (in the voice of Alex O'Dogherty) and Big Blue Cat (in the voice of José Luis García Pérez) are going to help him solve an impossible case: recover his desire to dream through a "desadultizer", a magic button that many people would like to press to see the world again with the eyes of a child.

Estrenada el pasado mes de mayo en Movistar +, esta historia ya está sobre la mesa de los despachos de varias majors americanas interesadas en convertir a los detectives Blue & Malone en serie de animación y largometraje.

The production of the film ended in 2017, the same year that the studio was split between its two partners and, since then, Nathalie Martínez has worked under the Wise Blue Studios brand from the same building in the Paterna Technology Park where it was born. Animal Crackers. Since that first American experience, the production company has not stopped facing new challenges, for which they have managed to stand out as one of the most innovative independent studios in the sector worldwide. Not for nothing are they one of the first two studios in the world to produce a real-time animated series, the series for preschoolers Hero Dad, which can be seen in Spain on A Punt and in the rest of the world on the channels of the international distributor WildBrain, responsible for brands such as Teletubbies, Caillou o Snoopy, to give some examples.

As a result of this experience as a producer but, this time also as director of Hero Dad, Nathalie has been invited to give talks around the world, including the prestigious international technology event Siggraph, held in Los Angeles in 2019, or the Marché du Films de Cannes in 2020, an edition held online due to COVID-19.

"I cannot deny that I have always been an entrepreneur. I have research and innovation in my DNA and every idea that occurs to me, I need to prove it true or wrong to continue learning and improving myself. Hero Dad It is, in that sense, another step forward, perhaps not in budget, because it is another format, but technologically. And I can't even tell you some more things that we are preparing in the kitchens of Wise Blue Studios, running 365 days a year at a rate of 27 hours a day, hahaha, vices inherited from Animal Crackers. Soon, if all goes well, we will be able to uncover some, we are looking forward to it. But at this moment I think it's time for something else, it's time to rest even for one day, on July 24, and enjoy the premiere with my team, my family, my friends and my two children, who are the ones who have had to suffer the most from the absence of an itinerant and traveling mother, and passionate about a wonderful, but also very absorbing job. I'm hoping that everyone can enjoy this film, I haven't seen it since then, I want to come to the premiere with the eyes of a new viewer. We'll see,” says Martínez.

Trailer Animal Crackers

https://youtu.be/UXkFG1S2yCM