Carlos Huante, Monstruo

Carlos Huante was born in East L.A. in 1965 to Carlos, Sr. and Amada Huante, the third of four children. From the very get out of the womb, the arts were in him. Both his parents were from creative families, one conservative and predominantly musical, the other eccentric and intuitively creative in everything from drawing to music to costume-making. With his father keeping Carlos' interests in the sciences and the real world, his mother enjoyed the fantastic, which included monster movies.

Carlos' first grade class was given a course in Mexican mask-making. This first experience with clay was all it took for Carlos to realize how much he liked it, and how much other people enjoyed him doing it. They photographed him and his first sculpt for the local East Los Angeles paper.

His interest in music grew side-by-side with his interest in art. He received awards for music and art during his grade-school years, so his focus on a career as an artist (illustrator) did not become completely clear till he was faced with having to decide whether to go to a 5-year tech private high school or to a public high school where he could study what he pleased. He decided to attend the tech private school to study architecture, but as the school would have the final say as to which profession would best suit him, they decided to make Carlos a printer. After only one year he decided that this school was not for him.

His sophomore year Carlos enrolled at Schurr High School in Montebello, California, where he involoved himself with music. It wasn't until his junior year, when he saw the school's annual art show and noticed how serious some of the art students were about their art, that he decided to finally enter the school's art program. He received trophies and honorable mentions during his two years in the program, and some of his drawings were purchased by the school. He graduated from high school in 1983.

Carlos attended East Los Angeles College for a year. While taking night classes in life drawing at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, he met Mike Spooner, a successful illustrator and great draftsman, who worked at Filmation, an animation company. It was there, thanks to Mike Spooner, that Carlos started his career. Like most young artists, he started off as a runner...running lots of errands. A year later he was working as an artist in the Layout department, where he learned a lot about politics and a little about layout. More importantly he discovered there was a department devoted exclusively to designing characters, called the Models department, and that every animation company has one.

He left Filmation and started work as an assistant layout artist at the sister company to Hanna-Barbera, Ruby and Spears. There he worked under Cosmo Anzolotti and learned all about layout for animation. But Carlos still hadn't found what he was looking for. The next season Carlos landed a job as a character designer on the Ghostbusters animated series, a dream job. Carlos considers this the true beginning of his career.

After two years in the animation industry, Carlos realized that being an artist required more than just good drawing skills. The politics of the job were almost more than he could handle and after the Ghostbusters job ended he stopped pursuing art jobs and nearly quit the industry. Carlos held odd jobs off and on, more off than on, but never stopped drawing. Two years into what would become a three-year hiatus, Carlos met the love of his life, Monica Martinez. Carlos and Monica were wed a year later on June 2, 1989 and have been happily married ever since. Also in that time, Carlos' faith in Christ matured and he decided to commit his life, and has been a believer ever since. In the month of March of 1989, Carlos, inspired by the fact that he was about to be married, decided to give the animation industry another try, and ended right back on the Ghostbusters animated series. From that time forward he has worked incessantly, all over the animation and film industry. He's worked for Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Guillermo Del Torro and the very significant Chiodo Bros. who, through his new friend at the time (in 1992) Miles Tevez, gave Carlos his first live-action job.

Carlos' professional career in animation lasted for 8 years before he decided to jump with both legs into the film industry. Today Carlos works for Lucas Digital and is part of the creature development team.