The Short Version of the Story so far:

Armed with a degree in Construction Management (official title: Bachelor of Building in Construction Management with 2nd Class Honours) from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Miguel left his job as the Western Australian Estimator for Cordell Building Information Services to embark on a career in cartooning.

With Gary Larson as his biggest influence and source on endless inspiration, Miguel managed to get some black and white single panel cartoons published in some trade magazines. After being offered two steady jobs in the same week, one by a Sydney based animation company as an inbetweener, and the other as a member of a small management team for a medium-sized steel fabrication company (Silo Constructions), Miguel dug deep and decided to go with the company in the construction industry.

Having learnt a lot about steel and the way contractors and subcontractors work in the Sydney construction scene, Miguel enjoyed working on contracts managing the fabrication and installation of many steel structures such as major roadsign support structures, fire escape stairs, handrailing, awnings and so on. Interesting contracts included jobs for the State Rail Authority, the Roads and Traffic Authority as well as for major Sydney building contractors working on projects such as the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

In 2001, Miguel decided that his vocation called for a major change in direction. Drawing was drawing him to a career that would include............... drawing. His creative side was yearning. After leaving the construction industry, Miguel studied multimedia, his major group assignment was authored with Macromedia's Authorware 5.2. The project, titled Q's Bizarro Quiz Show was a quirky computer trivia game delivered via a single CD. The other group members were Jon Blair and Adrien Kok. The CD included interactive gameplay where the user could choose to be one of three different characters to compete with two other computer controlled characters in a TV gameshow environment that could be described as a satirical mix between Sale of the Century and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Users must buzz in before their competing computer characters do, and answer a multiple choice question correctly in order to score points. The gameshow also included commercial breaks where four different anti-ads were created to play at random. The major ad was for the Abdominizer, a make-believe electronic device that advertised that it would turn your flabby abs into abs of steel while in reality, was seriously damaging the user and those around him. The project was a lot of fun. Armed with a Diploma in Multimedia Design from QANTM, Miguel started creating websites for people from home.

One major brand of software studied during the multimedia course included Discreet's 3ds max. Animation never looked so easy. So, after discovering a course held by the Computer Graphics College (CGC) in Sydney, Miguel learnt both traditional and computer generated animation. The software taught on the 3d side of things was 3ds max 5. Miguel has just completed his first Demo Reel and it is available here on this web site.

From March 2005 to February 2009, he worked for Catholic Communications, doing websites for Catholic Parishes in the Archdiocese of Sydney as well as Catholic organisations from all over Australia. The most interesting event he was involved in was World Youth Day 2008 where he worked in the media department. He enjoys an obsession with the sport of basketball where until sustaining a recent back injury, for a couple of nights each week, he either was playing or refereeing at his local basketball association (The Hornsby Spiders). He is a 1A Association Level (1B NSW) basketball referee having refereed his first women's ABA game in 2005.

In February 2009, Miguel left Catholic Communications to study the Foundation course as well as 3D Animation at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). In June 2009, Miguel completed the Graduate Diploma in 3D Animation and in December 2009, graduated from the Foundation Diploma course. The software used in the 3D Animation course was Autodesk Maya 2009. Along with fellow Foundation Diploma classmate Nathaniel Oliveri, Miguel primarily worked on a short comedy called Gordon's Star for the final project of the Foundation Diploma course. Miguel also worked on Dead Boring, directed by Dave Edwardz, an AFTRS Graduate Diploma short film which was a live action comedy filmed with a stereo camera. He was involved with the previsualisation and did some rotoscoping on the project. He also did 3D modeling on an animated short called Remembering (Foundation Diploma film by Winni Kim), sound recording for saepod (Foundation Diploma project by Sophie Weldon) as well as 3D special effects for the horror film Moving Day (Foundation Diploma short film by Tsubasa Masano). Miguel is currently working on developing an original story for an animated feature or television series. Miguel will be studying Graduate Certificate in Animation Directing at AFTRS in the first semester of 2010. Miguel is also now very tired of referring to himself in the third-person narrative and will now stop doing so.