Meet Matt Acuña | Animation Writer and Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Acuña and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
When I was younger, I explored every creative avenue I could get my hands on. I tried art (wasn’t my strong suit and still isn’t) and then comics (falls in the art category, so still wasn’t great) and writing. I found that no matter what I was doing, it was the story that really mattered to me above everything else. This came to a head when I was in high school and began programming my own little video games. I absolutely hated the actual coding and design process, but writing the script made me feel alive. I decided to pursue it and went to school for screenwriting, eventually realizing that writing specifically for animation is where I wanted to be. I took that step forward and never looked back, and I’m so happy I did that.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Right now, what I’m most excited about is my upcoming graphic novel ‘The Garden Age’. To describe it briefly, it’s Lord of the Rings with bugs. A group of insects go on a life-changing journey to stop a mechanical beast from destroying their land; that beast being a lawnmower. I’ve had this idea for years, but never had the means to do anything with it. But I met some amazing friends and artists out here in LA (Ali Woodruff, Kira Brown, William Austin and Hailey Austin) and together we put together a proof of concept animatic for an episode of the series. From there, we went on to pitch to a few studios, but ultimately nothing came of it… until our now-wonderful agent, Jennifer Azantian, found us on Twitter and offered us representation for a graphic novel. It’s not a path I thought we’d go down with this project, but I’m so happy it’s the one we ended up on. It’s been a long, tough journey for all of us, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I didn’t believe in my story and my team. It’s something very near and dear to me, and I hope it helps people going through difficult times of self-doubt.

Additionally, I’m currently working as a Script Coordinator at Wild Canary Animation on an unannounced series, and I’m really excited to be able to share what we’ve been working on with the world. Being able to finally be able to contribute creatively to an animated series is a dream come true, and I’m pumped to hone my skills and really refine my writing abilities under my story editors and staff writers. It’s been a long journey, having come up from a production background where I worked as a Production Coordinator on ‘Bob’s Burgers’ at Bento Box Entertainment (which I was immensely grateful for!), but I’m so glad to finally be in the position I’ve worked towards, and am very excited for what the future holds.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Oh wow, that’s a tough question. There’s just so much to do and see in LA! I’m over in Burbank, so first things first, we’re going to Porto’s over on Magnolia Blvd to get a Cubano and a Potato ball. Other favorite food spots in Burbank and Glendale are Seasonal Thai, Great White Hut, Ike’s Love and Sandwiches, Another Broken Egg Café and Zankou Chicken. Some really fun places to explore are Mystic Museum, Blast from the Past, Halloween Town and Game Realms.

It’s so cool to be able to say I’m right in animation central, so we’d of course be going around and seeing Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and the Walt Disney Studios. Burbank has so many amazing things to do, see and eat, so hopefully we can squeeze them all in there.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to give a shoutout to my friend, David Giganti, who also strives to work in animation. Since we were children, we’ve always created story ideas together, and he really helped push me to continue creating from a very young age. I remember distinctly one day when I was like, seven, and I was so sad because I had convinced myself that nobody would every want to play this video game I created. Granted, it was just a bunch of sketches in a notebook, but it was all I could ever talk about. He convinced me that people would absolutely care about my ideas, and I should never give up. For an eight year old, it was an incredibly motivating speech. I’ve never forgotten about that, and it’s definitely taken me far! David has made his own amazing strides and even directed and wrote an animated short called ‘The Walk’, so I definitely recommend looking into that. It’s amazing.

Website: https://www.mattacuna.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-acu%C3%B1a-35136532/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Acuna_Mattata

Image Credits
The Garden Age Artwork by Ali Woodruff and Hailey Austin Song of the Last Season Artwork by Bao Luu