Michael Arias

His father, Ron Arias (born 1941) is a former senior writer and correspondent for People magazine and a highly regarded Chicano writer.

Michael Arias' mother, Dr. Joan Arias, was a professor of Spanish and IBM Software Sales Specialist.

When still a young boy, Arias often watched movies in the theater with his parents and borrowed 16mm prints from a local public library for screening at home; it was at this stage in his life that he developed his passion for cinema.

Arias graduated from the Webb School of California at the age of 16.

He then attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut, majoring in linguistics for two years, before dropping out to pursue a career as a musician.

Michael's early musical associates include Moby and Margaret Fiedler McGinnis.

Soon after quitting Wesleyan, Arias moved to Los Angeles, abandoned his musical ambitions and, through the efforts of a family friend, began working in the film industry.

Michael Arias' early filmmaking career is marked by stints in both the U.S. and Japan, working in VFX, CG production and software development, and as a producer of animated films.

Michael Arias (born 1968) is an American-born filmmaker active primarily in Japan.

Though Arias has worked variously as visual effects artist, animation software developer, and producer, he is best known for his directorial debut, the anime feature Tekkonkinkreet, which established him as the first non-Japanese director of a major anime film.

Michael Arias was born in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Arias began his film career in 1987 at nascent visual effects powerhouse Dream Quest Images (DQ), first as an unpaid intern and then as a full-time employee and IATSE member.

The bulk of his time at DQ was spent as a camera assistant on the motion control stages, working on such effects-heavy Hollywood films as The Abyss, Total Recall, and Fat Man and Little Boy.

At the time, the visual effects industry had only just begun adopting digital technologies, and analog techniques such as motion control and stop motion photography, miniatures, optical compositing, matte painting, and pyrotechnics still dominated.

Arias, by his own account, flourished in the hands-on environment of DQ ("a big tinkertoy factory run by car nuts and mad bikers").

After two years of working at Dream Quest, Arias returned to the East Coast with the intention of finishing his studies, this time at NYU's Music Technology program.

Soon after enrolling though, Arias was contacted by visual effects veteran and fellow Abyss alumnus Susan Sitnek, who invited Arias to join the crew of Universal Studios’ immersive attraction Back To The Future: The Ride (BTTFTR), helmed by visual effects legend Douglas Trumbull.

Once relocated to the Berkshires, where pre-production was underway, Arias was drafted by Trumbull to animate the attraction's flight-simulator-style ride vehicles.

Of his time working under Trumbull, Arias recalls, "Doug was – IS – such an inspiring figure. For me and the other younger crew, including John Gaeta, now VFX Supervisor on the Matrix films, Doug was so generous with his knowledge; such a very warm and receptive and articulate and creative guy."

Arias' association with Trumbull proved fortuitous, not only for the experience of working daily with Trumbull himself, but also because it resulted in what would be Arias' first trip to Japan, with Trumbull, with whom he toured the Osaka Expo and visited post-production monolith Imagica and video game giant Sega Enterprises.

That first visit, combined with Arias' friendship with key members of BTTFTR's largely Japanese modelmaking crew, set the stage for Arias' subsequent long-term stay in Japan.

In 1991 Arias accepted an offer to work as a motion-control camera operator in Imagica's Special Effects department, and moved to Tokyo.

Then, after less than a year at Imagica, he was invited by up-and-coming game producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi to join a newly formed computer graphics unit at Sega Enterprises Amusement Research and Development facility.

At Sega, Arias co-directed and animated the ridefilm Megalopolice: Tokyo City Battle (featured in SIGGRAPH 1993's Electronic Theater).

In 1993 Arias returned to the US and teamed up with renowned New York City title designers Randall Balsmeyer & Mimi Everett, with whom he co-founded CG design boutique Syzygy Digital Cinema, creators of digital sequences for David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy, Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter, and Spike Lee’s Crooklyn and Clockers.

Their title sequence for M. Butterfly was honored by inclusion in the SIGGRAPH 1994 Screening Room and Montreal's Cinéma Du Futur festival of the same year.

Exhausted by the demands of production and hoping to gain further experience developing computer graphics software, Arias accepted an offer from 3D-animation software innovator Softimage to join their newly formed Special Projects group, a "S.W.A.T."

team of artists and engineers established to assist key high-end customers on-site.

Encouraged by colleagues, Arias quickly immersed himself in the Mental Ray rendering API and thereafter began experimenting with techniques for simulating traditional animation imagery using computer graphics tools.

This research led to Arias' developing and eventually patenting Softimage's Toon Shaders, rendering software for facilitating integration of computer graphics imagery with cel animation.

Newly minted Toon Shaders in hand, Arias worked closely with the staff of DreamWorks Animation and Studio Ghibli to add a distinct visual flavor to the traditional/digital hybrid animation of films Prince Of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) and Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し).

In 1995, after establishing himself definitively in Tokyo, Arias was introduced by a friend to Taiyō Matsumoto's manga Tekkonkinkreet (鉄コン筋クリート), a work that profoundly affected him.

Tekkonkinkreet (Tekkon) is a metaphysical coming-of-age story concerning two orphans, Black (クロ) and White (シロ) and their struggle to survive in a pan-Asian metropolis, Treasure Town (宝町), beset by evil.

Of first discovering Tekkon, Arias recalls that a friend loaned him Tekkon to read, "And that was it. Hooked. ...I cried many times reading it, also a new experience for me to be moved to tears by a manga."''

In November 1997, a conversation with animation auteur Kōji Morimoto, who had shown interest in Arias' software projects, led to Arias' introduction to manga artist Taiyō Matsumoto.

From there, what had begun as a simple software demo for Morimoto rapidly escalated to a full-fledged all-CG feature-film project, helmed by Morimoto, with computer graphics efforts directed by Arias himself.

Though the completed 4-minute Tekkonkinkreet Pilot Film (「鉄コン筋クリート」パイロット版) went on to take an Outstanding Performance award for Non-Interactive Digital Art at the Japan Media Arts Festival and be featured in the SIGGRAPH 2000 Animation Theater', the project was abandoned shortly thereafter for lack of funding and director Morimoto's flagging interest in Tekkonkinkreet.

Then, in 2000, while still under contract to Softimage, Michael accepted an invitation from Joel Silver and Lilly and Lana Wachowski (the Wachowskis) to produce Warner Bros’ Matrix-inspired animation anthology The Animatrix, a project that consumed him for over three years.

On being pegged to produce The Animatrix, despite his lack of experience producing, Arias recounts, "I really had to draw on a great deal of experience that had sat unused in the background while I’d been pursuing software development. Everything I’d learned until this point: a brief career in recording studios, composing music and doing sound effects for short films in college, having my own company, working in special effects. It was a great chance to exercise some dormant (or damaged) brain cells."

Arias worked closely with the Wachowskis to refine the project's unique specifications: though initially conceived of as a television series, The Animatrix evolved into a collection of nine non-episodic animated shorts, each six to ten minutes long.