Juanjo Guarnido
Juanjo Guarnido was born in Granada, Spain, in 1967. He spent his childhood drawing, in the town of Salobreña, before moving north to Granada with his family. There, he studied Fine Arts, joined the local fanzines and had some Marvel character illustrations published by Comics Forum. He turned next to animation, moving to Madrid, to work for the Lápiz Azul animation studio.
On his first day at Lápiz Azul, Guarnido met Juan Díaz Canales, who would become his friend and the writer of Blacksad. In 1993, Guarnido moved to Paris to join the Walt Disney Studios in Montreuil, where he moved from layout work (on The Goofy Movie, Mickey’s Runaway Brain, and Hunchback of Notre Dame) to character animation (Hades in Hercules; Tarzan and Sabor in Tarzan; and Helga in Atlantis). Guarnido also contributed to The Jungle Book 2 and Lorenzo the Cat before the French Disney office closed down, ten years after he was first hired.
A longtime fan both of the European bande dessinée market and of American comics, Guarnido patiently began the production of his first graphic album while still at Disney, working long-distance with Díaz Canales toward the 2000 publication of Blacksad: Somewhere within the Shadows. The overwhelming success of the title has allowed Guarnido to take on other projects – like Sorcelleries with writer Teresa Valero – or directing and animating the music video Freak of the Week for the Swedish band Freak Kitchen.
Five issues of Blacksad were released between 2000 and 2013. Guarnido spent then three years and a half working on the one-issue, ambitious 145 pages fully watercolour graphic novel Les Indes Fourbes, with script by Alain Ayroles, which hit Europe in autumn 2019 with huge success, and has recently completed and published the two-issue Blacksad adventure They All Fall Down.
Photo of Juanjo by Rita Scaglia
JUANJO GUARNIDO ONLINE
