San Diego Art School Grads Tell Comic-Con How Their Animation Dreams Came True

Thousands of fans attend Comic-Con each year, some with dreams of becoming pop culture stars themselves. This year, some local boys who made good showed that those dreams can come true.

Four friends from San Diego who met in art school talked about their successful journeys at a panel discussion titled “From San Diego Kids to Hollywood Animators.”

For Jeff Ranjo, who was raised in the South Bay, his dream started to take shape at Montgomery High School. He had a friend who introduced him to comics and went to one of the early Comic-Cons.

“I didn’t have any money to buy anything,” he said. “I was just amazed at what was happening down here.”

He met more comics-loving friends at City College and started a small comics company in Pacific Beach, but it didn’t succeed. However, he continued working on his craft and now is employed by Netflix.

Bobby Rubio went to Morse High School.  He at first wanted to be an editorial cartoonist and won a newspaper art contest, but eventually shifted to animation. A huge San Diego Padres fan, he has done drawings of players and did a Star Wars themed Padres sketch that was hung up in a local taco shop.

Rubio has attended Comic-Con and even had a booth at the event for 15 years.

“I loved it,” he said. “It was great to always come back to Comic-Con and see my family and friends.”

Rubio directed the Pixar short “Float” and one of his career highlights was working on a Marvel project and meeting Stan Lee.

“Definitely meeting Stan is a bucket list (item),” he said.

Julius Aguimatang went to Mount Miguel High School and Mira Costa College. He interned at Disney and worked on the film “Mulan” and has heard from fans who said the film impacted them.

“It’s nice to be a part of that,” he said.

Joe Moshier grew up in Lemon Grove and later moved to Mission Hills, graduating from Point Loma High School. He has worked with legendary animator Chuck Jones and on “Kubo and the Two Strings” and the recently released “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

Moshier wanted to be a professional baseball player but then fell in love with animation. He’s now a lead character designer for Sony Animation and encouraged students to be passionate about their art.

“Love it more than anything,” he said.