Jose Velasquez on Life, Lessons & Legacy

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Jose Velasquez. Check out our conversation below.

Hi Jose, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
The biggest thing outside of work that is providing me joy is a side venture that got cooked up with a group of my best friends. We founded an art studio that focuses on collectibles and short-form CG animation. We were inspired by Saturday morning cartoons where you could watch these awesome characters and then go and have fun with all these great toys afterwards. So we began Chandler Studios, named after Chandler Blvd where we all spent a crazy year living in the same apartment complex during the pandemic. We’ve started a Youtube channel where we produce animated CG shorts and we are currently in the process of working with our first university to produce and manufacture a collectible figurine.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Jose Luis Velasquez, but all my friends call me Weecho. I’m currently a creative supervisor at Walt Disney Animation Studios where I’ve worked for the past 13 years. After so long in the industry, a group of my closest friends and I wanted to try and start our own venture. We launched Chandler Studios last October and introduced our first original character Bonito the Cat. We’ve since produced 2 shorts and begun an interview series on YouTube where we go on hikes and talk to different CG artists about their journeys into the industry. Since the beginning, we’ve always wanted to partner with our alma mater, Texas A&M University. And we’ve been working this year on a licensing deal to bring one of their classic mascots, “Ol’ Sarge” to life in the form of a collectible sculpture. We’re really hoping to use this business venture as a way to learn about the manufacturing and logistics process and to try and work with U.S. based manufacturers to help support the development of skills that are quickly disappearing from the United States. We’ve also been able to start a scholarship program to try to inspire current students. We were able to find success thanks to all the help and guidance we received while we were in school so we want to try and give that back in any way that we can. We realize that it might be tough to be a student right now with all that’s going on in the world so we want to prove to these students that if a bunch of knuckleheads like us can do it then so can they!

Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
I remember waking up super early on Saturdays and watching blocks of cartoons on TV. I remember GI Joe and Streetsharks and Ninja Turtles. These characters were so inspiring and larger than life. I remember taking my plastic tubs full of Legos and spilling them on the floor and building entire worlds in my head that would occupy me for hours and hours. Anything could happen in those worlds. I didn’t realize it then, but the ability to cultivate these alternate universes was my introduction into being an artist. I was making something out of nothing and that ability is extremely powerful.

When did you last change your mind about something important?
With starting Chandler Studios my partners and I are constantly having to change our minds in order to adapt to new situations. One of our biggest goals with starting a business centered around manufacturing is that we want to try and provide the opportunity for local businesses to grow their manufacturing capabilities and skillsets. We’ve found that by supporting smaller, local businesses, we’re also helping facilitate the passing of trade skills that sometimes take lifetimes to cultivate. These are skills that might live in the heads of one or two individuals and once those people retire, that knowledge is just gone. This commitment has forced us to alter a lot of our original ideas. Some things that are more easily feasible by larger companies that are able to work overseas require more problem solving when staying local. But, we really believe that by sending these contracts to these local businesses, we are giving them added time to pass these skills down to the next generation of apprentices. And we feel that if we have the ability to help in this way, then we’re happy to change our minds because we feel it’s worth it.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
I think that one of the big things that I’m always seeing people do, and I’m guilty of this too, is accidentally turning something you love into work. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have put so much pressure on my personal art. I would have left that as a separate endeavor where I could create freely, without the weight of trying to achieve ‘success.’ It takes a significant amount of capital to start a small business and then a significant amount of time to make that business successful. Don’t get me wrong, I learned so many lessons by trying to treat my art as a business, and I’m really grateful for those lessons. In fact, the culmination of those experiences has helped me a lot in starting Chandler Studios. But most of those lessons came as accidents and I’m pretty sure I would have encountered them with or without the pressure to ‘get it right.’

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
I don’t know if I’m doing what I was born to do, but I’m definitely not doing what I was told to do! I think a lot of the time when you tell people that you’re going to grow up to be an artist you’re met with concern and polite suggestions to pick a more standard career path that will be more stable and lucrative. Maybe they weren’t wrong, but I’ve been really fortunate to be fairly deep into a respected artistic career and that’s afforded me the stability to start a new artistic business. I would not have been able to do this had I done what I was told to do.

I have so many days when I look up and marvel at what I get to do for a living. I think of myself as a kid and about how excited I would be if I knew what I’d be doing 20 or 30 years in the future. As long as that kid version of me is still excited, then I think I’m headed in the right direction.

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