Meet Maximilian Lopez

We recently connected with Maximilian Lopez and have shared our conversation below.

Maximilian, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
A lot of people have asked me where I got the chutzpah to start a stop motion animation studio. They say “wow, that must have taken a lot of balls” or “You must have really believed in yourself!” Well, I’m here to tell you that that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In some ways I was driven by a lack of self-esteem more than by any confidence I had. I mean, when you see yourself as just a worm in the dirt, what do you have to lose? The process of starting a company drove my self-esteem and confidence down to its lowest point. It has also been instrumental in building it up stronger than ever. While my confidence was borne of deliberate effort, self-esteem was in many ways given to me.

I’d say I started things off with particularly low self-esteem. I spent most of my life feeling like an outsider. I was lucky enough to find a wonderful, warm community in the stop motion industry. For the first time my fascination with scrap metal, old clocks and a desire to take things apart didn’t put me at odds with others, but instead made me part of the family! It took a long time for me to take the esteem of others at face value and believe it, but as my feelings of otherness started to go away, I found strength in those characteristics that used to set me apart. I think in the end my self-esteem came from the support of others, and learning to accept the kindness and warmth of the community I had been accepted into.

If that sounds warm and fuzzy, developing confidence was the opposite. My experience is that confidence is the painful process of falling down, and getting back up. On our first big project for Nickelodeon I completely missed the deadline. I remember that cold chill realizing that I had failed to deliver. I had failed. But what was I going to do? I kept going. I worked 48 hours straight, briefly sleeping in miserable intervals while things rendered, and questioning if finishing was even feasible. I carried that feeling of dread all the way to final delivery. In the end, the video was a hit. Not only had I survived the ordeal, but I had faced down my disbelief in my own ability and come out victorious. I learned that I was capable of much more than I realized.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
My company Apartment D is a stop motion animation studio, but that really just scratches the surface. What we love more than anything is high energy, action adventure anime. From a design standpoint, we’ve always been drawn to anime’s graphic 2D quality. The animation always looks as if it was pulled right off of the pages of a Manga. Silhouette and line quality are used to add energy and personality to characters, and we always strive to adapt that graphic 2D style into our stop motion. I believe that the gap between the 2D drawing and the dimensional puppet is where the most creativity lies, and we thrive on exploiting that gap to find brilliant design. Building on this, the incredible impact and emotion that can be delivered in anime with such an economical use of frames has always been dazzling to us. Anime series have always had to be more strategic than American animation when it comes to how they spend their frames. The balance between limited animation and Sakuga (the good stuff) is the make or break of any anime studio, and the masters learn to pack the most punch into the fewest frames possible. Learning to deliver that level of impact and energy has been our guiding star. The lessons we’ve learned from this artform have pushed us to always put bold characters, bright colors, and explosive action at the center of our work, while staying on budget. I like to think that even when we are doing a project that isn’t necessarily totally on brand, we still find ways to put our thumbprint on it (both literally and figuratively).

I have always made it my mission to nurture that energy that beautiful animation can impart. I work tirelessly to get all of the bullshit of production, all of the obstacles to art out of the way so that our artists have a direct path to doing the best work they can. More than that, I’ve worked to build an inspiring atmosphere with passionate creators and teachers, where the energy isn’t just self sustaining, but creates a feedback loop that grows in volume. TO me, there is no better feeling than seeing your work in its roughest stage and still going “Oh yeah, that’s sick!”

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Nobody wants to hear this but learning a thing or two about business pays dividends in the arts. Whether you’re a freelancer, a full time animator, or starting a company, you are always fundamentally a business. Your art is your product and you must sell! Reading about marketing gave Apartment D an edge in that I knew how to put a recognizable brand together, and communicate it to others. More than that, it helped me identify our strengths and weaknesses, which is essential as an artist. In addition to that, understanding how to manage finances, or even just manage time, was instrumental to being able to not just work, but grow as a company and create something enduring.

I also think it’s important to have purpose. You’ve got to have something to aim at with your energy and efforts, or you’ll sputter out. I feel like a lifespan is like a tank of rocket fuel: you can throw fins on that bad boy and launch it in a direction, or you can uncork it and let it zip all over haphazardly (if you’ve ever YouTubed “Fireworks gone wrong” you’ll know what I mean). Even if it’s vague or uncertain, a light in the distance to aim at will always get you further than stumbling in the dark. My whole career has been leaping head first into things I wasn’t certain I even wanted, sometimes I got there and realized I was in the wrong place, but I was always better off for having moved in a direction.

Ok, that was a knowledge, a quality… I think a valuable skill is just knowing how to talk to people, and more importantly how to listen to people, face to face as a person. Yes, things are going more remote and video calls are the norm, but there’s nothing like knowing how to navigate a conversation to change your life. Being able to be genuinely interested in what someone has to say, and actually listening has probably hands down been the most valuable skill I have. Listening is always the first step to understanding, and engaging with someone is more than just talking. Whether it’s selling yourself as an artist, learning the needs of a client, or just relating to a fellow human with no ulterior motive, you always come out better for having engaged with another person.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Don’t judge me, but The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli changed my life. It has such a bad rap (he didn’t even say “the ends justify the means”). In actuality The Prince is about how to operate in a world where people are self interested. It talks about keeping yourself secure, while building valuable relationships with those around you. Sound useful now? My favorite quote from Machiavelli is about fortress building. He says: “He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the designer and danger to the building.” I’ve always taken this to justify moving slowly, deliberately, and making sure each lesson is learned before moving onto the next. It’s given me comfort to know that, while Apartment D has been a slow growth, each step has helped secure our foundation for the fortress that will one day sit atop it. When we finally make our show, it will be because we worked hard and deliberately to build a foundation that could support it.

Contact Info:

Suggest a Story: BoldJourney is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Portraits of Resilience

Sometimes just seeing resilience can change out mindset and unlock our own resilience. That’s our

Perspectives on Staying Creative

We’re beyond fortunate to have built a community of some of the most creative artists,

Kicking Imposter Syndrome to the Curb

This is the year to kick the pesky imposter syndrome to the curb and move