Jibaro, a before and an after for
Digital Art and Animation

This is Netflix’s official making of Jibaro, the best chapter of Love, Death + Robots so far, created by the Spanish Oscar’s winner, Alberto Mielgo.

I am so amazed by this 15 minutes short film, it is just pure video art made in CGI. A conceptualized toxic love story, mixed with obvious components of the art of performance, combined with an exquisite direction involving 3D animation, lighting, fluids, sound environment, historic research, choreography, unthinkable creativity and a crazy attention to detail.

It is just pleasing for the eyes, visually impeccable, but also holds a profound mark of the personal background of the director, a fact that I deeply respect. 

Alberto Mielgo is the forgotten concept of what a true artist is. Someone who takes risks to make his most personal stories to the extreme, that does not follow regular post-production pipelines out there, and creates his animatics made of his own paintings, footage, and specific recorded references. He is an individual artist that needs a crew to achieve his art piece, but still, the final product is an absolutely personal one. Something highly refreshing in the production industry nowadays. 

Magic happens when you realize that this production, which sets new boundaries in keyframe animation technique, would not be possible without this profound seeking of the traditional procedures of a painting, sculpture or an old movie. And yet, he loves the possibilities of digital art above all, comparing his way of making art to coding. 

In a world recently invaded by production chains of NFTs (something that he also creates, individually, of course), and an animation and film industry that mainly promotes light products for big audiences and profit, to have Alberto Mielgo in its world is just good news, he definitely elevates and validates digital art to a new level. 

Production specs

  • Production Company: Pinkman.tv (Alberto Mielgo’s company)
  • 72 people in production crew
  • 20 of them animators
  • 2 years for Alberto Mielgo’s preparation
  • 1 month of pre-production
  • 7 months of production