Pres Romanillos

In 1989, Romanillos was hired by Disney Animation, who were at the time actively recruiting animators.[1] He began as an animation trainee, working on many Disney films, including The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Mulan (1998), and The Princess and the Frog (2009).[3] Early on he impressed many of his colleagues. Supervising animator Ruben A. Aquino met him while working on The Little Mermaid, and said of him: "from the very beginning, I was impressed by his beautiful draftsmanship, but even more by his incredible passion for animation."[2]

On Pocahontas he was promoted to animator, working under lead animator Glen Keane, who described him as "a man who loved to draw. When he came to the edge of his paper, his pencil didn't stop; he continued to draw characters onto the wood of his animation desk."[2] Director Eric Goldberg said of his work: "It was so beautiful, Mike [Gabriel] and I glanced at each other briefly and said, 'Yep, you're an animator'."[2]

Eventually he was given a lead role on Disney's Mulan, working at the new studio in Florida, and creating the character of Shan-Yu, the leader of the Hun army. Mulan co-director Barry Cook described Shan-Yu as "a straight villain who needed to feel like a real threat to our heroine. Pres pulled that off in an amazing way."[2]

In a 1998 interview Romanillos described the character he had created:

"The challenge in animating him was to convey his weight and gravity: He's like a force of impending doom. Unconsciously, I would scowl all day while I was drawing him. When I worked on Pocahontas, I would go home feeling sexy; with Shan-Yu, my wife was always asking, 'Why are you so angry?'"[2]

He was an early hire at DreamWorks when Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney animation to start up his own studio, and worked on many DreamWorks pictures including The Road to El Dorado (2000), and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003). On Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) he was given a lead role, supervising the animation of Native American Little Creek. Later, he successfully made the transition to computer animation, working on Shrek 2 (2004) and Madagascar (2005).

In 2006, he began to draw a regular blog titled "Life as a Pickle," based on the many pets he and his wife Jeannine had rescued and looked after at their home, most notably the eponymous Pickle, a rat terrier.[4]