Joaquim Dos Santos

Joaquim dos Santos (birthname: Joaquim Aranha dos Santos) is one of the few Portuguese-born animators who has climbed the ladder of the Hollywood animation industry to ascend from character designer to feature film director.

He worked for seventeen years, starting in 2004, largely inside the DC Universe of animated work in television and video, as a director, producer, storyboard artist, and character designer. The characters he has worked on in various media include those in James Cameron’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2006), Ironman, Superman, the characters of Justice League, Spider-Man, G.I. Joe, The Spectre, Batman, Jonah Hex, Green Arrow, Black Adam, Green Lantern, Korra, the characters of Tron, Voltron, and the characters of Invincible.

Such a range of experience effectively set up dos Santos to take over as co-director (with Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson) of the highly acclaimed animated feature and second in the series, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), featuring the voices of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, and Oscar Isaac. Dos Santos followed this major hit for Sony/Marvel with the third film in the series, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (2024).