Matsuda was born in
São Paulo. He worked in advertising at first in Brazil. He later moved to
Venice Beach in the greater Los Angeles region, where he lived starting from around 2008. He studied animation at
CalArts. He admires the work of famous animators
Ward Kimball and
Chuck Jones, as well as the comedy of
Monty Python, and the filmmakers
Jacques Tati and
Wes Anderson. While he did some initial work at
20th Century Fox and
Pixar, he eventually worked for
Disney, including
Wreck-It Ralph (2012). Matsuda's animation work for
Wreck-it Ralph received a nomination for an
Annie Award for storyboarding in an animated feature. He won an internal competition at Disney for who would get to direct the
short film that would appear before
Moana. The result was the short
Inner Workings (2016), which he directed and wrote the script for. This made him the first Brazilian to direct a film for Disney. In 2018, Matsuda and
DreamWorks Animation arranged a deal for Matsuda to produce two films for them, one called
Sputnik and the other
Yokai Samba. ==Filmography==