Salinas-born filmmaker Mike Rianda receives his first Oscar nomination for an animated film based on his family.

Salinas locals are thrilled to hear that one of their own, Palma High School graduate, cartoonist, director and writer Mike Rianda, might win an Oscar for best animated film next month. The Mitchells vs. The Machines, nominated on Feb. 8, is based on his Salinas childhood. It's available now on Netflix.

“The story is based on my family,” Rianda says. “My family is kind of crazy. But then you start talking to people and they tell you: ‘That sounds like my family.’ So every family is crazy. I show their flaws, but in a loving, endearing way.”

The movie tells a story of a quirky, dysfunctional family's road trip being upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity’s unlikeliest last hope.

“The nature-loving dad is basically my dad,” Rianda says, recalling his childhood. When he was young, his dad would bring a bag of acorns, trying to convince their mom to cook it for dinner. “If she said they were poisonous, he would say that we can boil out the poison.” 

The main character in the movie is Katie Mitchell, a young filmmaker on her way to a film school in California. (An earlier version was set in Salinas. The family's location was moved to Michigan because the plot required a cross-country trip.)

“She is a mix of me, an artsy weirdo, and my sister, who is very funny,” Rianda says. He himself studied at the California Institute of the Arts, and now lives in Los Angeles. He was in Salinas to watch the nominations with his family. 

“Salinas is a bizarre hub for cartoonists,” he says, giving Van Partible as an example. (Partible is a Filipino-born animator best known for creating the animated television series Johnny Bravo, who grew up in Salinas.)

In 2015, after completing his tenure on the Disney Channel animated series Gravity Falls, Rianda was approached by Sony Pictures Animation asking if he was willing to pitch any feature film ideas to them, to which he agreed.

“It was a very intense process,” Rianda says. “These days people make movies about X-men and this story was the farthest opposite from X-Men.”

But it worked out and Rianda was able to attract to his passion project actors such as comedian Abbi Jacobson (voice over for Katie) and Maya Rudolph (Katie’s mom, Linda). Rianda himself provided his voice to Aaron Mitchell, Katie's dinosaur-loving younger brother.

Asked for his future plans, Riands says: “I want to keep doing this, telling stories. I do have a new movie idea. And this time it will be based in Salinas.”

The Oscars take place in Hollywood on March 27. Rianda is up against the Disney hit Encanto, along with the films Flee, Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon.