2022 VES Honors Celebration

Welcome

Welcome to the 2022 VES Honors Celebration!

As part of our year-long celebration of the Society’s 25th Anniversary, we are excited to honor an extraordinary group of visual e ects artists, technicians and professionals who have had a profound impact on the Society and the global visual e ects industry.

Our VES Honors Celebration is a proud tradition in which we give tribute to exemplary storytellers, artists and creators who have helped shape our shared legacy, advance our craft and lift up the visual e ects industry as the center point of worldwide lmed entertainment. Each of our honorees has inspired future generations of VFX practitioners with technical skill, creative vision and relentless pursuit of innovation.

On behalf of the VES Board of Directors and our members across the globe, please join us in recognizing our 2022 class of outstanding VES honorees.

Thank you for joining this festive occasion as we recognize our dynamic, talented global community and mark this momentous time in our legacy.

Lisa Cooke Chair

VES Founders Award

Awarded to any individual member of the VES who has Pam Hogarth

During her more than 35 years in visual e ects and high-end computer graphics, Hogarth ful lled many roles, from marketing to industry relations. The majority of her career was dedicated to incubating and growing educational programs geared towards training people for careers in entertainment production. Hogarth also consulted for organizations and schools, coached entertainment professionals on career management and taught.

Before co-founding Eido, a training company that facilitated training for IATSE creative guilds, which was successfully sold in 2017, Hogarth was the publicist for VFX house LOOK E ects. As Industry Liaison she helped build Gnomon School of Visual E ects into the premiere school for careers in digital production. She ran Digital Media Institute (DMI) in Hollywood and helped grow the digital program at The American Film Institute (AFI). Teaching experience includes Art Directors Guild, Otis College of Art and Design, cgsociety.org, Gnomon, DMI and AFI.

Hogarth has been extremely active in the Visual E ects Society, including serving eight terms on the Board of Directors, twice elected as the rst female Vice Chair and former Chair of the Education Committee. She also served as Secretary of the Los Angeles Section of VES. Now retired, she is Board President for the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard, CA and is Secretary of the Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild.

DUC TE

T IM E MEMBE RS HI PS

UNDE RS AWARD REC IPI ENT

H ONORA R Y ME MBE RSHIP

VES FEL LOWS

2022 VES Fellows

A VES Fellow is a member who has maintained an outstanding reputation and who has made exceptional achievements and sustained contributions careers and promoting community worldwide for a period of not less than ten years within the last twenty years.

Tony Clark , VES

An Emmy Award-winning cinematographer, Tony Clark serves as the Co-Founder and Managing Director at Rising Sun Pictures. O the back of Terminator and Jurassic Park, Tony’s motivation in co-founding Rising Sun Pictures was to create a visual e ects company which combined his twin passions of art and technology, that could deliver VFX from anywhere in the world; in this instance, his hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. RSP’s experiences in working remotely from global production centres led to numerous innovations, including cineSpace, a lm colour management solution and cineSync, which enabled the secure collaboration of synced footage across the globe. Tony was a recipient of the Academy Scienti c and Technical Award for the creation of cineSync (alongside Rory McGregor, Neil Wilson and Alan Rogers).

Tony is credited with multple VFX Supervisor credits, including Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Gravity. Tony has been a pivotal member of Australian Boards, including a role on the South Australian Film Corporation and Royal Institute of Australia. He was recognized in 2018 with the Pearcey National IT Entrepreneur Award for his inspiring leadership, innovation, acclaim, and impact on the world stage.

Je Kleiser , VES 2022 VES Fellows

Je Kleiser is a Visual E ects Supervisor and CEO/Co-Founder of Synthespian Studios. His pioneering work in computer animation has spanned the history of the medium and many of his projects have involved the creation of computer-generated humans and creatures in a wide variety of formats. His feature lm credits include TRON, Stargate, Fantastic Four, Robocop and multiple lms across the X-Men franchise, and his location-based projects include creating stereoscopic superheroes for Spider-Man Ride, stereoscopic 70mm lm for Santa Lights Up New York at Radio City Music Hall and the stereoscopic virtual reality series Defrost: The Virtual Series.

Je has presented papers at international events including the London E ects and Animation Festival, SIGGRAPH, INA Imagina, NAB, Opera Totale and the Virtual Humans Conference. He has served as an industry expert in interviews with the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and ABC Evening News. Kleiser served on the global Board of Directors of the Visual E ects Society, the board of trustees of The Norman Rockwell Museum, and the Board of Advisors to the Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts. In addition, he is a member of the CG Society Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Grid Institute, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

2022 VES Fellows

Gene Kozicki , VES

Gene Kozicki, a VES Founders Award recipient and Lifetime Member, has served as a member of the Board of Directors and L.A. Section Board of Managers and was an organizer of the VES Festival for many years, as well as moderator of numerous VES panels. As chair of the VES Archives Committee, he helped secure portions of personal archives of Robert Abel, Richard Edlund, VES and others and was instrumental in organizing the VES archives and helping to secure funding to digitize many of our assets. As a VFX Historian, Kozicki is active in the archiving of information, imagery and artifacts from the visual e ects industry and regularly consults with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the American Cinematheque on retrospectives and conservation.

Kozicki’s career has spanned more than three decades, from working with Robert and Dennis Skotak, who were tasked with blowing up Los Angeles for Terminator 2: Judgement Day. He joined VIFX in 1994 and then worked with Rhythm & Hues for more than a decade. He has worked on various Star Trek series and lms including Titanic, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Power Rangers.

2022 VES Fellows

Rick Sayre , VES

Rick Sayre, who currently serves as Senior Production Scientist at Pixar Animation Studios, joined the studio in 1987 to work on experimental ultra-high resolution image processing. His lm credits include Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, The Good Dinosaur, The Incredibles, The Incredibles 2, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland. Sayre has contributed to the development of a wide variety of rendering, image processing, painting, grading and compositing techniques over the years, including the creation of "Virtual White" for the SMPTE Digital Cinema standard, and he received a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his work developing animation input systems for Jurassic Park.

Sayre is a charter member of the VES and a founding member of the Bay Area Section. He served on the global and Bay Area boards of the VES as well as the early Tech Committee, along with service on AMPAS’ Visual E ects Executive Committee, Scienti c and Technical Awards Steering Committee and the Science Council.

2022 VES Fellows

David Tanaka, VES

David Tanaka is an Editor, Producer and Creative Director with experience ranging from visual e ects and animation, to documentary and live action feature lms, with over 25 years of contributions to the entertainment industry. For 15 years, he served at Industrial Light & Magic in VFX Production and VFX Editorial on lms including Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump and Star Wars. He then joined Pixar Animation Studios as a Special Projects Editor for 10 years. Tanaka currently holds a sta VFX Editor position with Tippett Studio and serves as an Adjunct Professor for the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Tanaka has served three terms as Chair of the VES Bay Area Section, as well as 2nd Vice Chair on the global Board of Directors. He is also a major contributor to the VES Archives, Awards, Outreach, and Work From Home Committees.

2022 Lifetime Member

Je Barnes Awarded for meritorious service to the Society, the industry and for Barnes is honored for meritorious service to the Society and the global industry. His impact as an entertainment and technology creative executive continues across Silicon Valley and Hollywood. As the Executive Vice President of Creative Development at Light Field Lab, he drives cross-channel marketing initiatives and content creation for the company’s groundbreaking SolidLight holographic display platform. Before Light Field Lab, as Executive Director of Studio Productions at Lytro, he produced the world’s rst high-resolution light eld short with a hand-chosen academy award-winning team. Named one of the top 200 creative people in the world by Entertainment Weekly, Barnes previously co-founded and led entertainment and visual e ects companies, including CaféFX, The Syndicate, and Sententia Entertainment. The companies he built were worldclass providers of stunning, award-winning imagery for Pan’s Labyrinth, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man, The Aviator, and Sin City. Other notable projects include HBO’s iconic "Feature Presentation" open, the Emmy award-winning John Adams and Universal Studios’ theme park ride, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Barnes has also been a longtime leader of the Visual E ects Society, serving as Chair and Vice Chair of the global Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the VES Summit.

2022 Lifetime Member

Patricia “Rose” Duignan

Patricia “Rose” Duignan started working in visual e ects on Star Wars. She worked her way up the production ladder from Production Assistant to Production Supervisor on Return of the Jedi. Duignan was the rst Marketing Director at ILM, where she served for more than a dozen years. In addition to ILM, Duignan has contributed her marketing, sales and executive producing expertise at Tippett Studio, ABC TV, Rhythm & Hues and Kerner Optical (a spino from ILM’s practical e ects departments). She is also the Co-Author of Ballantine’s co ee table book , ILM: Into the Digital Realm. Duignan’s greatest passion is her commitment to families, illustrated by the fact that she started the ILM Daycare Center in 1990, which is still operating (with a wait list) today. She continues to play a role in uplifting women, people of color and veterans in the visual e ects world through her dedicated service on the Visual E ects Society’s Education Committee.

2022 Lifetime Member

Pam Hogarth

During her more than 35 years in visual e ects and high-end computer graphics, Hogarth ful lled many roles, from marketing to industry relations. The majority of her career was dedicated to incubating and growing educational programs geared towards training people for careers in entertainment production. Hogarth also consulted for organizations and schools, coached entertainment professionals on career management and taught.

Before co-founding Eido, a training company that facilitated training for IATSE creative guilds, which was successfully sold in 2017, Hogarth was the publicist for VFX house LOOK E ects. As Industry

Liaison she helped build Gnomon School of Visual E ects into the premiere school for careers in digital production. She ran Digital Media Institute (DMI) in Hollywood and helped grow the digital program at The American Film Institute (AFI). Teaching experience includes Art Directors Guild, Otis College of Art and Design, cgsociety.org, Gnomon, DMI and AFI.

Hogarth has been extremely active in the Visual E ects Society, including serving eight terms on the Board of Directors, twice elected as the rst female Vice Chair and former Chair of the Education Committee. She also served as Secretary of the Los Angeles Section of VES. Now retired, she is Board President for the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard, CA and is Secretary of the Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild.

2022 Lifetime Member

Toni Pace Carstensen

Recipient of the 2017 VES Founders Award, Carstensen is a founding member of the Visual E ects Society – joining the organization as member 0004 and serving as the Society’s rst Treasurer. She was a founding member of the Executive Committee and served on the global Board of Directors for many years, as well as Co-Chair of the Global Education Committee, Co-Editor of the rst edition of the VES Handbook of Visual E ects and with the Education Committee, generated the concept for VESAGE – a book showcasing the personal art of VES members. Carstensen serves as longtime Chair of the Vision Committee, which continues to engage with frontiers including VR/AR and holograms, and Treasurer of the Los Angeles Section. Her feature credits include VFX Producer/Digital Production Manager on Avatar, Minority Report and Fantasia 2000.

2022 Lifetime Member

Eric Roth

For 19 years, Eric Roth served as the Executive Director of the Society and ended his tenure last month. Eric leaves an indelible mark on our Society, our global community and everyone he interacted with and lifted up.

Under Eric’s watch, the Society grew from an organization of about 750 people, mostly situated in California, to a thriving global community with about 4,500 members in 45 countries and 14 Sections worldwide. Among his many accomplishments, the Society rolled out our award-winning VFX Voice magazine ve years ago, created three editions of the VES Handbook of Visual E ects, produced 20 years of our amazing VES Awards Show, hosted our yearly VES Honors and Hall of Fame Program, delivered a robust roster of top-notch educational programming and online content, and gave rise to volunteer Committees doing vital work in service to our members and the worldwide VFX community, including creating industry-leading mental health bene ts, mentoring programs, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, forward-looking technology projects, a video archive and a soon-to-be-realized VFX digital museum.

2022 Lifetime Member

David Tanaka, VES

David Tanaka is an Editor, Producer and Creative Director with experience ranging from visual e ects and animation, to documentary and live action feature lms, with over 25 years of contributions to the entertainment industry. For 15 years, he served at Industrial Light & Magic in VFX Production and VFX Editorial on lms including Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump and Star Wars. He then joined Pixar Animation Studios as a Special Projects Editor for 10 years. Tanaka currently holds a sta VFX Editor position with Tippett Studio and serves as an Adjunct Professor for the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Tanaka has served three terms as Chair of the VES Bay Area Section, as well as 2nd Vice Chair on the global Board of Directors. He is also a major contributor to the VES Archives, Awards, Outreach, and Work From Home Committees.

2022 Honorary Member

Awarded for exemplary contributions to the entertainment industry at practitioners around the world.

Pete Docter

Pete Docter is the Oscar®-winning director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, and Chief Creative O cer at Pixar Animation Studios. He most recently directed Disney and Pixar’s Oscar®-winning feature lm Soul with producer Dana Murray and co-director Kemp Powers, which is now streaming on Disney+. Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio’s third animator, Docter collaborated and helped develop the story and characters for Toy Story, Pixar’s rst full-length animated feature lm, for which he also was supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life, and wrote initial story treatments for both Toy Story 2 and WALL•E.

Aside from directing his four lms, Docter also executive produced Monsters University and the Academy Award®-winning Brave.

Docter’s interest in animation began at the age of eight when he created his rst ipbook. He studied character animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short lms, one of which won a Student Academy Award®. Those lms have since been shown in animation festivals worldwide and are featured on the Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2.

Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for nine Academy Awards® including Best Animated Feature-winners Up, Inside Out and Soul, and nominee Monsters, Inc., and Best Original Screenplay for Up, Inside Out and WALL•E. In 2010, Up also was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This distinction is

VES Hall of Fame

upon

Ellen Bute

Alice Guy-Blaché (1873 – 1968)

Bute was a pioneer American lm animator, producer and director. She was one of the rst female experimental lmmakers, and was the creator of some of the rst electronically generated lm images. Her specialty was visual music. While working in New York City between 1934 and 1958, Bute made 14 short abstract musical lms exploring the relationship of sound and image in cinema, and a second body of work focused on the relation of language and cinema through the adaptation of literary sources. Many of these were viewed in movie theaters, such as Radio City Music Hall, usually preceding a prestigious lm, and several of her abstract lms were part of her Seeing Sound series. Guy-Blaché was a French pioneer lmmaker. She was one of the rst lmmakers to make a narrative ction lm, as well as the rst woman to direct a lm. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting and special e ects. As artistic director and a co-founder of Solax Studios in New York in 1912, she made the lm A Fool and His Money – probably the rst to have an all African-American cast. The lm is now preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute for its historical and aesthetic signi cance. Guy-Blaché was awarded the Légion d’honneur, the highest non-military award France o ers, and honored in a Cinémathèque Française ceremony.

VES Hall of Fame

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)

Hopper, known as “Grandma COBOL,” was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral. One of the rst programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the rst linkers. Hopper was the rst to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer at NERSC. In 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Bill Kovacs (1949 – 2006)

Kovacs was a pioneer of commercial computer animation technology. As Vice President of R&D at Robert Abel and Associates, he co-developed the company’s animation software. Kovacs used this software, along with others, in the lm Tron. He later co-founded Wavefront Technologies as Chief Technology O cer, leading the development of products such as The Advanced Visualizer as well as animated productions. Along with Richard Childers and Chris Baker, he was a key organizer of the In nite Illusions exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute. Following his retirement from Wavefront, Kovacs co-founded Instant E ects, and worked as a consultant for Electronic Arts and RezN8, serving as RezN8’s CTO from 2000 until his death. He received a Scienti c and Engineering Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and two Clio Awards for his work on animated TV commercials.

VES Hall of Fame

George Pal (1908 – 1980)

Pal was a Hungarian-American animator, lm director and producer, principally associated with the fantasy and science- ction genres. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe. He was nominated for Academy Awards (in the category Best Short Subjects, Cartoon) for seven consecutive years (1942–1948) and received an honorary award in 1944. As an animator, he made the Puppetoons series in the 1940s, which led to him being awarded the honorary Oscar for “the development of novel methods and techniques in the production of short subjects known as Puppetoons”. Pal then switched to live-action lmmaking with The Great Rupert. He is best remembered as the producer of several science- ction and fantasy lms in the 1950s and 1960s, four of which were collaborations with director Byron Haskin, including The War of the Worlds. He himself directed Tom Thumb, The Time Machine and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.

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