February 7, 2009 – Ed Catmull is Awarded the Gordon E. Sawyer Award
“…for his lifetime of technical contributions and leadership in the field of computer graphics for the motion picture industry.”
On February 7, 2009, President of the Pixar Animation and Walt Disney Animation Studios was honored with the Gordon E. Sawyer Award at the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The award, first presented in 1981, is presented to those whose technological advances have helped the industry. Catmull was instrumental in creating the fundamentals of what would become computer animation, with his film A Computer Animated Hand being hailed as groundbreaking. He would go on to found three computer graphics research centers at New York Institute of Technology, Lucasfilm Ltd., and Pixar. Catmull had previously received two Scientific and Engineering Awards for his work in the film industry, winning as part of a team for RenderMan software in 1992 and part of a team for Digital Image Compositing in 1995.
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