- Hal Hickel
Hal T. Hickel is an
Academy Award winning visual effects animator forIndustrial Light & Magic .At the age of 12, Hickel wrote a letter to
Lucasfilm outlining his ideas for a sequel to ' and received a polite rejection letter from producerGary Kurtz . The letter now hangs on the wall of Hickel's office at ILM. Twenty years later, Hickel found himself working on "Star Wars" after all, as a lead animator on '.A native from Boulder, Colorado, he joined the Film Graphics Program at
CalArts in 1982. Worked at An-FX from 1982 till 1988 and then joined Will Vinton Studios working in stop motion and motion control.Hickel began his animation career at
Pixar in 1994, where he worked on "Toy Story ", theTHX promos, as well as some of Pixar's short films. Hearing that a new "Star Wars" trilogy was in pre-production, Hickel applied for a transfer to ILM on the chance that he may get to work on the prequels. He was first assigned as an animator on ', but was eventually assigned to work on "The Phantom Menace" and later its sequel ', where he was responsible for the unique movement of the Droideka destroyer droids.His other credits include: "A.I.", "
Space Cowboys ", "Dreamcatcher" and "Van Helsing". In 2007, Hickel won the BAFTA and theAcademy Award for Visual Effects along withJohn Knoll , Charles Gibson and Allen Hall, for "".External links
*imdb|name=Hal T. Hickel|id=0382579
* [http://www.starwars.com/episode-i/bts/profile/f20000512/index.html Rolling Out Droids - An Interview with Hal Hickel] , Starwars.com,May 12 2000 .
* [http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6153164.html Visual-effects masters put the magic in ILM] , "ZDNet ",January 25 2007 .
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