ILM Wins Big at VES Awards

Last week at the 10th Annual VES Awards hosted by the Visual Effects Society, my friends and colleagues from Industrial Light & Magic were honored with seven awards, including a clean sweep for our first animated feature, "Rango".

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" won two key awards: one for Outstanding Created Environment and one for Outstanding Models. Both of the awards centered heavily around the Chicago destruction sequence, where Driller, the giant snake-like Transformer circles an already damaged building, squeezing it to the point of spitting the edifice in half, with the top half crashing onto another skyscraper.  Taking home awards for that work was Tim Brakensiek, Kelvin Chu, David Fogler, Rene Garcia, Giles Hancock, John Hanson, Scott Younkin, and my very good friend Tom Martinek, who did an extraordinary job supervising the tilted building sequence.  I have been fortunate to work with Tom for many years now, and I'm glad he now has this tangible proof of his enormous talents.

I have been very lucky in 2011: the three films to which I contributed ("Rango", "Transformers 3" and "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol") have been showered with praise for their innovative visual effects work. I'm proud to have been a part of these magnificent productions.

Congratulations to all the winners that night, and thank you so much to the Visual Effects Society for sponsoring the event.

• Full list of nominees for the 10th Annual VES Awards
• Full list of winners for the 10th Annual VES Awards
• FXGuide TV's video coverage of the event