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Jan Pinkava
Jan Jaroslav Pinkava (born 21 June 1963) is a Czech-British-American producer, director, writer, and animator. He directed the Pixar short film Geri's Game and served as co-director and co-wrote the story for Ratatouille, both of which went on to win Oscars.
Pinkava was born in Prague. His family immigrated to Britain in 1969, where he obtained British citizenship. Subsequently, he moved to the US, and also obtained American citizenship.
He attended Colchester Royal Grammar School from 1974 to 1982 showing interest and talent in the arts, music, drama, and sculpture. (One of his juvenile sculptures, 'Big Cat', was acquired by Essex University and put on permanent display outside the library.)
After obtaining an 8mm movie camera for Christmas in 1975, he began experimenting with pixilation, stop-motion plasticine, paper-drawn and cel animation. He had some early prize-winning successes in animation competitions. Most notably, he won the Young Film-Maker's Competition of the Year Award 1980 on the long-running (1969 to 1984) BBC children's quiz series Screen Test for his animated short "The Rainbow". This was hailed in 2001 on Channel 4's "100 Greatest Kids' TV shows" by ex-Screen Test presenters Michael Rodd and Brian Trueman as "the only occasion in the history of the competition where we came across a piece of film that was spectacularly professional". A clip of him receiving the award is shown in the 2007 film Son of Rambow.
He went on to study Computer Science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he graduated with first class honours and obtained his PhD. During this time he also represented his university in archery, fencing, and hang-gliding competitions, and continued developing his cartoon drawing skills.
After university he turned to a career in computer animation initially in London, with Digital Pictures, who specialised in TV commercials.
In 1993 he joined Pixar, and moved to the USA. His "Arrows" TV commercial for Listerine won the Gold Clio Award in 1994.
His 1997 animated short Geri's Game won the Oscar for Best Animated Short on his mother's birthday, which prompted him to dedicate the award to her long-distance, with a message in Czech and won a string of other awards.
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Jan Pinkava
Jan Jaroslav Pinkava (born 21 June 1963) is a Czech-British-American producer, director, writer, and animator. He directed the Pixar short film Geri's Game and served as co-director and co-wrote the story for Ratatouille, both of which went on to win Oscars.
Pinkava was born in Prague. His family immigrated to Britain in 1969, where he obtained British citizenship. Subsequently, he moved to the US, and also obtained American citizenship.
He attended Colchester Royal Grammar School from 1974 to 1982 showing interest and talent in the arts, music, drama, and sculpture. (One of his juvenile sculptures, 'Big Cat', was acquired by Essex University and put on permanent display outside the library.)
After obtaining an 8mm movie camera for Christmas in 1975, he began experimenting with pixilation, stop-motion plasticine, paper-drawn and cel animation. He had some early prize-winning successes in animation competitions. Most notably, he won the Young Film-Maker's Competition of the Year Award 1980 on the long-running (1969 to 1984) BBC children's quiz series Screen Test for his animated short "The Rainbow". This was hailed in 2001 on Channel 4's "100 Greatest Kids' TV shows" by ex-Screen Test presenters Michael Rodd and Brian Trueman as "the only occasion in the history of the competition where we came across a piece of film that was spectacularly professional". A clip of him receiving the award is shown in the 2007 film Son of Rambow.
He went on to study Computer Science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he graduated with first class honours and obtained his PhD. During this time he also represented his university in archery, fencing, and hang-gliding competitions, and continued developing his cartoon drawing skills.
After university he turned to a career in computer animation initially in London, with Digital Pictures, who specialised in TV commercials.
In 1993 he joined Pixar, and moved to the USA. His "Arrows" TV commercial for Listerine won the Gold Clio Award in 1994.
His 1997 animated short Geri's Game won the Oscar for Best Animated Short on his mother's birthday, which prompted him to dedicate the award to her long-distance, with a message in Czech and won a string of other awards.