Hal Hickel

Hal T Hickel is a visual effects animator for Industrial Light Magic At the age of 12 Hickel wrote a letter to Lucasfilm outlining his ideas for a sequel to the original Star Wars movie now known as Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope and received a polite rejection letter from producer Gary Kurtz The letter now hangs on the wall of Hickels office at ILM Twenty years later Hickel found himself working on Star Wars after all as a lead animator on Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace A native of Bailey Colorado Hickel joined the Film Graphics Program at CalArts in 1982 He worked at AnFX from 1982 until 1988 and then joined Will Vinton Studios working in stopmotion and motion control Hickel began his animation career at Pixar in 1994 where he worked on Toy Story and the THXpromos as well as some of Pixars short films Hearing that a new Star Wars trilogy was in preproduction Hickel applied for a transfer to ILM on the chance that he might get to work on the prequels He was first assigned as an animator on The Lost World Jurassic Park but was eventually assigned to work on The Phantom Menace and later its sequel Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones where he was responsible for the unique movement of the Droideka destroyer droids His other credits include AI Artificial Intelligence Space Cowboys Dreamcatcher and Van Helsing In 2007 Hickel won the BAFTA and the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects along with John Knoll Charles Gibson and Allen Hall for Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Mans Chest He also received an Academy Award nomination for his work on Rogue One A Star Wars Story Description above from the Wikipedia article Hal Hickel licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia