The five-time Oscar winner, BAFTA winner, and senior VFX supervisor of James Cameron’s groundbreaking sci-fi sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, will be honored at the upcoming VIEW Conference, which runs October 15-20 in Torino, Italy.
VIEW Conference, Italy’s premier international event on Computer Graphics, Interactive Techniques, Digital Cinema, 2D/3D Animation, VR and AR, Gaming, and VFX, has just announced that Wētā FX’s Joe Letteri, senior VFX supervisor of James Cameron’s groundbreaking sci-fi sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, will receive this year’s VIEW Visionary Award.
Letteri and his pioneering work in visual effects have earned five Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects - Avatar, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, King Kong, and Avatar: The Way of Water. He has a long-standing interest in creating compelling, realistic creatures, from the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to Gollum, the Na'vi in Avatar, and Caesar from the Planet of the Apes franchise. He has developed industry standard techniques for creating photorealistic digital effects and has pushed the development of large-scale virtual production.
Previous recipients of the VIEW Visionary Award, presented for outstanding contribution to the visual arts, include Oscar-winning cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins, pioneering visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, animated feature director Nora Twomey and Pixar designer/director Ralph Eggleston.
Also not that in a late addition to the event’s packed program, VIEW Conference presents an inspiring journey into the extraordinary VFX of the innovative sci-fi thriller The Creator, presented by ILM VFX supervisors Charmaine Chan and Ian Comley They’ll take the audience on a behind-the-scenes look at the film’s groundbreaking visual effects in a special presentation “Creating the World of The Creator.” The duo will discuss how the ILM team was able to partner with filmmaker Gareth Edwards to achieve his ambitious vision for the futuristic world ripped apart by a war between factions of humanity on one side and artificial intelligence on the other.
And in a last bit of event news, RenderMan is bringing a special exhibition to the OGR conference center. The “RenderMan Walking Teapot” exhibition, first unveiled earlier this year at SIGGRAPH, takes visitors on a nostalgic journey, featuring every iteration of the beloved teapot since its inception. What began in 2003 as a quirky mascot to promote Pixar's RenderMan software, over time, became an emblem of computer graphics evolution and Pixar's spirit of innovation.
The international VIEW Conference brings together industry professionals, thought leaders, students and enthusiasts not only to share and celebrate the latest achievements in Animation, VFX and Games, but also to share their visions of the future. The conference’s vibrant and inclusive atmosphere is designed to enlighten and inspire, with an extensive live program of talks, presentations, workshops and masterclasses embracing cutting-edge thinking on such diverse topics as Storytelling, Virtual Production, Computer Graphics, Interactive & Immersive Media, VR/AR/Mixed Reality and the Metaverse, Artificial Intelligence, Real-Time Rendering and much, much more.
Additional program information is available here.
Source: VIEW 2023
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
