Distinguished member of the Cogswell College board of directors receives his second Academy Award for his groundbreaking design work of the PDI/DreamWorks Animation Media Review System.
SAN JOSE, CA -- Cogswell College has announced that Richard Chuang, a distinguished member of their board of directors, has just received (on Feb. 13th) his second Academy Award for his groundbreaking design work of the PDI/DreamWorks Animation Media Review System.
John Duhring, Cogswell College’s Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Alliances commented, “Richard has always been an artist, one who discovered computers in high school back in 1974. His approach is so pragmatic. He just figures things out and gets things done. He’s an artist who embraced science and engineering to become one of the most prominent inventors within the entertainment industry. We are thrilled to have his influence as we prepare students to operate successfully in the most dynamic industry ever created.”
Chuang, is considered a true Pioneer of Digital Animation, and the co-inventor of one of the very first Digital Animation Pipelines. A 1979 graduate of the UC Davis College of Engineering, Chuang became the first employee at Pacific Data Images in 1981. At the time, PDI was an upstart computer animation company that operated in a garage. PDI’s early successes included an updated Pillsbury Doughboy, which became the first established corporate icon to go CGI. PDI was later acquired by DreamWorks.
While at PDI, Chuant served as a Visual Effects Supervisor on 16 Hollywood motion pictures, as well as a director on commercials. He also won an Emmy Award for Graphics Design. Later, as an executive at DreamWorks Animation, he led the effort in setting up DWA productions around the world.
Chuang’s technical innovations led him to win, in 1998, a shared Technical Achievement Academy Award, his first of two awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Chuang left DreamWorks in 2008, determined to re-shape the way that animators work with each other. He then became the founder and CEO of Cloudpic.
Source: Cogswell College
