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Prestigious accolade for stellar work by Teesside graduate

10 March 2015

 

A Teesside University graduate has won a prestigious award for his work on Oscar winning film Interstellar.

School of Computing graduate Thomas Dohlen was presented with the VES (Visual Effects Society) award for his work on Interstellar. The awards were recently announced at a ceremony in Beverly Hills, California.

Thomas received the accolade as lead lighter TD on the Tesseract sequence in Interstellar, achieving a VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture.

He said: 'It was very exciting, a bit surprising, but it made me feel extremely honoured to have been nominated and then to win. It was a very challenging project, working with the high-res IMAX format and something that abstract was not easy.

'It is pretty amazing that Interstellar has received so much recognition for the visual effects which were all done at Double Negative, where I worked for five years.'

Thomas, who is originally from Norway and currently working for world-renowned visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), said: 'I really enjoyed my time at Teesside, especially spending time in the University labs working with friends on different challenging projects. Unless I was in the computer labs, you’d find me using the University’s indoor climbing wall.

'I came from a more artistic background and chose the course at Teesside as I wanted to learn more about the technical side of computer graphics. I was taught about computer graphics algorithms for rendering, image-processing and simulation.

'I knew Teesside had good computer graphics and animation courses and they were investing a lot of money in facilities and hardware for the School of Computing. I was also impressed with their connections to the visual effects industry.'

After graduating in 2010 from the BSc (Hons) Visualisation, Thomas joined Double Negative as Assistant Technical Director before progressing to Technical Director. He joined ILM last year in their London office as a Technical Director.

He said: 'Before starting the degree I had a clear vision that I wanted to work in visual effects and was hoping Teesside University would help me to get my foot in the door of one the bigger visual effects companies. ILM did cross my mind as a company I wanted to work for, but at that point it was more a dream than reality. My main goal was to get into the industry and work on some interesting projects.

'I really love learning new things and I’ve had the opportunity of working with some really talented people who I have learned a lot from.'


 
 
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