LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Warsaw native Tony Etienne grew up loving watching "Star Wars" and working with computer graphics.
His interests has led him to being a part of a visual effects team that won an Oscar Sunday.
Etienne, 32, son of Warsaw residents Tony and Mary Etienne, has worked for the past four years as a visual effects artist for Los Angeles-based visual effects company Rhythm & Hues.
The company received an Oscar for Achievement in Visual Effects Sunday at the 80th Annual Academy Awards on the movie "The Golden Compass." The movie beat out "Transformers" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" for visual effects. The last time the visual effects company received an Oscar for Visual Effects was in 1995 for the movie "Babe."
Earlier this year, "The Golden Compass" received a British Academy of Film and Television Art Award for special visual effects.
Etienne did the look development for the wolves and huskies in the Svalbard sequence of "The Golden Compass."
Etienne said 500 people from two continents worked on the film.
"My job in look development is to make characters look real using lighting and materials such as fur," Tony said in a telephone interview Thursday from Los Angeles.
Rhythm & Hues Visual Effects Supervisor Bill Westenhofer accepted the award during the Oscars.
Tony did not attend the Oscars, but found out Rhythm & Hues won the Oscar when his parents called him from Warsaw after they heard his company's name announced on TV during the Oscars. Etienne said he was sitting at a restaurant in Los Angles with his wife Sara when he received the phone call from his parents.
"I was shocked because my mom was so excited over the phone I could barely understand what she was saying," Etienne said with a laugh.
Etienne's parents have early memories of their son's interest in movies and computers.
"Tony loved movies and computers at a young age and as he grew older we always encouraged him to seek a job he would wake up every day and look forward to," Mary said.
His father Tony has memories of their son during a New Year's party entertaining people at the party by programming a computer to say hello.
Etienne, a 1993 Warsaw Community High School graduate, moved to Warsaw during his senior year. He was in an advanced theater class at the high school and remembers taking drafting class to create 3-D objects.
He received a degree in computer graphics from Indiana University in 1998, and a degree from the Vancouver Film School in British Columbia in 2003.
"I have held the Oscar two times since we won it, and every time I hold it all I can think about is how rewarding it is to know all of our hard work has been recognized and paid off," Etienne said.
He has worked on visual effects since 2004 for movies including "Evan Almighty," "Night At The Museum," "Charlotte's Web," "The Fast and The Furious," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "Flight of the Phoenix," "Garfield" and "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."
Etienne said he currently is working on visual effects for "The Incredible Hulk" that is scheduled to be released this summer.
"There is nothing like going to a movie and seeing our son's name on the screen during the credits. We are so proud of him," Mary said.
