Honors Program Book 2026

Welcome Welcome to the 2026 VES Honors Celebration!

We are delighted to welcome you to this cherished VES tradition, where we gather to recognize the exemplary artists and innovators who have made a profound impact on the field of visual effects and our Society.

On behalf of the VES Board of Directors and our nearly 6,000 members in 50+ countries and 18 global Sections, we proudly recognize this year's honorees for their extraordinary creativity, technical excellence, and dedication to advancing the art of visual effects. Through their groundbreaking achievements and commitment to our profession and Society, they have helped shape the future of visual storytelling while inspiring generations of artists and innovators around the world.

As the global entertainment industry navigates ongoing change, it’s a privilege to come together to recognize excellence, celebrate our global community, and honor the passion and ingenuity that unite us.

Thank you for your continued support of VES as we shine a light on the pioneering visual storytellers who inspire us all.

Kim Davidson VES Board Chair

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Nancy Ward VES Executive Director

2026 FOUNDERS AWARD & VES LIFETIME MEMBER The Founders Award is bestowed to individual members of the VES who have significantly contributed to the success of the Society.

Susan Zwerman, VES Susan Zwerman, VES, stands at the forefront of innovative filmmaking, with an unwavering commitment to excellence and specialized expertise in visual effects and virtual production. Her unique blend of talents not only showcases a profound understanding of the technical facets of film production but also reflects a visionary approach to the cinematic arts.

Zwerman is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America, and the Visual Effects Society. She is a proud recipient of the Frank Capra Achievement Award, the VES Fellows Award, and a Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video for Weird Al’s “I’m Fat.” She also taught visual effects at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

As a Freelance Budgeting Consultant at Sony Innovation Studios, she championed virtual production budgeting and asset management, significantly impacting test projects for film and television. In her tenure as a Studio Executive Producer at Exceptional Minds, she founded a VFX and 2D Animation studio tailored for artists on the autism spectrum, overseeing the studio's ascent and involvement in major feature films and television shows including titles like Black Widow, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Avengers: Endgame.

During her long tenure with the VES, Zwerman has co-authored five books on visual effects and virtual production including most recently The VES Handbook of Visual Effects, Fourth Edition. She served 18 total years on the global Board of Directors and additionally served on the VES Education Committee and the VES Technology Committee. In 2019, she was named a VES Fellow.

2026 VES LIFETIME MEMBER Awarded for meritorious service to the Society, the industry, and for furthering the interests and values of visual effects artists around the world.

Jeff Kleiser, VES Jeff Kleiser, VES, is a Visual Effects Supervisor and CEO/Co-Founder of Synthespian Studios. His pioneering work in computer animation has spanned the history of the medium and many of his projects have involved the creation of computer-generated humans and creatures in a wide variety of formats. His feature film credits include TRON, Stargate, Fantastic Four, Robocop, and multiple films across the X-Men franchise, and his location-based projects include creating stereoscopic superheroes for the SpiderMan Ride, stereoscopic 70mm film for Santa Lights Up New York at Radio City Music Hall, and the stereoscopic virtual reality series Defrost: The Virtual Series.

Kleiser has presented papers at international events including the London Effects and Animation Festival, SIGGRAPH, INA Imagina, NAB, Opera Totale, and the Virtual Humans Conference. He has served as an industry expert in interviews with the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and ABC Evening News. Kleiser served on the global Board of Directors of the Visual Effects Society, the Board of Trustees of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and the Board of Advisors to the Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts. In addition, he is a member of the CG Society Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Grid Institute, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

2026 HONORARY MEMBERS Awarded for exemplary contributions to the entertainment industry at large, and for furthering the interests and values of visual effects practitioners around the world.

Sir William Sargent, CBE Sir William Sargent, CBE, co-founded Framestore in 1986 and led its rise over 40 years as CEO and now Chairman. Equally at home in Hollywood and government, Sargent was Permanent Secretary, Regulatory Reform, at the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office, Board Director of HM Treasury, governor at the Southbank Centre, on UKRI's Innovate Council, and is a member of Trinity College Dublin's Provost Council and the Mayor of London’s Business Council. He is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, a member of BAFTA and the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He received a CBE in 2004, and was knighted by the Queen in 2008.

2026 HONORARY MEMBERS Scott Stokdyk Scott Stokdyk is an Academy Award® winner and three-time Oscar® nominee for Visual Effects. He has also been nominated for multiple British Academy (BAFTA) Awards and Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards.

Most recently, Stokdyk served as the production VFX Supervisor for Marvel Studios' Fantastic Four: First Steps. His extensive career as a VFX Supervisor also includes major feature films such as Finch and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, alongside consulting roles on numerous high-profile projects.

Stokdyk collaborated with director Sam Raimi on the original Spider-Man trilogy, winning the Academy Award® for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for Spider-Man 2. His other notable supervising credits include Disney’s G-Force and Oz the Great and Powerful.

Earlier in his career, Stokdyk worked as a Digital Effects Supervisor on Hollow Man and as a CG Supervisor on both Godzilla and Stuart Little. He began his journey in the industry as a digital artist on groundbreaking films including Contact, Starship Troopers, Titanic, The Fifth Element, and Universal Studios' Terminator 2: 3D attraction.

2026 FELLOWS This title signifies that the individual is recognized for earning an outstanding reputation through sustained contributions to the art, science or business of visual effects, as well as through meritorious service to the Society and the entertainment industry at large for a period of not less than ten (10) years within the last twenty (20) years.

Neishaw Ali, VES Neishaw Ali, VES, is the founding Partner, CEO, and Executive Producer of SPINVFX, and a prominent figure in the film and television industry for 30 years. Her innovative approach led to the creation of BRIO, a cloud and licensed subscription-based AR, VR, and 3D platform acquired by Adobe in 2022. In recognition of her impact, The Hollywood Reporter named her one of the 'Most Powerful Women in Canadian Entertainment' for three consecutive years (2024–2026).

Under Neishaw’s leadership, SPINVFX has produced work on more than 150 feature films and 40 television series. Her television career includes the Emmy Award-winning Game of Thrones, the Emmynominated The Umbrella Academy, The Boys, Beast Games and The Miniature Wife. Her film credits include the Academy Awardwinning Spotlight, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, Big George Foreman, Dora and the Search For Sol Dorado, and The Devil’s Mouth.

Neishaw is deeply committed to advancing the film and television industry as Chair of the Canadian Film Centre (CFC), while also serving on its Programming and Innovation Committee, Fundraising+ Committee, and Diversity and Governance Committee. She previously co-chaired the Toronto Film, Television & Digital Media Panel and currently serves on the Board of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and the Academy Futures Committee. Internationally, she serves the Visual Effects Society (VES) as a founding member and Chair of the VES Women Who Lead Committee, dedicated to ensuring women in VFX have the support, mentorship, visibility, and resources to advance. She also serves on the VES Education and Outreach Committee, where she launched a peer-to-peer mentoring program in 2021 that has impacted more than 450 visual effects artists to date.

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2026 FELLOWS Rita Cahill, VES Rita Cahill, VES, is an international business and marketing/PR consultant who has worked with a number of US, Canadian, UK, EU and Asian companies for visual effects and animation. Current and former clients include companies in the feature film, television, VR and game industries, as well as government and educational entities. She is also a partner in MakeBelieve Entertainment, a film development company and serves as Executive Producer on several animation and live-action projects.

Previously, Cahill was the VP Marketing for Cinesite where she oversaw the marketing of four divisions of the pioneering digital studio’s services. Prior to Cinesite, Cahill was a founding Board member of the Mill Valley Film Festival/California Film Institute and remains on the Institute’s Emeritus Board of Directors. Cahill was also the Founding Consultant on the formation and establishment of the Singapore International Film Festival.

Cahill is a long-term member of the VES (since 2002) and has served 10 years on the global Board of Directors (2015-2020 and 2022-2025), and as Secretary of the Board for all those years. She also served as a Committee member of the first VES Summit in 2009 and then went onto being the Chair or Co-Chair of the VES Summit for eight years (2010-2017) until it morphed into the Honors event. She has also served on various other Board Committees and in 2013 she represented the VES at Tokyo’s DigiCon6 event which was part of Japan’s InterBEE professional trade show. In 2021, Cahill was honored with a VES Lifetime Membership and the VES Founders Award.

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2026 FELLOWS Barbara Ford Grant, VES Barbara Ford Grant, VES, is an artist, engineer, and executive whose career spans the evolution of modern visual effects, from the inception of digital animation to the rise of virtual production and AI-assisted pipelines. With over 30 years of experience bridging creative artistry and advanced technology, she has engineered highly scalable creative tools and infrastructure for film and series productions, streaming giants, and location-based entertainment.

Currently, she advises major studios, including Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios, on AI production strategy while developing proprietary tools and original IP through BFG Productions, which she founded in 2024 to produce the short film Unhoused.

In 2018, she pivoted from her position leading multi-divisional creative and technical production operations at HBO to pursue entrepreneurial ventures that allowed her to define new methods of storytelling. She subsequently served as Chief Technology Officer at Meow Wolf, architecting mixed-reality platforms and experience design systems for landmark immersive installations Convergence Station and The Real Unreal, which collectively attract millions of visitors. Later, as President of Prysm Stages at NEP, she launched and oversaw the Lumière Award–winning LED volume stage at Trilith Studios in Atlanta, used for Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis and James Gunn's Superman.

Her earlier career established her core expertise in creativetechnology integration. At Digital Domain, she advanced digital human animation and rendering for blockbuster films, including Maleficent. During her tenure at Sony Pictures Imageworks, she oversaw the development and deployment of Academy Award– winning technologies, including Katana, Arnold, and OSL, used on Alice in Wonderland and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. At DreamWorks Animation, where she began as a traditionally trained artist and self-taught color science engineer, she pioneered the color pipeline, digital dailies infrastructure, and co-designed the 3D projection system for Shrek 4D at Universal Studios locations worldwide.

She studied Art History and Art Studio at the University of New Mexico. Notably, she was the first female Chair of the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee in its 92-year history.

She is a member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy, serves on the VES Technology Committee, and sits on the editorial advisory board of VFX Voice magazine.

2026 FELLOWS Susan Thurmond O’Neal, VES Susan Thurmond O'Neal, VES, has been a dedicated volunteer with the Visual Effects Society for more than two decades and has served on the global Board of Directors since 2010, including multiple terms on the Executive Committee. She has also chaired the Membership Committee for more than a decade, helping guide the Society's global membership process and uphold its professional standards. Earlier in her VES service, she served on the Education Committee for five years. In recognition of her longstanding commitment to the Society, O'Neal was given the VES Founders Award in 2019.

She has also contributed to several editions of the Society's flagship publications, serving as one of the co-editors of both The VES Handbook of Visual Effects, Fourth Edition, and the forthcoming second edition of The VES Handbook of Virtual Production. Through these publications, she has helped preserve and share the visual effects industry's collective knowledge for future generations.

A frequent moderator and speaker on emerging technologies, career development, and the future of visual effects, O'Neal is passionate about mentoring, connecting people, sharing knowledge, and strengthening the visual effects community. She began her visual effects career at Digital Domain in 1993, contributing to T2:3D – Battle Across Time and Titanic before moving on to various Los Angeles-based studios producing visual effects for commercials, music videos, and feature films. She held production operations and leadership roles at several studios including The Mill, Radium FX, and CREO Collective, served in account management at SideFX, and today is an independent creative recruiter partnering with studios, agencies, and technology companies across visual effects, animation, virtual production, and emerging technologies through her longtime collaboration with BLT Recruiting.

2026 SECTION HONOREES We salute these Section leaders for their three consecutive terms of service to their Section Board of Managers and for their service of at least three years as a Section Officer.

Aditya Talwar Australia

Michael Conte, VES

Mark Spatny Los Angeles

Bay Area

Rico Dober

Jose Marin New York

Germany

Aditya Talwar Australia

Aditya (Adi) Talwar is a CG Supervisor with over a decade of experience in the visual effects and animation industry, contributing to more than 20 feature films and episodic series. He currently works at Netflix Animation Studios, following a career trajectory that includes key roles at worldclass studios such as Animal Logic, Industrial Light & Magic, Weta Digital and Flying Bark Productions.

Throughout his career, Talwar has balanced technical pipeline management with a strong creative focus on lighting and look development to deliver final cinematic images. His work as a CG Supervisor on Marvel Studios’ What If...? contributed to the series earning a Primetime Emmy nomination. His credits also include the BAFTA-winning The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie, as well as high-profile Hollywood blockbusters like Leo and Warcraft.

Alongside his studio work, Talwar has been an active member of the local industry community.

He has served on the Board of Managers for the VES Australia Section for several years, initially as Secretary and most recently as the Section Chair. In these roles, his focus has been on community engagement, working to bring professionals together and foster a supportive, connected network across the Australian VFX industry.

Michael Conte, VES Bay Area

Michael Conte, VES, has built a 35-year career at ILM where he has worked on over five dozen shows and built a reputation for leadership in both artistic and technical roles. He first joined Lucasfilm in 1990 as a production assistant for Lucasfilm Learning, then cut his technical teeth on Hook and Jurassic Park in the nascent ILM Computer Graphics department. Over the years, he has held many different roles at the company including technical assistant, artist, supervisor, and 2D department head. While serving as compositing supervisor for films such as The Day After Tomorrow, Battleship, and Terminator Genisys, Conte was also the 2D technical lead at ILM. In 2015, Conte took the helm of the newly-formed ILM Image Unit. During his tenure in this multifaceted role, he was responsible for a range of Star Wars-themed IP including commercials, AR/VR experiences, large-scale projection shows, 360-degree videos, custom artwork, publicity stills, and more.

Conte first joined the VES Bay Area Board of Directors in 2012 and has served multiple terms, holding every officer position over the course of 10 years, with a couple of years off for good behavior. In 2024, he was named a VES Fellow.

Conte won a VES Award for compositing on Transformers and was nominated for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. He is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Rico Dober Germany

Rico Dober is a visual effects artist, supervisor, educator, and VES Germany Section board member whose career bridges international feature film production, technical innovation, and the next generation of VFX education.

After studying Media and Information Science, Dober began his career in 2003 as a freelance Digital Artist and lecturer before working as a Technical Director in Berlin. He later moved to London, joining Framestore as a Lead Pipeline Technical Director, where his credits included Gravity. From 2011, he worked at DNEG in a range of senior roles, including FX Supervisor and CG Supervisor, contributing to major productions such as Man of Steel, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Total Recall, and Captain America: The First Avenger.

In 2020, Dober returned to Germany to take up a professorship in Technical Direction at TH OWL. He is now Professor of Visual Effects at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, where he also serves as Dean of Studies for the BA programme Visual Effects & Virtual Productions. His current work focuses on virtual production, artificial intelligence, and the evolving relationship between artistic practice, technology, and education.

Mark Spatny Los Angeles

Mark Spatny is a multiple Emmy and Telly Award winning Visual Effects Supervisor with a 30-year career in VFX. A graduate of USC with a degree in set and lighting design, Mark has worked on over 400 episodes of television and a dozen feature films. His credits include The Peripheral, Heroes, Doctor Who, Station 19, Lethal Weapon, Marvel’s Runaways, What Dreams May Come, Armageddon, and Idiocracy.

Spatny was a founding member of the VES Awards Committee, overseeing the first 10 years of the Awards, including three years as Co-Chair. He also served as Secretary, then Chair of the Los Angeles Board of Managers. Outside of the VES, he was Governor of the Visual Effects peer group of the Television Academy for nine years, serving on the Academy’s Executive Board, and on its Emmy Awards, Engineering Awards, and Digital Strategy committees. As a Red Cross volunteer, he managed evacuation shelters during disasters such as the 2009 Station Fire. In 2011, Kentucky governor Steven Beshear commissioned Spatny as a Kentucky Colonel for his service to the entertainment industry. In 2017, Secretary of Defense James Mattis invited Spatny to participate in the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, touring military bases across the East Coast with civic leaders from around the country. He has lectured at the DGA, SIGGRAPH, the Gnomon School, and the BBC Children’s Festival.

As a musician, Spatny performed at a Super Bowl halftime, the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympics, and with Mick Fleetwood, Chuck Mangione, and the Laker Band. He has the distinction of being the only person to ever perform both the cannon and trombone parts of the 1812 Overture at the Hollywood Bowl.

Spatny is currently VFX Supervisor of the Roddenberry Archive, leading an international team of artists creating VR experiences and short films in the Star Trek franchise.

Jose Marin New York

Jose L. Marin is a Visual Effects Supervisor, Lead Compositor, and Foundry Certified Nuke Trainer.

Elected in 2020 to the VES Section Board of Managers in New York, he has served three terms, including two years as Chair and two as Co-Chair. He has also been a dedicated member of the Global VES Education and Outreach Committee. Within his Section, he also co-founded and chaired new VES regional initiatives in New York, including their Education, Pub Night, and Advisory Committees. In addition, he served as the VES Awards Nomination Event Lead in New York for five years. In 2024, he organized the momentous VES 10th Annual New York Celebration, recognizing Section members that had been nominated or won a VES Award.

Marin’s VFX career includes over 18 years specializing in feature film, episodic, and commercial projects of all sizes. He has worked across every part of the visual effects pipeline from script breakdown to final shot render as well as supervising on-set. His contributions as Lead Digital Artist on HBO's The Deuce earned him a Visual Effects Society Award nomination in 2019 and he won a Webby for the “Defy The Storm” campaign with MassFX Studio in 2025. Throughout his career he has worked at studios such as Industrial Light and Magic, MPC, and Framestore on projects including The Book of Boba Fett, Good Omens, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves; and his recent commercial campaigns have included collaborations with brands like Gucci and global talents like Madonna.

Marin’s career in visual effects and previous military service as a Platoon Sergeant and Martial Arts Instructor in the United States Marines has driven him to continue learning and giving back by mentoring and connecting industry professionals. Through regular engagement and outreach to the professional community when speaking at schools, conferences, and even pop culture conventions across the country, he hopes to continue inspiring, demystifying, and inviting others to join in the celebration of our craft.

2026 HALL OF FAME The distinction is bestowed upon a select group of professionals and pioneers who have played a significant role in advancing the field of visual effects by invention, science, contribution or avocation of the art, science, technology and/or communications.

Gerry Anderson

(1929–2012)

Gerry Anderson was a British pioneer in the field of puppetry who changed the trajectory of sci-fi storytelling with his innovative “supermarionation” technique. He created his first puppet show, The Adventures of Twizzle, in 1957, and in the 1960s went on to create and launch numerous hit shows including Supercar, Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Stingray, and Captain Scarlet, all under Anderson’s AP Films banner. The 1960 series Supercar marked the debut of supermarionation, an electronic system that makes marionettes more lifelike and convincing on screen. Anderson’s expertise in blending special effects with live action continued throughout his career, including work on the 1969 film Doppelgänger. Other notable projects include the live action television series UFO and Space: 1999 and special television program The Day After Tomorrow. His legacy as a pioneer in sci-fi television continues to inspire new generations through his imaginative worlds and unforgettable characters.

Ishirō Honda

(1911–1993)

Ishirō Honda was an iconic Japanese filmmaker and one of the pioneers of modern disaster films, in particular as a co-creator of the kaiju genre with special effects artist Eiji Tsuburaya. His first feature film was The Blue Pearl (1952), a critical success in Japan and the first Japanese film to utilize underwater sequences. He followed that with directing and co-writing 1954’s blockbuster Godzilla, which has since spawned the longest-running film franchise in history, and is widely considered one of the best monster movies of all time. Honda would go on to direct a total of eight films in the Godzilla franchise over the next twenty years, including Mothra (1961), King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), and Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964). Over the course of his career, Honda worked extensively within Japan’s legendary Toho Studios, ultimately directing over 40 feature films plus many shorts, documentary projects, and television projects. At Toho, he also met filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who would go on to become a friend and collaborator over many years. Honda served as the assistant director for Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949), and would later work on Kurosawa’s last five films from the late 1970s to early 1990s.

2026 HALL OF FAME Jon Landau Jon Landau was an acclaimed American film producer, best known for his collaborations with filmmaker James Cameron. He coproduced Cameron's Titanic – for which he won the Academy Award for Best Picture – as well as Cameron's Avatar film series through 2025’s Avatar: Fire and Ash. Titanic, Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Avatar: Fire and Ash are four of the highest-grossing films of all time. Landau's other notable credits include Solaris and Alita: Battle Angel, both of which he produced alongside Cameron, as well as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Dick Tracy. Born in New York, Landau graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and rose to become the executive vice president of feature film production at Twentieth Century Fox, before joining Cameron’s company Lightstorm Entertainment, Inc.

(1960–2024)

Tomoyuki Tanaka Tomoyuki Tanaka was a prolific Japanese film producer with over 200 credits to his name, most notably in the long-running Godzilla franchise starting with the original 1954 film directed by Ishirō Honda. Tanaka also produced several films by Akira Kurosawa in the 1960s including The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low, and Red Beard. Tanaka would later reunite with Kurosawa to produce Kagemusha (1980), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Most of Tanaka’s career, spanning six decades, was spent working at Japan’s renowned Toho Studios, and he ultimately worked his way up to become Chairman and CEO of the company in 1989.

(1910–1997)

Susan

W E P R O U D LY S P O N S O R T H E

VES HONORS CELEBR ATION A N D C O N G R AT U L AT E A L L O F T O N I G H T ’ S H O N O R E E S

FOUNDERS AWARD RECIPIENT Susan Zwerman, VES

LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP Jeff Kleiser, VES Susan Zwerman, VES

HONORARY MEMBERS Sir William Sargent, CBE Scott Stokdyk

VES HALL OF FAME Jon Landau Gerry Anderson Ishirō Honda Tomoyuki Tanaka

SECTION HONOREES VES FELLOWS Neishaw Ali, VES Rita Cahill, VES Barbara Ford Grant, VES Susan Thurmond O’Neal, VES

Aditya Talwar (Austrailia) Michael Conte, VES (Bay Area) Rico Dober (Germany) Mark Spatny (Los Angeles) Jose Marin (New York)

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