The winner of 2006′s year’s Animex Student Animation Award for Visualization was VFS graduate Chung-Hao Tung for his phenomenal short film The Barometz. The award was announced during the Animex Festival on February 10th 2006 by Shelley Page, European Representative for Feature Animation DreamWorks, David Sproxton, co founder of Aardman Animation, and Philip Hunt, director at Studio AKA.

The Animex Visualization Award recognizes and rewards the “best and most innovative use of a 3D animation application and/or language for the production of an environment to support creative, architectural, engineering, and scientific applications.”

Alan Clements, the Animex representative who visited VFS to deliver the award was impressed by the “sheer internationalism of the awards.” Animex is a festival and award ceremony hosted by the University of Teesside in England, but it attracts submissions from around the world. “Simply teaching technical skills is not enough any more. Today you have the amazing ability to make quality animation on a home computer that looks like it could be from Hollywood. So creativity is at a premium.”

Larry Bafia, Head of Animation was quick to point out that VFS recognized Tung’s talents early and even awarded him an extra term in order to work on completing this stunning project. Extra terms are awarded every year at VFS to the “cream of the crop.” “[Tung] had a really strong technical background before coming to VFS,” said Bafia. “Our role was to combine the art and esthetics with his technical skill. I’m very pleased that he’s won this award.”