Blackhawk High grad wins Oscar, brings new realism to animation
Animated movie characters, that is.
For that achievement, Iben, a 1997 Blackhawk High graduate, earned an Academy Award last weekend.
The South Beaver Township native, director of engineering for the famed Pixar film studio, officially received her prestigious Oscar award when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held a virtual ceremony on Feb. 13, bestowing Scientific And Technical Achievement Awards for 17 filmmaking innovations.
Iben and three Pixar colleagues, Mark Meyer, John Anderson and Andrew Witkin, created the Taz Hair Simulation System that brought a new level of realism to digital characters in popular animated films like 2012 s Brave and 2015 s Inside Out.