Ukrainian Canadian nominated for an Oscar (11/10/96)

Ukrainian Canadian nominated for an Oscar

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - A film he was involved with didn't win one, but Ukrainian Canadian computer-animation pioneer Nestor Burtnyk might just claim his own Academy Award.

Mr. Burtnyk, and with his former colleague Marceli Wein, are among 22 scientific and technical achievements nominated for Oscars at next year's March 1 ceremony.

Although the more well-known nominations for acting, directing and the like aren't announced until February, scientific-technical nominations get the heads-up in order to give someone claiming a film-related invention an opportunity to advise the Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences.

An electrical engineer by training, Mr. Burtnyk, 67, headed a team at the National Research Council of Canada that developed the technique of key frame animation. Mr. Wein, a physicist, was a member of that group.

The Burtnyk team invented its computer graphics system in which the computer imitates conventional cell animation and transforms one drawing to another. They used their key frame techniques in a 1974 National Film Board of Canada animated film, "Hunger," which became the first computer-animated movie to be nominated for an Oscar. It won a jury prize at that year's Cannes Film Festival.

Last February, Mr. Burtnyk and Mr. Wein were honored as "fathers" of computer animation at the Festival of Computer Animation at the Ontario Science Center in Toronto. Mr. Burtnyk retired from the NRC in 1995 after a 45-year career.