While Halle Berry, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman were sweating about whether they would be nominated for an Academy Award earlier this week, one Lawrence native already knew he was a winner.

Lance J. Williams, a Lawrence native and Kansas University graduate, was lauded with a 2001 Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement. The honor was bestowed upon him for his “pioneering influence in the field of computer generated animation and effects for motion pictures.”

So where will he be keeping his Oscar?

“I’m the recipient of a technical award certificate, not a statuette,” Williams said from his home in the Los Angeles area. “I won’t be able to use it as a doorstop or anything like that.”

The Academy singled out the software developer for the ongoing impact embodied by three papers he wrote, “Casting Shadows on Curved Surfaces,” “Pyramidal Parametrics” and “View Interpolation for Image Synthesis.” These works served as building blocks for computer-generated image (CGI) sequences that are now considered part of the visual lexicon.

“They’ve been used quite a bit,” Williams said. “There’s been reflection mapping on ‘Terminator (2),’ use of textures on the dinosaurs in ‘Jurassic Park’ and view interpolation in ‘The Matrix.'”

The Academy’s Board of Governors granted 14 Technical Achievement Awards based upon recommendations from the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee this year. The official ceremony will be March 2 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. The traditional Oscars will take place March 24.

“Some day, of course, I’d love to get nominated for a regular award, and get picked up in a stretch limo and all that,” he confessed. “But the technical awards are a little more low key.”

A graduate of Lawrence High School in 1967, Williams completed KU with an English degree in 1971.

“I think I got really excellent guidance from people,” Williams said, explaining how the university helped prepare him for his career, crediting past instructors such as science fiction expert James E. Gunn.

Beginning graduate work at the University of Utah, Williams joined a team that would usher in the golden era of CGI research. By 1974, he was working at the New York Institute of technology, where his contributions to facial animation by image warping and shadow buffers drew acknowledgment all through the industry. Two computer graphics films he collaborated on, “Sunstone” and “The Works,” became regarded as seminal pieces in his field.

In 1987, Williams was hired by Apple’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG), where he spent over seven years. Special effects jobs on some modest Canadian (“Habitat”) and Japanese (“Lensman”) movies followed. By 1997, he found himself at DreamWorks, applying his technical skills to feature filmmaking.

“I was very proud in being directly involved in motion blurring in ‘The Prince of Egypt,'” said Williams.

As a senior software developer on the project, he helped to correct the fake jerkiness that plagued animation by simulating the blurred image of an exposed celluloid frame. He applied the same skills to DreamWorks’ “The Road to El Dorado,” the last feature he’s worked on.

Now employed by Walt Disney Animation Studios, he is currently involved in research and development.

While he admits to being “very impressed” by the digital craftsmanship that went into the recent films “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” and Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” Williams maintains there is always the danger that reliance on computer technology might taint the creative process of filmmakers.

“Like any other medium, and like with any other tool, just because something is made possible to realize doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth imagining.”