Jan Pinkava

Jan Pinkava’s full name is Jan Jaroslav Pinkava. He is a Czech director and a producer who is known for his Oscar-winning short film Geri’s Game and Ratatouille. Jan was born on 21^st June 1963 in Prague. He was born and raised in Prague. Jan’s father name was Václav Pinkava, who was also known as Jan Křesadlo. Jan had three siblings and his family moved to the Great Britain in 1969 and later received a British citizenship. Jan was an excellent student. From 1974 to 1982 he attended Colchester Royal Grammar School.

He had a proclivity towards music, drama, art and sculpture. One of his sophisticated sculptures which he named Big Cat was bought by Essex University. The University put the sculpture outside the university library for display. In 1975, his family gifted him a movie camera on Christmas and he began playing with stop-motion plasticine, pixilation, Cel animation and paper-drawn. He participated in many animation competition and won most of them. In 1980, he won the Young Film-Maker’s Competition of the Year Award on Screen Test, which was a long-running quiz series conducted by BBC.

He presented his animated short film named The Rainbow at the competition. His video was aired on a TV show named 100 Greatest Kids. He even showed his clip of receiving the award in his short film Son of Rainbow. After completing his high school education, Jan went to University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He studied computer science there and graduated with first class honours. Later he also did his Ph.D. from the same university. Not just in studies, Jan was also very active in sports.

He represented his university in fencing, archery and hand-gliding competitions. After completing his education he turned his career to computer animation and started working with Digital Pictures. In the year 1993, he was hired by Pixar and then moved to the USA. He did many commercials there. His animated commercial for Listerine won him the Gold Clio Award. In 1997, he made an animated movie named Geri’s Game which won the Oscar.

The movie was awarded many titles. In 2000, he started directing Ratatouille. The movie was a huge success all over the world. Later, Jan was replaced by the existing directors of the movie The Incredibles. His latest work includes an animated game with Motorola Mobility.