Shaun won the Oscar

Yesterday was, as Shaun himself said, a bit surreal.  As everyone knows, he and the team who worked on his short film The Lost Thing, won the Academy Award for best animated short film of the year.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was literally shaking when I watched his acceptance speech at work yesterday. It was stunning, unbelievable, amazing and everything else that everyone has said.  Inari looked stunning, he was poised and classy.  The only thing it wasn’t was surprising.

I first saw Shaun’s art when he asked if we were looking for artists for Eidolon back in about 1992. He went on to be our art editor for most of the ’90s, and we stayed friends. I’d visit him in Farnley Street and see the work he was doing, and like everyone else, followed his books. I remember seeing the initial work done for The Lost Thing, uncolored and untextured tests he showed me in hotel rooms at different World Fantasy Conventions around the US and if, at any time since I first met him you’d said he would one day hold up an Oscar, I don’t think I’d have been surprised.  A lot of hard work, an enormous talent, and above all an incredible personal vision all lead to what happened in LA yesterday. It wasn’t really surprising at all. Wonderful, yes. Definitely.  And to think, he’s still only 37. I wonder what he’ll do in the next 10 or 15 years. I can’t wait to see. Congratulations, my friend! Well deserved.