WELLINGTON: Auckland-based art director and Oscar winner Kim Sinclair says seeing portraits of previous Oscar winners after collecting his award for Avatar was the most amazing part of yesterday's Academy Awards ceremony.
"After we'd won the Oscar and we went backstage and we walked up this avenue of photos of previous Oscar winners like Audrey Hepburn and Jack Nicholson and they were all there with their Oscars, and I thought `I've got one of those'.
It was pretty amazing," Sinclair told TV3.
Sinclair was the supervising art director on the James Cameron 3-D epic, which won three Oscars - including best art direction and best visual effects, won by the Wellington-based Weta Digital team.
Sinclair's work on Avatar began in 2006 and involved creating "the physical world" for the film.
He said he admired Cameron, who had waited 10 years for technology to catch up with his idea for the film.
A team from Weta Digital in Wellington also won the best visual effects Oscar for the movie Avatar.
Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew Jones from Weta Digital were on stage in Hollywood to accept the Academy Award for best visual effects.
Letteri, in his acceptance speech, thanked "Eileen Moran and everyone at Weta Digital for your talent and creativity".
Avatar's director of photography, Mauro Fiore, won the Oscar for best cinematography, thanking "everybody in New Zealand" in his acceptance speech.
