For 2nd year running, another Coimbatorean wins Oscar

The 41-year-old will receive the award along with Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell and Paige Warner for developing ILM facial performance-capture solving system. Kiran, who currently lives in the United States, is the second technician from Coimbatore to win the Oscar for technical achievement after Cottalango Leon (45) won the award in 2016 along with J Robert Ray and Sam Richards for designing Sony Pictures’ Image works Itview. 

Kiran Bhat will receive the prestigious award on February 11 at Beverly Hills, California.  In a short video, he thanked his parents and teachers back home in Coimbatore who shaped and encouraged him to become an achiever. He added that the technology developed by him enables high-fidelity facial performance transfer from actors to digital characters in largescale productions. 

Kiran has contributed to the technical aspects of several Hollywood blockbusters like Avenger, Teenage Mutant Nin ja Turtle, P irates of the Caribbe an , Warcraft , Star Wars Episode VII and Star Wars Rogue One . “We will be flying to the US on Wednesday and will be there to see him receive the award,” his father KS Bhat (69) told DTNext. 

With no words to express his joy, he said that, “Kiran made Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu and India proud.” Bhat is an industrial pump manufacturer and exporter. Kiran’s parents claimed that he was always focused in what he did from his early days as a student.