A FORMER Aberystwyth man has scooped a gong at a prestigious film event for his work on the visual effects for one of the year’s big film hits.

Rhys Salcombe, a former Ysgol Penglais school pupil, was part of the Double Negative team which won two Visual Effects Society Awards at the 16th Annual VES Awards Gala in Los Angeles last week.

Rhys, who now lives in works in Vancouver, Canada, was a build supervisor on the team that won the Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature award for their work on Blade Runner 2049.

Blade Runner 2049 is nominated in the Visual Effects category for the 90th Academy Awards and scooped the Best Special Visual Effects category at the EE BAFTAs 2018 last month.

Rhys told the Cambrian News that it “was a real pleasure to accept the award as recognition for the huge effort that everyone on my team put into the project”.

“In summer 2016 after finishing on my previous project Star Trek Beyond, I was asked to work on Blade Runner 2049 and to supervise the futuristic Los Angeles environments in particular and so my team and I built the digital city and took it from concept design through to the final shots you see on screen,” Rhys said.

“My supervisor at Double Negative was Paul Lambert who won the BAFTA last weekend and who is nominated for the Oscar next week.

“I worked with him to develop the way the city looks, taking into account story ideas that the director wanted to convey."

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