Lee Lanier is an American 3D computer animator and the author of two books for the 3D modeling software package Maya—Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting and Maya Professional Tips and Tricks—both published by Sybex. In 2002, Lanier gave an ACM SIGGRAPH-sponsored lecture on creating a short animated film on a desktop PC; he also teaches 3D texturing and lighting effects at the Art Institute of Las Vegas. Early in his teaching career, Lanier developed the De Anza College 3-D computer animation curriculum using Maya. He presently teaches for Westwood College Online.
After working for Buena Vista Visual Effects at Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, Lanier worked at PDI/DreamWorks in the San Francisco bay area—where he created digital special effects for the movies Shrek and Antz. Next, he moved to Boulder City, Nevada where Lee formed his own company, BeezleBug Bit LLC.
Lanier's computer animated short films have played at over 200 film festivals, galleries, and museums worldwide. Millennium Bug won the Mike Gribble Peel of Laughter Award at the 1998 Ottawa International Animation Festival and the Silver Jury Award at the 1999 Chicago Underground Film Festival.
Lanier's short films Day Off the Dead, Mirror, Millennium Bug, and 13 Ways to Die at Home have played such venues as the Sundance Film Festival, Annecy Festival of Animation, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, and Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Lee is also the founder of The Dam Short Film Festival.
Famous quotes containing the words lee and/or lanier:
“Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)