A former Marietta resident and graduate of Warren High School will be among the Oscar winners when the Academy Awards are handed out next month.

“It’s just one of those crazy things. I grew up in this small town, and now I’m receiving an Academy Award,” said Geoff Wedig, 44, who now resides with his family in Los Angeles, Calif.

Earlier this month Geoff and partner Nicholas Apostoloff learned they would be honored with a Technical Achievement Award for design and development of facial-performance-capture systems at ImageMovers Digital and Digital Domain visual effects studios in California. They will be honored at the Scientific and Technical Awards presented Feb. 11 while the televised Oscars ceremony will be aired live on Feb. 26 on ABC.

“Facial-performance-capture is basically a computerized system that allows us to take an actor who gives a performance and apply his facial features into an animated sequence of a movie,” Wedig explained.

“The first project I worked on was a small piece for ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,'” he said. “Most people don’t realize that (lead actor) Brad Pitt doesn’t show up during the first 45 to 50 minutes of that film. It was all either computer-generated or a body double was used.”

Digitally “capturing” the many features of a human face and transferring those features to animation is challenging work that it has taken Wedig years to develop.

“Tron: Legacy,” a 2010 Disney film about a virtual reality world, represented his first major work with animation in a motion picture.

“It took two years in 2008 and 2009 to develop the facial technology used in Tron,” Wedig said.

He also worked on Disney’s 2014 animated and live action film, “Maleficent,” with a cast led by Angelina Jolie.

“On ‘Maleficent’ we not only had digital effects, but the actual actors often appeared in scenes alongside those effects,” he said. “That raised the effects bar very high.”

He basically taught himself the skills required to work in the highly-specialized field of computer-generated graphics.

“It’s been a long road,” Wedig admitted.

His father and mother, Dan and Paula Wedig, were originally from the Cincinnati area, but moved to Marietta in 1973. They currently reside in Columbus.

“We lived in Marietta for 29 years, then moved to Columbus in 2002. We had a great time in Marietta,” said Dan.

Geoff is one of six children.

“We’re proud of Geoff and all of his brothers, they’ve all done well,” Dan said, adding that his youngest son, William, also works in the motion picture field as a professional film maker in New York.

Dan said Geoff has always been fascinated by computer graphics.

“We got our first computer in the early 1980s, and he was highly interested in it,” he said.

He said soon after Geoff went to see an animated movie and was extremely impressed because all of the scenes were done with computers.

Geoff was hooked on the world of computer-generated graphics from then on.

Jerry Bedilion was Geoff Wedig’s French and English teacher at Warren High School.

“He certainly was his own person,” Bedilion recalled. “He was very likable and polite, and came from a very close-knit, supportive family.”

Bedilion said Wedig winning of an Academy Award isn’t surprising.

“I expected something great from all those Wedig boys,” he said.

After graduating from Warren High in 1990, Geoff entered Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, graduating in 1994 with a double degree, a bachelor of science in mathematics and a bachelor of arts in English and creative writing.

“He went to the University of California at Los Angeles where he earned a masters degree in computer science,” Dan said. “Then he came back to Case Western where he worked in the departments of epidemiology and bio statistics for 13 years.”

It was then that Wedig decided to make a significant career change.

“I remember, when I was about 12 or 13, watching one of those ‘behind the scenes’ shows on television about how they made ‘Return of the Jedi,'” Geoff said. “I suddenly realized that there were people who did this for a living and got paid for it.”

His inner 13-year-old was reawakened in 2004 when Geoff told his wife, Kathy, that he wanted to do something different.

He began learning the ropes of computer animation by spending 18 months working on production of a one-and-a-half-minute short film he titled “Invasion From Beyond the Galaxy.”

It took some time as he and Kathy were in the midst of raising three children and Wedig could only work on the project during his few moments of spare time.

But he eventually completed the clip, even adding a musical score.

“I designed it as the trailer for a movie that was never made,” he said. “But it was total computer animation.”

By 2006 Geoff was sending out resumes, seeking a position with a visual effects company.

“I started working for Digital Domain in 2007 after interviewing with several other companies,” he said, noting Digital Domain brought him on board as a support person, assisting with facial capture technology.

“I was good at that job, so they relied on me,” Geoff said. “When they needed facials for ‘Tron: Legacy,’ I took over on the facial effects.”

The company often brought Geoff in to consult on other projects.

Geoff said he became known as the “mad scientist” who developed new digital effect techniques.

“I would kind of throw things together just to see how they came out,” he said. “And two of those techniques became cornerstones for Digital Domain’s visual effects program.”

Speaking of his Academy Award, Geoff said while it’s great to receive such recognition for the work he and Apostoloff have done, that isn’t the reason they do it.

“I didn’t want anything from this work, I just like doing it,” he said. “It’s a fulfilling job and I enjoy going to work every day. I get to live out my childhood dream, and how many people can say that?”