Selection 1976-1979

Tomislav Mikulić (1953) is a Croatian-Australian artist, and a pioneer of computer graphics and computer animation. He learned the computer programming language Fortran at a high school in Zagreb in 1970. A year later, he enrolled to study at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Zagreb (ETF) where he was offered a position as an Assistant at the Laboratory for Computer Programming. He made his first computer graphics in 1971. In 1972, he enrolled to study the traditional techniques of graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. At the same time as developing hand drawing skills, he produced a number of computer graphics which he started to exhibit. That earned him a place in the avant-garde art movement “New Tendencies” with nine computer graphics included in the “Tendencies 5” exhibition in 1973. In 1976, he had his first solo exhibition in Gallery Nova in Zagreb and screened the first computer animated film in the country (then Yugoslavia). He wrote the computer programs by himself (in Fortran, Assembler and Basic computer languages) and developed a morphing algorithm. He was Head of TV Design Department at the national television network TV Zagreb in 1980, where he established the Electronic graphics Department. He established his own studio for animation and graphic design in Melbourne “High Resolution Design Studio” in 1992. His animation was selected by Autodesk, Inc. and included in their showreel at SIGGRAPH ’96. In the same year, he was one of three nominated animators for the Australian Effects and Animation Festival annual award, the most prestigious Australian award for animation.