Last night, 13 students from colleges and universities around the world were honored as winners at the 39th Annual Student Academy Awards.

The medal placements were announced at the awards ceremony, which featured as presenters actors Laura Dern, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Greg Kinnear and Mena Suvari, alongside Academy President Tom Sherak at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

And as you can see in the above photo, there's one brotha in the group of 13 award winners, and I figured we'd give him some *shine* here on S&A; he just might be a talent we'll be talking about in the future, so add Mr Eric Prah to your talent watch-lists.

He's an animator, which I think is great, as we rarely hear/read/write about black animators, even though they most certainly are out there, working mostly in silence. And I'd really love to know more black animators working in or out of the *industry*, so that we can profile you and your work here as well. So email us!

In the meantime, meet Eric Prah, who won the Bronze Medal a the 39th Annual Student Academy Awards, for his short film, My Little Friend. Eric Prah attended Ringling College of Art and Design, in Sarasota, FL. In the photo above, he's with the gold and silver award winners in the animation category.

In the first video clip below, Mena Suvari announces him as the Bronze Medal winner at the Awards ceremony last night, and he gives his recipient speech; in the second, he intros the short film he won the award for, and we get to see a short piece of it.

And here's Eric introducing his short, as well as a clip from it.