{"id":163770,"date":"2026-02-04T17:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T17:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/163770\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T17:11:10","slug":"oscar-buzz-olympic-momentum-mark-recent-beach-achievements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/163770\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar buzz, Olympic momentum mark recent Beach achievements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jeremy Spears<\/p>\n

Jeremy Spears \u201907, who graduated from CSULB with a BFA in art illustration, has earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film as co-director and writer of \u201cForevergreen,\u201d a 2025 animated short that follows an orphaned bear cub and a nurturing tree. Spears, an Annie Award-winning story artist at Disney-Pixar, has contributed to major films including \u201cZootopia 2,\u201d \u201cZootopia,\u201d \u201cFrozen,\u201d \u201cMoana,\u201d \u201cEncanto\u201d and \u201cBig Hero 6\u201d and helped shape “Forevergreen\u201d alongside co-director Nathan Engelhardt. The short has screened at international festivals and won several awards, including an Oscar-qualifying prize at AFI Fest, before receiving its Academy Award nomination for the 98th Oscars. In a recent interview<\/a>, Spears credited The Beach with honing his storytelling and composition skills and remembered Professor Robin Richesson<\/a> \u201982, \u201995 as a key mentor.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image Jeremy Spears Jeremy Spears \u201907, who graduated from CSULB with a BFA in art illustration, has earned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1818,6758,1820,7,1823,1821,1822,1819,131,133,132,1817,1816],"class_list":{"0":"post-163770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-award","10":"tag-cal-state","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-conoley","13":"tag-csu","14":"tag-csulb","15":"tag-dirtbags","16":"tag-long-beach","17":"tag-long-beach-headlines","18":"tag-long-beach-news","19":"tag-long-beach-state","20":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}