Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton has been named ShoWest 2004Animation Director of the Year and will collect his honour during the event,which runs in Las Vegas from Mar 22-25.

"To think that Nemo, Marlinand Dory were first introduced to the industry at ShoWest 2003 when Disney andPixar screened Finding Nemo isvery exciting," Mitch Neuhauser, co-managing director of ShoWest 2004, said ina statement.

"The world that AndrewStanton and his Pixar team created on screen takes film - both animated and traditional- to a new level."

Stanton has been at Pixarfor 14 years and served as co-writer on all four of the Pixar pictures thatpreceded Finding Nemo. He was oneof a team of several screenwriters to receive an Oscar nomination in 1996 for ToyStory.

After graduating with adegree in character animation from the California Institute of the Arts,Stanton worked in Los Angeles in the 1980s as an animator for Bill Kroyer'sKroyer Films studio and as a writer on various projects, before joining Pixarin 1990.