Most notably, he won the Young Film-Maker's Competition of the Year Award 1980 on the long-running (1969 to 1984) BBC children's quiz series Screen Test for his animated short "The Rainbow".

[4][5] This was hailed in 2001 on Channel 4's "100 Greatest Kids' TV shows" by ex-Screen Test presenters Michael Rodd and Brian Trueman as "the only occasion in the history of the competition where we came across a piece of film that was spectacularly professional".

The short film "67 Aluminum Plates" was created during the 1998 Ottawa International Animation Festival by a group of volunteers under the direction of Jan Pinkava.

He subsequently worked as a development director at Laika on his new film Little White Lie,[15] but left in 2011;[16] coincidentally in the same year as Claire Jennings, the studio's head of entertainment.

[17] In 2013, as a creative executive in Motorola Mobility, he co-created a new, in-phone, immersive interactive animation storytelling concept: "Let's make a movie, but give the camera to the audience.

[23] The collaborative work won many prizes, including the ASIFA-Hollywood Ub Iwerks award for technical advancement in the art for animation,[24] the first Emmy for outstanding innovation in interactive storytelling,[25] and an Oscar nomination.

[26] Since June 2023, Jan Pinkava has been Director of the Animationsinstitut at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, one of the world's leading institutions for animation, visual effects and interactive media, which is located in Ludwigsburg, Germany.