Hal Hickel started at Industrial Light & Magic in 1996 as an animator for The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He was promoted to lead animator animating several characters in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. In 2000, Hickel was promoted to animation supervisor, and worked with multi-award winning effects supervisor Dennis Murren on A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg. Since then, Hickel has overseen animation work on Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, Iron Man and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. In 2007, his work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was recognised with an Academy Award and BAFTA for Visual Effects.

Hickel was the Animation Supervisor for Guillermo del Toro's sci-fi film Pacific Rim for which he received his fifth BAFTA nomination and a VES Nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects. Prior to that, he was the Animation Director on ILM's first animated feature film "Rango", Oscar winner for Best Animated Film. In 2016, Hickel took on the task of animating the epic battle between Orcs and humans in Warcraft. He served as Animation Supervisor on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which earned him Oscar, BAFTA and VES nominations.

Most recently, Hal Hickel oversaw the animation for the train robbery sequence in Solo: A Star Wars Story and is now Animation Supervisor for The Mandalorian first Star Wars series from Lucasfilm.