Gumby, Godzilla, HG Wells and Ray Harryhausen form the foundation of
Jamie's love for special effects. With eyes glued to the magical images
glowing from the TV, the seed was being planted deep. On a trip to
California, when he asked how they made Gumby move, his father told him
of stop-motion animation and gave him his first Gumby. It was that long
ride back to Maryland where he fantasized about making his own Gumby
movies.
Fireball XL5, Star Trek, Bewitched, Lost in Space and My Favorite
Martin add fuel to his interests in special effects, so by 1966 armed
with the family's 8mm movie camera, he finally got the chance to
explore making films for himself.
There were a few attempts at stop motion animation but mostly you saw
things disappear, explode and move about in an unnatural manner. As you
might guess, there were many "test" reels with just a couple of "full
feature films" getting produced.
When personal computers began to show up in the late '70s, he dove into
the wonderful world of tape drives and basic programming, soon
discovering that he had an unusual rapport with the beasts. The big
project this decade was converting "Start Trek" the basic game over to
the more contemporary "Battle Star Galactica" for the Pet 2000, many
Cylons died that year, I'm here to say.
This talent eventually got him work at Autodesk, Inc. in 1986 in their
Product Support group. During this time he became a key player in
Autodesk's animation software development working with John Walker on
Autodesk's first animation package, AutoFlix (for use with AutoCAD and
AutoShade), and then moving on to do all the development on AutoFlix
2.0 which included the Animation Tool Kit for AutoCAD.
Using this early PC based animation software, along with Autodesk
Animator, he helped Nano Technologist Eric Drexler (author of Engines
of Creation) to visualize how nano machines might look. This animation
was used in the BBC documentary "Little by Little" and was the first
time an Autodesk animation product had been used for broadcast
television.
Working closely with the Yost Group (the authors of Animator Pro and
Autodesk's 3D Studio software), he assisted in the design and testing
of the software, often defining the methods that could be used to
achieve a wide range of special effects.
When 3D Studio was a few months away from release, Gary Yost realized a
need to "production test" this new product, so thanks to his previous
involvement with Autodesk Animator, he was given the "unofficial" duty
to manage a collection of computers (not networked) that were quickly
assembled for the making of "The Bored Room".
As far as anyone seems to know, the industry term "Render Farm" was
coined during this production by Bob Bennett when he was commenting on
Jamie's regular attire of farmer's bib coveralls.
Leveraging the production experience from "Bored Room" and producing
many of the initial animations that Autodesk used to promote its
products, Jamie founded and managed Autodesk's first internal team of
digital artists whose charter was to do production testing with the
byproduct of producing material for Autodesk's Marketing needs.
This production group grew to about 15 employees and went from a group
with tech to an autonomous group reporting to the director of corporate
marketing. They were producing everything from promotional CD ROMS to
images for ads, posters and of course corporate videos - all the while
delivering design testing and feedback for now a wide range of
Autodesk's products, not just 3D Studio.
Realizing the potential for the burgeoning 3D effects market Jamie left
Autodesk to pursue a new path using the tools he helped to create. In
1995 he opened up a small one man studio at "Jr. Walker Ranch" (in
Lucas Valley) and founded "digital phenomena", specializing in digital
image effects.
One of the first projects was assisting the completion of Paramount's
Film _Virtuosity_ He created special visual effects depicting Denzel
Washington's virtual fall and subsequent atomization in the film's
climactic ending sequences. This was one of the first times PC based
software was employed for doing a majority of the special effects in a
major film.
Shortly there after Kevin O'Lone (Jamie's brother-in-law) joined dph to
grow it into a larger business and in 12 months we did just that. At
our peak they had 14 staff members (plus a good number of interns)
doing simultaneous work on films, games and broadcast projects.
In early 1998 they were prepared to move into doing series television
after creating the "sales kit" for "Real Life adventures of Jules
Verne" but the client decided to go with another group located in
Montreal Canada (don't you hate it when that happens.) Unfortunately
they had put too many eggs in that basket, so at that point they
decided to cut their losses and move back to Jr. Walker Ranch to reduce
our overhead.
Most of the dph staff moved on and stayed within "the biz", you'll find
their names within the credits of many of today's blockbuster FX films.
And so it goes.
