Biography: Bruce Walters

February 2014

Bruce Walters started his professional career in 1967 as a participant in an experimental training program at Seattle's Boeing Aircraft. Fifteen men, carefully selected for their mechanical and mathematic aptitude, were tested for spatial visualization skill, trigonometric understanding, and electro-mechanical comprehension. Those who passed the tests were enrolled in a machinist boot camp designed to prove that cheap genius could trump expensive craftsmanship. The program was a total failure. Within six months fourteen of the candidates, including Bruce, left the program, potentially saving the lives of thousands of future fliers.

Aviation's loss was Bruce's gain. During his short-lived stint as a blue-collar lab experiment and mis-diagnosed electro-mechanical/mathematics prodigy, Bruce at least learned to print well enough to catch the eye of a Denver employment officer who was looking for neat printers to staff an engineering firm. Thus, from 1967 until 1969, Bruce worked as a contract technical illustrator for Western Electric, Honeywell, and Lockheed Aircraft. Moral: Good penmanship counts. So does clean underwear (so I'm told.)

In 1970 Bruce started the Graphic Arts Department at Pierce College in Tacoma, Washington, where he and his small team of professional and student artists produced posters, educational materials, slide shows, videos, and photography for the college's educational and extracurricular needs. He also started a closed circuit, student television program, and won several awards for his graphics and paintings. He also married Ginny, the most incredible woman in the world at the time and future U.S. Army Sergeant, Executive Producer, Entertainment Vice-president, and Operations Manager at San Francisco General Hospital's Emergency Psychiatric Unit -- good experience for living with her shiny new husband.

In 1974 Bruce started the Art Factory where he produced posters and graphics for Bachman Turner Overdrive, Richard Leakey, and Wayne Aho: UFO enthusiast, alien contactee, and who "walked up to me and said 'Hi, Bruce' the first time we laid eyes on each other." Doo do doo do.

In late 1974 the now Sgt. Ginny shipped off basic training in the Alabama swamps and then headed to Nürnberg, West Germany to fight Commies. A few weeks later Bruce and their five year old son (don't do the math) joined her. The idea of a female NCO with a bearded dependent husband really screwed with some military minds. The day Bruce landed Ginny (while in morning formation) was informed that her "wife" was at the airport.

Fortunately, the men and women of the US military forces were kind to Bruce although MP's pulled him over and searched him a few times just because they could.

Despite the confusion, Bruce got a civilian job with the US Army's Pre-Discharge Education Program as head of audio/visual materials for 30 Bavarian education centers in an area bordered by Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and the Czechoslovakian border. The program's goal was to teach soldiers how to read and write before they were discharged.

Sad but true.

The good news was that nine months after the day Sgt. Ginny's "wife" arrived in Nürnberg, Ginny gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

Bruce and family returned to Seattle in 1976 where he worked until 1978 as a freelance graphic designer. This was a dark period in Bruce's life. After two years of life on the other side of the world learning foreign money exchange rates, the metric system, and the autobahn, Bruce found himself unprepared for his return to 55 mile per hour speed limits, yellow diamond road signs, and a complete lack of schweinehaxen, bratwurst, and marzipan pigs.

Then, on some sunny Seattle day in 1978, a miracle happened. Bruce applied for work as a Special Effects Director at a Seattle film studio and got the job. Bruce's first production, filmed in glorious 35mm on a home made animation stand in his living room, won an Clio. Unfortunately the the film studio got to keep the award and never paid Bruce for his work, but the experience ignited Bruce's passion for film...

...and should have served as an omen regarding the paying habits of some future clients.

In 1978 Bruce opened Trickfilm, a film special effects and animation studio in Seattle. (That's the logo at the top of my blog page page.). From 1978 until 1983 Bruce art directed and created visual designs and animation for hundreds of national television commercials, industrial films, and feature title sequences for clients such as Standard Oil, the Ice Capades, the Harlem Globetrotters, Kenworth Trucks, and Lawman Jeans.

At the same time, Bruce co-developed the Peashooter, an ultra-miniature, motion-controlled, borescope camera system, that he used to create visual effects for the Washington State National History Museum, PBS, and Nike.

In 1983 Bruce also taught special effects theory and production techniques at the University of Washington.

In late 1983, Bruce moved to Marin County, California's to work for George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic. Between 1983 and 1993 Bruce was Department Head of ILM's Animation, Motion Control Camera, and Matte Painting Departments where he supervised forty of the most world's foremost artists, animators, and camera operators and played a key role in the effects production of over sixty major motion pictures including Indiana Jones II and III; Back to the Future I, II, and III; Star Trek III, IV, and VI; the Hunt for Red October; Crimson Tide; and the Rocketeer.

In the process Bruce designed and supervised the construction of over $1,000,000 worth of computer-controlled camera equipment including revolutionary, motion-controlled matte painting cameras. In 1990 Bruce became one of the first five Photoshop users and, with John Knoll, Yusei Uesugi, and Paul Huston), invented the process of digital matte painting producing over 100 shots for Die Hard 2, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Jurassic Park -- all done on early Macintosh computers!

At ILM Bruce won a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for his effects work on The Witches of Eastwick and national Emmy honors for his digital matte painting development on he Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. 

In 1993 Bruce left ILM and started XO Digital Arts where he, his trusty Macs, and a crew of two students created and supervised special effects, matte paintings, 3D animation, and digital composites for 500 Nations, Flubber, Spawn, Xiu-Xiu the Sent Down Girl, Reindeer Games, I'll Be Home for Christmas, Autumn in New York, and other films and national commercials.

In 1996, Bruce supervised effects for Crush Depth and An American Werewolf in Paris supervising crews in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. He also created IMAX matte paintings for the Smithsonian Institution's Cosmic Voyage and 3D, stereographic background paintings for the IWERKS version of Duck Dodgers in the Third Dimension.

Between 1993 and 2005 Bruce wrote and optioned several screenplays and obtained the rights to El Bulbo, a Mexican comic book character. Unfortunately, none of the projects made it into production. But they came "this" close.

In 2005 the film and television commercial industry collapsed. In an fit of panicked desperation, Bruce dipped his toe in the game world. As the Studio Art Director at Stormfront Studios, Bruce was a member of the senior management team where he successfully managed and directed a crew of 35 art directors, concept artists, modelers, animators, and environment artists to create the Eragon and Spiderwick video games and an early prototype for an unannounced (and, alas, unrealized) PlayStation3 game.

But 2-1/2 years in the game business took its toll. In 2007, Bruce emerged broken and brain dead from the dark and bizarre hell-hole of video games, making him the ideal candidate for a position as the Studio Director of a "shall be unnamed" virtual world company where he supervised the project's 25 artist production team. Without going into detail, this it was here the omen mentioned above from 1978 came to pass.

On Febuary 6, 2009, Bruce gave the virtual world the old heave-ho and dived back into the real world of independent film production where Bruce teaches a variety of masters and undergraduate animation and visual effects courses at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, is currently working on preproduction for a collaborative AAU animation short, and just finished a feature-length documentary on the philosopher Alan Watts produced by his son Mark. 

The adventure, as always, is just beginning.