David B. Coons is an Academy Award-winning
computer graphicsComputer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of pictorial data by a computer....
professional who is perhaps best-known as the inspiration for the title of
Po BronsonPo Bronson is an American journalist and author who lives in San Francisco, California.-Personal history:Born in Seattle, Washington. After attending Lakeside School in Seattle, Bronson graduated from Stanford University and briefly worked as an assistant-bond-salesman in San Francisco...
's
The Nudist on the Late Shift, but is also a longtime CGI expert of near-"Pioneer" status.
Active in the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures....
, Coons works behind the scenes in the film and computer graphics industries. He is also the president and owner of
ArtScans Studio in
Culver City, CaliforniaCulver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 38,816. The community is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also has a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County...
, where he uses a
scannerScanner may refer to a number of technological devices:* Scanner , for searching for and receiving radio broadcasts* A rotating radar antenna* Image scanner, which digitizes a two-dimensional image...
of his own invention to serve a clientele of celebrity artists and fine artists.
David B. Coons is an Academy Award-winning
computer graphicsComputer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of pictorial data by a computer....
professional who is perhaps best-known as the inspiration for the title of
Po BronsonPo Bronson is an American journalist and author who lives in San Francisco, California.-Personal history:Born in Seattle, Washington. After attending Lakeside School in Seattle, Bronson graduated from Stanford University and briefly worked as an assistant-bond-salesman in San Francisco...
's
The Nudist on the Late Shift, but is also a longtime CGI expert of near-"Pioneer" status.
Scanning and Computer Graphics
Active in the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures....
, Coons works behind the scenes in the film and computer graphics industries. He is also the president and owner of
ArtScans Studio in
Culver City, CaliforniaCulver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 38,816. The community is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also has a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County...
, where he uses a
scannerScanner may refer to a number of technological devices:* Scanner , for searching for and receiving radio broadcasts* A rotating radar antenna* Image scanner, which digitizes a two-dimensional image...
of his own invention to serve a clientele of celebrity artists and fine artists. The ArtScans page describes the scanner this way: "ArtScans has been doing accurate color capture for reproduction since 1992. We own and operate a large (44" x 50") flatbed scanner that is the only one of its kind in the world. Both the scanner and its software were designed by us."
Keith Goldfarb (co-founder of
Rhythm and Hues StudiosRhythm & Hues Studios is an Academy Award - winning visual effects studio. It is perhaps best known for its computer generated 3D character animation. Recognized internationally as one of Hollywood's top visual effects and animation facilities, Rhythm & Hues has more than 100 feature films to its...
, a computer-graphics studio that works on major motion pictures -
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian and
The Chronicles of Narnia - as well as high-end commercials) has called him "the most knowledgeable person about scanning on this planet."
Coons's first business partner was
Graham NashGraham William Nash is a British singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer.- Music career...
of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The two worked together for several years in Nash's Manhattan Beach company,
Nash Editions, scanning fine art and creating archival-quality printouts. Because Nash is a photographer, some of the challenge had to do with re-creating images for which prints and negatives had been lost-- and in some cases, the pictures were to be enlarged, a tricky endeavour indeed when one doesn't want to lose resolution.
In the mid-1990s, Coons split off from Nash Editions to concentrate on scanning, while Nash's team continued to work on premium-quality prints. The two companies still share a close relationship, and refer clients to one another.
Film Production
Coons's Academy Award is for design and development of the
Computer Animation Production SystemThe Computer Animation Production System is a proprietary collection of software programs, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by The Walt Disney Company together with Pixar in the late-1980s...
production system for film
animationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways...
; as a technical Oscar, it is shared with the rest of the team that worked on CAPS. This award served to get him into the Academy, where he's regarded as a deeply involved and committed member.
Coons has been involved with motion-picture technology since he was in junior high school, where he was one of the "Audio-Visual Team" that handled the equipment for educational films and shows (it would be quite shocking if he had not been). Coons has made a number of "amateur" films, in addition to several student-style efforts. He was also the cameraman, cinematographer, craft services and technical consultant on
John P. McCannJohn P. McCann is an American-born writer, actor and producer who has mostly focused on writing/producing animation and family-friendly scripts in the past. He is best-known for his work on television cartoons, for which he has received numerous awards, but he has also produced live-action...
's
The Glendale Ogre. He is widely regarded as a "connector" in the sense
Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell is a British-born Canadian journalist, author, and pop sociologist, based in New York City. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
wrote about in
The Tipping Point, though some see him as a Gladwellian "maven." He is also, thanks to Bronson, a very famous nudist.
Personal life
David B. Coons was born in 1960, and grew up in Santa Monica, California. He attended
Santa Monica High SchoolSanta Monica High School , informally known as Samohi or just Samo, is a public school located in Santa Monica, California which was founded in 1884 . It is one of the oldest High Schools in California...
while living in a highly unconventional family arrangement: he alternated between his uncle's apartment (where he actually had a bedroom) and his father's apartment (which was his sister's official residence), several blocks away. During his high school years he was a member of the "Olive Starlight Orchestra" (not an orchestra at all, but rather a social circle akin to Virginia Woolf's
Bloomsbury Group), that included other legal, creative, mathematical and scientific luminaries such as Kate Sanford, Wendy Sue Lamm, David Eadington, Eric Enderton,
Greg TurkGreg Turk is an American-born researcher in the field of computer graphics and a Professor at the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology...
,
Sandra Tsing LohSandra Tsing Loh is a Los Angeles, California-based writer, actress, performance-artist, pop-culture analyst, and radio commentator.-Biography:Loh is the daughter of a Chinese father and a German mother...
,
Susan P. CrawfordSusan P. Crawford is President Barack Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy. She is a former Board Member of ICANN and the founder of OneWebDay....
, and entrepreneur Christophe Pettus (founder of the company
BlowfishBlowfish is an online sex toy catalog offering erotic toys, books, supplies and videos.-History:Founded May 1, 1994 Blowfish was one of the first online sex toy catalogs. With the motto "Good Products for Great Sex", Blowfish is known for their honest, thorough and often humorous reviews of their...
). His chief strength as a filmmaker is his ability to walk backward while holding a camera absolutely still; his colleagues call him "the human dolly." The first film he ever completed was an egregiously bad takeoff on vampire movies entitled
Murder in Vein; presumably, Coons hopes the public at large will never stumble onto that particular film. He also performed camera work on a short called
The Juggler, which starred Keith Goldfarb.
It has been remarked upon by other "Olives" that Coons's steady hand doesn't only help him in wielding a camera: it is also very useful for carrying his dates' martinis in such a way that they do not spill. (Coons himself rarely drinks.)
At the main Siggraph Convention every year, Coons can be identified by the job description on his badge, which invariably reads "Mad Scientist." (For the first time in 20 years or so Coons did not attend Siggraph in 2009. The reason give was reduced financial circumstances that would, apparently, have made it more difficult to get to New Orleans. His friend think there's a woman to blame, but that also needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
Irrespective, it is the end of an era.
External links