SCOTT SQUIRES - BIO
Scott Squires has a full range of experience working with both traditional and cutting edge digital techniques to create photo real visual effects. His career began with the development of the Cloud Tank Effect for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
His creative and technical problem solving combined with his knowledge and experience has allowed him to achieve the artistic vision of his directors.
Squires received Oscar nominations for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for “The Mask,” “Dragonheart” and “Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace.” He also received a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his pioneering work in the area of Film Input Scanning.
Squires co-founded Dream Quest Images where he was a Visual Effects Supervisor, as well as the company’s president for six years. Dream Quest was a leading visual effects facility from 1979-2001 before it was purchased by Disney Studios.
After running Dream Quest, Squires was recruited by ILM where he worked as a visual effects supervisor and commercial director for twenty years.
An avid inventor, Squires has developed a number of tools and processes to accomplish his work. Squires developed Commotion, a visual effects software package for doing rotoscoping, animation and compositing. Squires founded Puffin Designs, Inc. in 1997 to market Commotion which was acquired by Pinnacle Systems which was in turn acquired by Avid.
For Van Helsing he developed a technique to shoot bluescreen actresses to match predefined animation. On Dragonheart he wrote a program to gather data from a digital surveyors tool and also convert it into the necessary data format to load into a 3D application. He also wrote the software for doing the exploding star sequence in Dragonheart.
Squires has recently developed iPhone applications including a Paint Program (Squiggles) and a video puzzle game (Fliparoni)
Squires is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences -Visual Effects Branch. Squires is on the board of the Visual Effects Society and on the technical committee. He volunteered to contribute his time to writing chapters in the Visual Effects Handbook by the Visual Effects Society.