Biography
Jon A. Bell is an award-winning computer graphics artist and technical writer who has produced CG imagery for television, films, computer games, multimedia, and print. He provided animation for the films "Exorcist III: Legion," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid," "Soldier" and "Mighty Joe Young." His video and film work includes Autodesk's 1991, 1994 and 1997 SIGGRAPH reels, their 1993 and 1996 NAB reels, and work for Digital Phenomena and Matte World Digital. His multimedia and game work includes models and animation for Oracle, LucasArts, Sega of America, and GameTek. Since 1996, he has written four books on Autodesk's 3ds max program, and provided illustrations for the book "Tripping," by Charles Hayes, published October 2000 by Penguin USA. Jon works as a computer graphics artist and technical writer for various TV production companies on both the East and West Coast. Since 2003, he has provided more than 700 CG shots for TV shows including the Discovery Channel's "Solving History" and "Treasure Quest," History's "Modern Marvels," "Tactical to Practical," and "Man, Moment, Machine" (for which Jon won 3 Telly Awards.) He has also provided graphics for TV specials such as National Geographic's "SuperCarrier" and "42 Ways to Kill Hitler," and History's "101 Objects That Changed the World" and "Ancient Ink." In 2013, Jon created and produced one hour of stereo CGI (in both HD and 4K resolutions) for the first episode of 3Net's "Unraveling the Cosmos" TV series; the 4K version of this show won a Lumiere Award on 1/28/2014 from the International 3D & Advanced Imaging Society. He also provides CG and tech writing support for Hawkes Ocean Technologies, Pt. Richmond, CA (www.deepflight.com), builders of the minisubs Deep Flight I, the Deep Flight 502 "Aviator," the "Super Falcon" and the upcoming "Dragon." Most recently, he created 18 CG comp shots for the TV series "zNation" for the SyFy Channel. Jon and his wife Joan Gale Frank (writer/script consultant on "Unraveling the Cosmos") live in Lake Oswego, OR.
