WILLIAM A. SPITZAK

Address & email go here


EXPERIENCE:

Desgined and implemented system and application software for Linux, Windows NT and 2000, SGI IRIX, Sun SPARCstation, NeXT, and OS/X workstations. Software written in C++, C, Objective-C, Perl, TCL, Lisp. User interfaces designed with X/Xlib, OpenGL, GDI32, FLTK, Qt and Qt designer, Xt/Motif/OLIT, Display PostScript, Sun NeWS and TNT, NeXTstep, SGI GL and 4Sight, NeXT window server. Some Quartz, MacOS, and PEX. Projects include user interfaces, user interface toolkits, language interpreters, parsers, translators, graphics pipeline software, 3-D modelling and rendering, 2-D image filtering and compositing, and graphic image format converters. Composed and edited end-user documentation and provided end-user technical support.

Modeling experience with Maya, Houdinit, Prisms, Alias, some Wavefront. Rendering and shader writing experience with Renderman Experienced with Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator, FreeHand, and similar drawing and painting tools.

Produced rofessional-quality cel animation and special effects animation and storyboarding experience. Award winning artist, working in acrylic/airbrush, drafting and illustration experience. Non-professional experience as a production designer, set decorator, sound editor, and special effects designer on independent and student productions, and television commercials.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

Digital Domain (1993-present)

Senior software developer. Wrote a very large interactive compositing environment (Nuke) used to pull keys, color correct, combine, transform, and filter images for feature films. Wrote other interactive tools and the FLTK user interface toolkit. Extensive work diagnosing and finding solutions to production problems.

Sidley Wright Motionworks (1993)

Created image processing and manipulation software for Iris Indigo and Pixar Image Computer. Developed methods for ink and paint of animation cels, image translation, compresssion, and storage.

Sun Microsystems (1992-1993)

As a member of the NeWS/TNT toolkit team, creating user interface objects using NeWS (PostScript) and porting objects between TNT and other toolkits using XLib and OLIT. As part of the OLIT team, designed and implemented new widgets for the OLIT Xt toolkit, and wrote automated and manual testing programs and demonstration software for TNT, OLIT, and XLib.

USC Computer Graphics Laboratory (1990-1992)

Animator for IMAX Hawaii film, HDTV productions, and student films, using SGI VGX hardware, Alias modeling and raytracing, and custom designed 2-D image compositing software.

Mark of the Unicorn, Inc., Cambridge MA (1983-1992)

Designed, implemented, and documented Borland's Sprint word processor, Final Word II for PC's, Communicaé terminal emulator for the NeXT and other end user software systems. Designed and implemented GUI toolkit libraries for NeXT and other machines.

Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard MA (1981-1983)

Designed and implemented an error-correcting table-driven Ada parser. Developed experimental syntax-driven editors for the Ada language. Ported a CLU compiler from BSD to VMS.

EDUCATION:

University of Southern California, School of Cinema/Television (1987-1991)

Master of Fine Arts in Cinema Production

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1980-1983)

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering

University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1979-1980)

Majored in Physics and Computer Science.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Motion Picture Academy Technical Achievement Award (2002)

For Digital Domain's Nuke Compositing System.

Art Awards (1984-1989)

Several awards from Science Fiction conventions