Timothy "Tim" Glenn Wilcox (born 27 August 1966; age 58) was a digital visual effects artist who, as a freelancer, has shortly worked for the Star Trek franchise on three occasions.
In 1998, Wilcox was hired by Digital Muse to help the company out with translating the last batch of existing physical studio models into digital ones for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season seven episode "Shadows and Symbols". The two ships he was assigned to were the Bajoran vessel studio model and the Bajoran Antares-class model. Wilcox recollected on his involvement, "I was hired for roughly 4-6 weeks at Digital Muse to handle converting these two models. The technology was not where it is today to allow for detailed, practical models to be scanned on a both economic or aesthetic manner – It needed a Human touch. David Stipes had brought the actual models, crated, to Muse and they both became my office mates for the next few weeks. I photographed the models to assist in both the recreation of the textures and in measuring and accurately modeling the nurnies along the respective hulls. Having the models on hand was the key though, as I constantly was using my ruler to check and double check everything as I was building it. If you look at the top 'bridge' of Freighter 1, you will see that it is a zip kick bottle [a super glue accelerator] in real life that was re-purposed into a cool bit of spaceship. All the modeling was done in Lightwave and the texturing was in Photoshop. After the hero, detailed models were finished, I also circled back and built low poly proxy version which aid tremendously in the animation process and are replaced out prior to final renders of shots." [1] Being lumped together under the company name, his contributions went uncredited individually.
Prior to his involvement with the live-action franchise, Wilcox had, in one of his earliest professional engagements from 1993 – 1995, contributed for Interplay Entertainment to their PC games Star Trek: Judgment Rites (1993 as visual effects artist, rendering the opening movie) and the ultimately unreleased Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (1999 as concept designer and 3D modeler, researching and rebuilding the interior, exterior, and props of the USS Enterprise).
Career outside Star Trek[]
A 1988 graduate from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor's degree in Arts, Cinema Television Production, Tim Wilcox started out his professional career a freelancer in the early 1990s with the two Star Trek games for Interplay being some of his earliest recorded credits. In between these two assignments he worked from 1993 – 1994 for Foundation Imaging, working for them as animator on the television pilot Viper (1994) and the first season of Babylon 5, garnering his first motion picture industry credits.
Afterwards, Wilcox has worked as digital artist in the 1990s for a succession of Hollywood studios and effects companies on such productions as, aside from Deep Space Nine, the last six episodes of Space Above and Beyond (1996, together with other notable freelance Star Trek effects staffer Kim Bailey), as well as Contact (1997), Deep Impact (1998) and Mission to Mars (2000).
Wilcox continued to do so as digital artist and concept illustrator in the 21st century and has accumulated further credits for A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Jurassic Park III (both 2001), The Time Machine (2002), X2 (2003), The Golden Compass, The Day After Tomorrow (both 2004), The Longest Yard (2005), Click (2006, uncredited), I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), Knight and Day (2010), with Cowboys & Aliens (2011) and Blended (2014) two of his more recent movie contributions. Television productions he worked upon in this period included the series Criminal Minds and Star Crossed. His work on Cowboys & Aliens earned Wilcox a 2012 ADG Excellence in Production Design Award co-nomination, which he shared, among others, with a host of (alternate reality) Star Trek production staffers, including Scott Chambliss, Scott Schneider, Christopher Ross, Edwin Natividad, Lauren Polizzi, Harry E. Otto, Lorrie Campbell, John Chichester, Kevin Cross, Anne Porter, James Clyne, Andrea Dopaso, John Mann, Patrick J. Rodriguez, Jeff Frost, Jason Mahakian, Clint Schultz and Karen Manthey.
Aside from his work for the motion picture industry, Tim Wilcox is co-founder and creative director of the advertisement company DigitalFusion CREATIVE, established in 2008, where his motion picture industry skills are put to good use. Additionally he has two US patents to his name, one for a remote controller and one for a digital set-top box.
External links[]
- Tim Wilcox at the Internet Movie Database
- Tim Wilcox at LinkedIn.com
- DigitalFusion CREATIVE – official company site