Kevin Bjorke

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Kevin Allen Bjorke is an American artist, photographer, writer, and evangelist for NVIDIA, based in Silicon Valley. His work spans print advertising, video games, major films, and books, and he has lectured on art at SIGGRAPH since the mid-1980s.

Education: Bjorke studied at the California Institute of the Arts, combining film/video with cinematography and theatre. He also spent time at UCLA, USC, the University of Minnesota, and the American Film Institute.

Film work: Bjorke helped with imaging and lighting for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and The Last Flight of the Osiris. He served as a technical director and lead layout artist for A Bug’s Life and Toy Story, and built the 3D graphics studio and software for the Super Mario Bros. film adaptation. He has long worked in television, is a member of ATAS and IATSE, and has won awards for TV commercials and rock videos for Mick Jagger. In the 1990s, he worked in Paris with Philippe Druillet on a feature-animated film based on Lone Sloane, which was shelved due to budget issues.

Theme parks: Bjorke contributed to theme-park attractions, creating ride films such as The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera for Universal Studios Orlando, and doing test rides for Disneyland. He also created two stereo rides for Sanrio in Chiba City and Ōita, Japan.

Games: In gaming, he has worked with Sinclair, Atari, Square, and Pixar in various lead roles. In the mid-1980s he helped develop an ambitious Mind Movie project with Timothy Leary and artists like Keith Haring, William S. Burroughs, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Helmut Newton, based on William Gibson’s Neuromancer; Atari ultimately shelved the project. Bjorke also helped create Palace virtual worlds and an early web CGI application called BotBot, which let users customize their avatars’ automated backends.

Writing and public speaking: As a journalist, Bjorke contributed to Little Bit Magazine and produced segments for ABC News in Minneapolis. He has been a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and served on its publisher-grievances committee. He contributed to The RenderMan Companion and edited/author for the GPU Gems series. He wrote for 3D Artist, Develop, and CGWorld Japan, and his photography has appeared in Springer Verlag magazines and Black & White Magazine. He maintains PhotoRant.com and PhotoPermit.org and continues to lecture on game design, art, and technology at events such as the Game Developers Conference and for NVIDIA.

External links include NVIDIA Developer Site, Botzilla/KevinBjorke.com, and PhotoPermit.org.