Template:Realworld Robert "Rob" Bonchune (born 15 September 1970; age 53) is a digital effects expert who worked on the Star Trek productions, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise while in the employ of consecutively, Foundation Imaging, and Eden FX. Bonchune was also part of the team that worked on the Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director's Edition DVD.
Bonchune shared Emmy Awards for his CGI work on the Voyager episodes "Dark Frontier" and "Endgame" and the Enterprise pilot, "Broken Bow". He also received an additional three Emmy nominations for VOY's "Timeless", DS9's "What You Leave Behind", and ENT's "Dead Stop".
Together with Adam Lebowitz, Bonchune conceived the concept of the successful Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series, on which he served as co-editor and co-illustrator for the first three outings. With Lebowitz he also wrote and illustrated the Star Trek: Starship Spotter reference book.
The Nebula-class vessel, the CGI version of which, he created for Voyager's episode "Message in a Bottle", USS Bonchune was named after him, the registry, NCC-70915, a play on his birth date. (source)
Star Trek contributions
CGI work with:
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- USS Enterprise (NCC-1701): Secondary hull, pylons, neck and engines for TMP DE
- DS9:
- USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D): remapping and upgrading of lights
- VOY:
- class 2 shuttle: nurnies
- USS Voyager: remapping
- Delta Flyer: Complete build
- Nebula-class: Complete build
- Aeroshuttle: Complete build
- Aeroshuttle Bay: Complete build
- USS Rhode Island: All mods from original USS Equinox
- ENT:
- Columbia NX-02: remap
He was also responsible for many planets, props, anomalies and astrometrics 3D graphics. His other contributions include many texture tweaks and painting on ships during filming.
Other work
Hailing from Montreal, Canada, Bonchune moved after graduating college to Los Angeles in order "to change his view", according to his mini biography in Starship Spotter. He first worked as a physical studio model maker for television and movies (even as late as 1995 when he contributed as such to Apollo 13, albeit uncredited), before an opening presented itself on the 1993 science fiction television show SeaQuest DSV at Amblin Imaging, where he taught himself the craft of CGI modeling. As digital artist he proceeded to also work for Foundation on the science fiction series Babylon 5, as well as on the 1997 movie The Jackal. After his tenure on the Star Trek franchise, he worked on the television series Surface, which won him a Visual Effects Society Awards nomination in 2006 (shared with Eric Hance, John Teska and Sean Jackson), before quiting Eden FX and joining NBC to work on Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica and its follow-up Caprica. More recently, after joining Pixomondo Visual Effects (an international VFX house, founded in 2001, that currently employs many former Star Trek visual effects staffers) in 2011, he has worked as CGI senior animator on the television series Hawaii Five-O (2011), and Steven Spielberg's science fiction series Terra Nova (2011), and Perception (2012).
Star Trek interviews
- VOY Season 4 DVD special feature "Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects", interviewed on 21 April 2004
- VOY Season 6 DVD special feature "Red Alert: Amazing Visual Effects", interviewed on 21 April 2004
- ENT Season 4 DVD special feature "Visual Effects Magic"
Emmy Awards
Bonchune received the following Emmy Award wins and nominations in the category Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series:
- 1999 Emmy Award win for "Dark Frontier", shared with Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz, Elizabeth Castro, Arthur J. Codron, Dan Curry, Don Greenberg, Paul Hill, Ronald B. Moore, Mitch Suskin, Greg Rainoff, and John Teska
- 1999 Emmy Award nomination for "What You Leave Behind", shared with David Lombardi, Kevin P. Bouchez, Adam Howard, Greg Rainoff, Adam Buckner, Arthur J. Codron, Judy Elkins, Dan Curry, Steve Fong, Don Greenberg, Paul Hill, Davy T. Nethercutt, Sherry Hitch, Gary Hutzel, David Stipes, Paul Maples, Gary Monak, and Larry Younger
- 1999 Emmy Award nomination for "Timeless", shared with John Allardice, Eric Chauvin, Arthur J. Codron, Dan Curry, Don Greenberg, Sherry Hitch, Greg Rainoff, Mitch Suskin, John Teska, and Ron Thornton
- 2001 Emmy Award win for "Dark Frontier", shared with Eric Chauvin, Arthur Codron, Greg Rainoff, and John Teska
- 2002 Emmy Award win for "Broken Bow", shared with David Morton, Elizabeth Castro, Arthur Codron, Dan Curry, Steven Fong, Paul Hill, Ronald B. Moore, and Gregory Rainoff
- 2003 Emmy Award nomination for "Dead Stop", shared with Arthur Codron, Pierre Drolet, Steve Fong, Koji Kuramura, Sean Scott, John Teska, Greg Rainoff, and Mitch Suskin
Bibliography
- "Building and Refitting Starships", Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models, issue 32, September 1998, p. 54
- "Creating fifth season FX for Star Trek: Voyager", Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models International, issue 41, October 1999, pp. 25-26
- Star Trek: Starship Spotter, 2001 - Co-illustrator/Co-author
- Star Trek: Ships Of The Line, Calendar series, 2001 - Co-illustrator/Co-Editor (2001-2003 editions)
- USS Enterprise Owners' Workshop Manual, 2010 - Co-illustrator
External links
- RobertBonchune.com - official site
- Template:IMDb-link
- Robert Bonchune at LinkedIn.com