Ron Thornton

Ron Thornton (1957–2016) was a pioneer in the field of computer-generated visual effects for film and television. He is best known for pioneering the use of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) in the industry, through his work on the Babylon 5 series, which was the first television series to use CGI for all its visual effects. Thornton and his team won an Emmy award in 1993 for their work in the field. During his career, Thornton also worked with teams providing visual effects for many major science fiction productions, including Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Early career Thornton was born in London in 1957, studying at West Kent College, and subsequently worked at Gatwick Airport as a flight dispatcher. After seeing the movie Alien, Thornton realised, "it dawned on me … that somebody could actually make money building plastic spaceships! That was quite amusing to me…"

Thornton built a few spaceship models, showing them to Mat Irvine at the BBC Special Effects Workshop. One of these was later used as the shuttle in Blake's 7. Irvine later offered Thornton work as his assistant, creating effects and electronic circuits. Among other things, Thornton created guns for the Doctor Who story "Warriors' Gate" Thornton and his friend Paul Beigle-Bryant, whom he had previously known in the UK, began a business as dealers in Psion handheld devices, under the name Foundation Systems.

Thornton ended up running the effects department for Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. Also involved in the series were producer Douglas Netter and writer J. Michael Straczynski, who would both would go on to produce Babylon 5. At that time, Thornton started experimenting on using 3D computer graphics for pre-visualising effects shots, and also purchased his first Commodore Amiga 2000 computer.

Thornton used an Amiga with a Video Toaster board to experiment with creating spaceship shots where not only the spaceship design, but also the motion and lighting could be controlled by the software. Suddenly effects shots which previously would have cost thousands of dollars could be done for much less. Warner Brothers approved the series soon afterwards. Foundation commissioned developer Perry Kivolowitz to write software to enable the Amigas to write video data onto standard digital tape drives, which they then used to deliver their video output to post-production. Foundation's use of computer-generated imagery was less expensive than traditional physical models, and it also enabled the creation of effects which are difficult to create using models, such as having fighter craft spinning on different axes, having hundreds of ships moving in different directions, or dynamically changing the audience's viewpoint via the rotation and banking of the virtual camera.

For the first season of the series, Foundation Imaging used 24 Commodore Amiga 2000 computers with LightWave 3D software and Video Toaster cards, 16 of which were dedicated to rending each individual frame of CGI at a resolution of 720 x 486 pixels, with each frame taking on average 45 minutes to render. FIRE (Foundation Imaging Render Environment), was a resource management software which was key to Foundation's level of output. FIRE handled job queuing, resource management and automatic error recovery. When an animator left his desk, he would click an icon, and FIRE would automatically take over the workstation, making it part of the rendering collective. For the second season, Foundation moved from using Amigas to using PCs, with Paul Beigle-Bryant assembling the computers from components. This was because the cost of buying a computer had to be amortised over a period of years, whereas purchasing components was 100 per cent tax deductible. or "It is a scene from hell: explosion, heavy weapons fire, smoke, the ugly face of war on an alien world ... .”

Thornton also created the CGI-animated series Hypernauts, which aired in 1996, and directed one episode.

Later career and Star Trek After the third season of Babylon 5, producer Douglas Netter's startup company, Netter Digital Entertainment Inc, took over visual effects for the series, and Foundation was left without work. Thornton approached Dan Curry, the visual effects producer for the Star Trek: Voyager series, who engaged Thornton and Foundation to work on roughly every second episode of Voyager. Thornton's team created the spectacular crash landing scene in the one hundredth episode, "Timeless". and Max Steel.

Thornton would also work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Nemesis, the director's cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Star Trek: Enterprise.

By the time Foundation Imaging closed in 2002, it was running upwards of 500 computers in its rendering collective, those that were dedicated render machines – as opposed to workstations – without keyboards, monitors and cases.

Later in his career, Thornton worked on effects for the 2012 pilot of the ABC series, Nashville, and worked on the Austrian web series Talking Tom and Friends. and an "amazing creative force". His approach to his work was, "on't tell us we can't do that, we'll find a way." Designer Luc Mayrand described his time working with Thornton on Babylon 5, "Ron and Foundation were fantastic..., and he, Paul, Mojo, and John Teska were way ahead of the curve in doing effects for tv. Ultimately, Ron's eye (and his team's) was incredible in determining the best final shape and color, plus the cinematography that went with the ships."

In addition to revolutionising the way that visual effects were achieved for television series, Thornton contributed to many significant science fiction series in both the UK and in North America. His work popularised the use of LightWave 3D software, which was to become regarded an industry standard. Thornton was a pioneer in the industry moving from expensive mainframe-based equipment to more affordable hardware and software. This enabled many self-taught and amateur artists to enter the field, with many being mentored by Thornton. Many significant visual effects artists were led or mentored by Thornton at Foundation, such as Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz, John Teska and Emile Smith, who would each go on to work as visual effects supervisors on prominent series, such as the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series.