Colin Campbell ’84 Named Visual Effects Society Fellow

Colin Campbell ’84, VES, sits at his desk in his home office in Dallas watching his neighbors walk their dogs outside. Little do those passerbys know, Campbell is working on a top-secret project on his computer, something so classified that he would lose his job—and potentially face even worse consequences—if any of his work leaked. There isn’t a boring spreadsheet illuminating Campbell’s monitors. Rather, it’s the highly anticipated 2021 superhero blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Campbell is busy creating the visual effects for the scene where Spider-Man fights the Green Goblin in Happy Hogan’s apartment complex.

Campbell is no stranger to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He was the artist responsible for the “What did it cost?” scene between Thanos and young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War, for instance. Ironically, he wasn’t the biggest fan of superheroes growing up.

“While everybody else was reading Spider-Man and Superman, I was reading the monster magazines,” Campbell remembers.

Like many young boys, Campbell was fascinated by dinosaurs as a kid and dreamed of being a paleontologist. After being exposed to monster movies, though, Campbell’s dream shifted from digging up dinosaurs to creating them for the big screen. The way to achieve that dream became clear when Campbell was reading the Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Flipping to a picture of the legendary animator and special effects creator Ray Harryhausen holding a dinosaur model from One Million Years B.C., Campbell couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I knew that small dinosaur model was the one that was in the movie, but I always assumed they were giant robots or something. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible to take that tiny thing and transform it into something so massive on the screen,” Campbell recalls.

A few issues later, the magazine included an article promoting The Golden Voyage of Sinbad with another picture of Harryhausen holding a creature model. The article explained stop motion animation, and a switch flicked on in Campbell’s head. From that moment on, Campbell set his sights on a career in visual effects.

As the Oklahoma native was applying to colleges with film programs, he discovered that he wouldn’t be able to get his hands on film equipment until he was a graduate student at many of the larger universities. With Trinity University’s film program, however, he could take film production courses right away as an undergraduate student. 

“That was huge for me, and then I was reading through the prospective student materials again and saw that Trinity’s amazing dorms also come with a cleaning service. That sealed the deal, so I chose Trinity based on those two criteria without having ever visited the campus,” Campbell laughs.

Campbell wasted no time working on his journalism, broadcasting, and film (JBF) degree (what later transitioned to the radio, television, and film (RTF) degree and is now a major in communication), completing all the prerequisites in his first semester to enroll in a course the next semester traditionally reserved for sophomores called The Aesthetics of Sight, Sound, and Motion taught by Manfred Wolfram. David Thomas’ screenwriting courses sharpened Campbell’s idea of how visual effects played a role in storytelling, and he took as many courses as he could with William Christ, Ph.D.

The tight-knit Trinity community left a lasting mark on Campbell. Once every summer, he still gathers with a handful of friends he made on campus for a weekend in Galveston.

“Trinity is such a unique environment. Because it’s such a residential campus, you really get to know everyone there. I knew most of my graduating class, and I don’t think the kids who go to those big schools can say that,” Campbell contends. “Trinity has much more of a sense of local community, and I love that aspect of my college experience.”

In a world without LinkedIn or online job boards, Campbell turned to the Yellow Pages after graduation, mass mailing his resume to any place where he thought he could get his hands on a camera lens, eventually landing a job setting up audio visual equipment for business meetings at hotels in San Antonio.

“I did that for two years before I realized that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg aren’t going to find me sitting in the back of a hotel storage room with this AV equipment,” says Campbell, “so I made the decision to pack up and blindly move to Los Angeles with no job.”

After doing a similar job setting up audio visual equipment in Los Angeles, Campbell began working at Klasky Csupo, an American animation studio founded in 1982. He spent half his day as a runner, but for the other half of the day, he was able to get involved in the production process. He got his start operating motion control cameras on the animated commercial bumpers for The Simpsons before picking up more visual effects oriented jobs, with James Cameron’s The Abyss as the first movie he worked on. Movies like Hook, Babe, Anaconda, Starship Troopers, Transformers, Coraline, and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith followed. Fans of the Wizarding World will recognize Campbell’s work in the Quidditch scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Harry and the Dementors.

“Once you get that first credit, you know you’re in the club, and then your name starts getting passed around, allowing you to pick up more jobs,” explains Campbell.

Campbell is quick to stress that a real passion is required to work in his field.

“It’s almost like you have to run away and join the circus. You’ve got to give up a lot of social aspects of your life because it’s long hours with fast-moving deadlines,” he says. “You have to take a lot of criticism and be able to communicate and collaborate with different people.”

Like the rest of the entertainment industry, streaming has impacted the work of visual effects artists. Besides television shows demanding the same feature quality of films now, the work is much less seasonal.

“Before streaming took over, everybody was busy in the winter and spring working on movies that were coming out in the summer. Once everything came out, everyone took a big break in the summer. In early fall, you might get a job for a Christmas movie or something that was coming out for the holidays. There was always a predictable flow. Streaming changed that because shows can come out at any time,” Campbell says.

According to Campbell, the visual effects industry is still recovering from the loss of work as a result of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes in 2023.

“The margins in visual effects are really thin. It’s all based on government tax incentives, so whatever country offers the best tax incentive to the studio is usually where the work ends up. Right now, Australia seems to be the hot spot, along with London and Vancouver. I’ve got friends in Los Angeles that are scared they’re going to lose their homes because the work is getting sent overseas,” Campbell shares.

Campbell is doing his part to give back and build a way forward for the industry he has devoted 38 years of his life to. He has served two three-consecutive terms on the Visual Effect Society’s (VES) Global Board of Directors for a total of 12 years and was re-elected to begin a new term in January 2026. He was also instrumental in the formation of the 16th VES section in Texas in January 2024.

“Texas isn’t really considered a headquarters for visual effects, but we’re trying to change that. Texas’ lower cost of living and tax incentives, along with the active presence of the Texas Section of the Visual Effects Society, make us a prime target for visual effects production,” says Campbell.

In addition, Campbell has been partnering with the Texas Film Commission and other local film commissions to educate them about how the visual effects process works and why visual effects are the low hanging fruit when it comes to creating jobs in Texas. He has also been visiting schools across the state speaking with students about what he does and sharing insights about getting a foot in the door in the industry.

“Texas has always been so focused on who the big celebrity is coming to the state, like when Harrison Ford filmed in San Antonio for 1923. Nobody really stops to think about who makes the dragons or the spaceships,” remarks Campbell. “I want to raise awareness of our work so that by the time I declare retirement, hopefully I will have created in Texas someplace where these young people can get a job in visual effects without having to fly halfway around the world to do what they want to do.”

In November 2025, the VES recognized Campbell as a VES Fellow at its Honors Celebration in Los Angeles for his outstanding contributions to visual effects and his dedicated service to the VES and the entertainment industry at large.

About a year ago, Campbell returned to Trinity’s campus, blown away by new additions like MakerSpace and renovations and updates for TigerTV. One thing that hadn’t changed that warmed Campbell’s heart to no end, though, was finding a book called The Making of King Kong still available to be checked out from the shelves of Coates Library, a book that he checked out and held onto as long as he could when he was a Trinity student. With over 50 films and television shows under his belt, this discovery took this VES Fellow back to being a young boy reading monster magazines and watching monster movies, experiencing a childlike sense of wonder for movie magic all over again.