Talk:Bill Kovacs

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A memorial get-together took place on Sunday, June 4th, 1-3pm at

Rincon Catering & Beach Club
3805 Santa Claus Lane
Carpinteria, CA 93103

Video and many photos were taken and will appear on the web, hopefully soon.
A memorial page with a video clip and photos, including early photos of Bill is here.

If you knew Bill and did not receive an email about the service, please email Dave@Yost.com.


This is so sad, and coming right on the heels of Doc Bailys death. Kathy White emailed me this morning. I looked for an obit also and couldn't find anything. So many people remember Kovacs from Abels. I had a great time with him there. He was not only kind but very funny. I really got to know him working as a tech writer for Abel Image Research. Our personal motto was "System 2000 - Todays Technology....Tomorrow"  :-) I've been on the East Coast for four years and was looking forward to seeing Bill at Docs Memorial service at Cal Arts. He emailed me not too long ago. He helped a lot of people, and with his death, the bar went up a notch or two.

Tandy Martin

I still can't believe it! Bill was my mentor; he hired me out of nowhere at Robert Abel and Associates and is the guy who launched me on a career in digital multimedia! I was just talking with Ellen Wolff and so many memories came bubbling up!

Bill did some consulting for EA last year and I hung out with him several nights here in Vancouver. His mischievous grin was at the ready, and as usual he had several new schemes and far out ideas ready to try. He would often forward me net humor and news of the weird. There was always a sense that we might be working together again soon on something really cool.

But the memories go way back to earlier days as well.... I remember the TD loft at Abel's... There was a hand written poster on the wall that said... "That's the signpost up ahead, Highland and Romaine, your next stop, the Abel Zone" And there would be Bill in a cubicle, writing code at 3:00 AM on the VAX to help us do whatever crazy new visual effect we happened to be imagining at the time! The digital future was just opening before us and anything and everything was possible. I actually learned to program in C under Bill's tutelage come to think of it. I remember Bill insisting that everyone read "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe. He imagined that we were digital astronauts probing the uncharted frontiers of computer graphics. And we were!

I too was looking forward to seeing Bill and many other friends and associates at Doc's memorial, more to connect with the circle of living friends and associates than to mourn Doc's death... I think Doc would like that. Bill would too.

Frank Vitz --- Vancouver, BC - June 1, 2006

I was hoping that I could get to the Memorial service this sunday, but unfortunatly I have another funeral to go to here in Sydney, Australia where I live. I guess I am a much younger friend of Bill's having met him in 2001 in REZN8 when I was doing one of my first real consulting jobs... And I can tell you that Bill really took me under his wing. I think the coolest was adding GPS to a childrens scooter and taking it down Sunset Blvd. Bill was the one who taught me about the Coriolis effect - the reason why water in Australia goes the wrong way down the drain.

What most of you would have missed would have been the stories that I heard about the Robert Abel and Associates days, and how fondly he remembered them. The stories about all you guys. There was the time a young body-builder was working on the reception desk for the offices - a guy by the name of Arnold who brought some of his mates to burbank. And the stuff with Tron. And a load more.

Then there was the stories about awards, and ringing to tell someone really important that they had won an award together, with bill being told 'Yeah, that is nice... So why are you ringing...'. But one of my favourite quotes from bill was when he was being asked into a meeting in REZN8 to meet some international visitors, and his response was 'I guess I should go into the meeting... for some reason they think winning an academy award is important'.

I will certainly miss Bill... Visiting the USA will not be the same without dropping in on Bill, or at least chatting with him on the phone. But thankfully I have my memories of Bill and my friendships with the people who Bill has introduced me to.

Darryl Smith - Radioactive Networks - Sydney Australia - 2/June/2006 VK2TDS darryl@radio-active.net.au

The books in my office that Bill gave me tell a story of technology through the years... 

    Preview and Model User's Manual...Wavefront Technologies, July 1985
    Data Communications...1986
    Life After Television...1991
    Longitude, Invention of the Marine Chronometer...1996
    Web Power Authority Business Plan...1997
    Telecosm...How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize the World...2000

These books are treasures, along with many memories of shared technology. I'll miss one of the greatest Technologists that I've ever worked with...Bill Kovacs.

Larry Green, Technologist, Ixia, lgreen@ixiacom.com

Bill gave a wonderful presentation about the history/future of computer graphics at Loyola Marymount (which I currently attend) last year. When he was finished, I walked right up to him, thanked him for his efforts, and handed him my business card (freelance graphic design). Low and behold, a few days later I recieved an enthusiastic email complimenting my online portfolio and an offer to help me with my job search that Summer.

The list of people Bill forwarded my website to was jaw dropping. Academy Award winning VFX supervisors, Execs at Disney... the lengths that he would go to help out just one 19 year old kid were astounding to me. Through him I also now know the great conceptual artist Syd Mead.

When you're young and you look at adults who have spent lifetimes achieving success it's easy to feel like you'll never amount to anything. Bill was truly one of the few who would extend his hand in purely altruistic acts of good favor. It is because of my experience with him that I now have even the courage to approach people I look up to and introduce myself. It is because of Bill Kovacs that I feel like I might have a chance. I will miss him.

Alex Christenson Thinkmad, Loyola Marymount University, alex@thinkmad.com

I still can't believe Bill is gone, partly because I've been keeping busy with the emails and with the Wikipedia articles, I guess, and partly because I just don't want it to be so.

Bill was a sunny addition to my life. I always saw him as a grand, generous man. I'll never forget one day at Abel, they were struggling with an early digitizing tablet driver, which just wasn't working well at all. Bill asked me if I could fix it. I rewrote the driver and changed the protocol, so it worked smoothly. I can still see him, tablet pointer in hand, marveling at it, as he said, "Yost, you're my hero!" Coming from him, that made me feel really good. Still does.

Then there's all the encouragement he gave me, including introducing me to some wonderful people, along with a glowing recommendation.

What a guy.

I was just about to call him about his SIGGRAPH IP Marketplace proposal, and boom. Gone.

I wish I had gotten around to telling Bill about the secret to avoiding heart attacks and strokes: 10 grams of Vitamin C per day to maintain good collagen structure in the blood vessels. Well anyway now I have gotten around to telling you, dear reader.

Dave Yost Los Altos, CA - 3 June 2006

Bill Kovacs was first and foremost a friend, also a mentor as I worked with him a Abel, and a peer at Wavefront. I first ran across him at SIGGRAPH 1982. I was a grad student at Cornell and this was my first SIGGRAPH. In the film show, there was a reel from Robert Abel and Associates - it was astounding - I had to work with those guys. I briefly met Bill at a reception - but was just one of those SIGGRAPH wannabes at the time. I spent the next year creating my resume - a collection of images. I wanted to work with the creative best - Abel and Kovacs - and the geniuses they collected: Timmy, Mirman, Royster, Grower, Hollander, Warman, Vitz, Mr.Hughes, Dr.B.

Bill and I had an interesting relationship - working though the technical problems, trying to figure out how to create tools to help the magicians at Abel do things people had never seen before - he had the vision, and spread it like pixie-dust, I swept up the pixels behind him.

Wavefront started, and we were riding the wave. Here we were collegues - Bill the creative genius, I - well - sweeping up pixels, Bill and Larry giving us a place where it could happen, and Mark and John always making us look good. Bill and Larry making sure we never had a clue what it took to get a startup off the ground. It was friendships forged, that ebbed and flowed in the years that followed. 12 years later I shared an Academy Award (scientific and technical) with Bill - him for the vision, me for sweeping up the pixels - we did good. Our paths crossed and re-crossed, Bill always emailing interesting links and articles, talking about cool projects that might open up. It's hard to believe the window for collaborating again has closed.

Bill helped people step onto paths that took them past their dreams. He was a giant among us. Rest well, my friend.

Roy Hall - Portland, OR - 3 June 2006

I first met Bill in 1981. I applied for a job at Abel's as TD. I didn't get the job but remained in touch with Bill. He was just in one word "cool". I invited him to speak as a guest at my classes in optical effects in Hollywood in 1982 and Bill graciously came and shared his experience as he was in the middle of doing Tron. I will never forget when Bill invited me to his new place in a small store front in Hollywood where he and I discussed the future of CG. He said we are calling our new company "Wavefront" since in the future all computers will talk to each other, he said this is the future, the front of the wave. I was blown away. As I fast forward to my last memory of Bill in 2003, I remember him on a G3 jet flying from SF Arts School drinking Bloody Marys and grooving to the tunes of Joe Cocker (with a little help from my friends). Bill, a mentor, a father, visionary and a fun guy.. I will sorely miss him.

Mary T Duda, Los Angeles. duda@virtuearts.com

I worked for Bill's firm, Wavefront in Santa Barbara; my first professional post-university job. It was very pre-Google modern California for it's time. The CEO was a surfer, people brought their dogs, to work, and when very-formal Japanese investors from Mitsui came walking through the hall I remember one of them being shocked at almost tripping over a labrador retriever. It was a very high-stress, high-acheiver, amazing first place-to-work. I came from student experience at HP, and this was much, much more intense. The product was the best in the country, competing with TDI, it was all very exciting. Two of the paragraphs in the Wavefront page were my projects, which is pretty amazing for my first professional year of employment.

I used to go to movies with people from Wavefront, and we'd stay at the end and notice how many of the names we know. We knew most of the best animators at ILM, Disney and Lusasfilms. One of my favorite moments I remember working there was some animator asking me some complex question, pressuring me by saying "listen - I have to have fifty french fries dancing down the McDonald's walkway by 4pm, OK?". Between this kind of dialogue, the dogs, and a CEO who was often on surf-break, Wavefront was the uber cool firm, before that culture became the norm in California. Bill Kovacs was one of the three main founding team in-place when I was hired.

Bill Kovacs was a true gentleman and professional class-act; very ivy league, intellectual and interesting. All of the start-up management of Wavefront brought things to the table. One was an exceptionally skilled animation/artist (who was formerly a cook, moved to VP), another an entrepreneur (fomerly a surfer, moved to CEO).

Bill Kovacs? He was an intellectual; a cross between an ivy-league professor and a motion-picture executive-artistic-technical-expert. He'd have fit in anywhere, and Wavefront was truly 'anywhere',i.e. two blocks from East Beach Santa Barbara shoreline. Bill's talents were multi-faceted and outstanding. He took me to lunch my first week of work and I was overwhelmed. I had just finished my last final exam; suddenly I was taken to lunch by a guy who wrote the Starwars software; he had won several Clios (the academy award for advertising) and was all kinds of sophisticated that were (at the time, for me) so intimidating; Bill was gracious and never made me feel like a kid, which I was, of course. My quick learning of the intricacies of graphics animation were all due to his excellent drafting of the Wavefront literature which explained in detail how to generate special effects like opacity, all kinds of transformation, and basically, if a guy like him had written geometry books, I'd have paid more attention to math, because he was a talented writer; Bill was genius, but never a boring one.

I'm sorry he passed away so young. He was a very nice man. His family seemed lovely. He had a gorgeous home in Montecito, and had everything to live for. Years after I left in the early 1990s, he won an Academy Award (Oscar) for his work on Star Wars.

JP 2009 83.76.127.174 (talk) 23:24, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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