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Spring 2005 l Capital University Journal

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Aaron Campbell
Big-screen creations

The special effects that wowed audiences in the movie Spider-Man 2 came in part from the imagination of Sac State alum Aaron Campbell (’92 Fine Arts).

Using computer-generated imaging tech-niques, the Sony Pictures Imageworks’ senior technical animator produced the digital character “set-up” for Doc Ock’s menacing tentacles.

The goal, Campbell says, was to “give the tentacles their own personality, as well as allow them to act like deadly weapons, or arms and legs.” He had to make the tentacles’ thousands of individual pieces move in a way that would make them look mechanical as well as organic.

“The computer-generated tentacles were designed to be exactly like the real tentacle puppets, so when the live action was cut with the computer-generated version, it would be seamless,” he says.

Campbell, who lives in the Marina Del Reyarea in California, studied general arts and graphic design at Sac State. While he didn’t study animation, his graphic design classes taught him to solve complex visual problems with simple solutions. Campbell especially credits courses taught by Gwen Amos.

As a kid, Campbell wanted to be a comic book artist. He turned to computer-generated imaging soon after graduating. His first job was with Disney’s Buena Vista Visual Effects.

“I worked on a lot of films, most of them bad. Who saw Cabin Boy?” Campbell says. “But I did do the glow worms in James and the Giant Peach, the reindeer in The Santa Claus and animated the big monkey in Mighty Joe Young.”

Other films Campbell has worked on for the Culver City, Calif.- based Sony Pictures Image-works include Stuart Little 1 and 2 and Hollow Man. He also digitally mastered the shadow in Peter Pan.

For Stuart Little 2, Campbell crafted the difficult images of the movie’s bird characters, Margalo and the Falcon.

Campbell says all the major U.S. studios are now making animated films using only computer-generated images. While he admires the polished look, he says he misses the “expressive” and “lively” animation in classics like Pinnochio.

However, he’s astonished with the industry’s growing capabilities, including the technique utilized in The Polar Express in which actors’ movements are digitally recorded. “Image-works is already working on the next perfor-mance capture movie and from what I’ve seen they’re making amazing improvements from Polar Express.”

Being an animator, Campbell says, has been the job of his dreams.

“Computer animation is always evolving,” he says. “How I created a character two to three years ago is not how I do it today. I’m never bored, and in the end, your hard work is on the big screen for millions to see.”

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Holly Heyser
Capitol beat

Orange County Register state editor Holly Heyser (Journalism ’88) knew she wanted to be a journalist after interviewing former Sacramento mayor Ann Rudin for Sac State’s student newspaper, The State Hornet.

“I had thought I wanted to be an author,” Heyser recalls. “Having access to that world of local politics was so exciting that pretty soon I forgot all about writing books. I’ve never regretted the choice.”

Since graduating from Sac State, Heyser has had plenty of such access—including to the adminis-tration of former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.

Covering politics is “ridiculously fun,” she says.

“Everybody’s life is touched by what the state does, from the roads you drive on to health care to the papers you sign when you buy a house…” Heyser says. “It’s a great feeling to help the people of your state understand big, complicated things like the state budget, and incredibly rewarding to tell them about issues they’ve never heard of before that affect their communities.”

Heyser’s first newspaper position was with Neighbors section of The Sacramento Bee. She left to work in the Bay Area, where she was a metro editor for The Peninsula Times Tribune and then a reporter at The San Jose Mercury-News. She then moved the East Coast for a state government reporter position with The Virginian-Pilot before taking a position with St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. Her current position with the Orange County Register has brought her back to Sacramento, where she works near the Capitol.

In Minnesota, Heyser was the state government editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press during the last year of Jesse Ventura’s term as governor.

“Jesse’s an incredible character,” she says, “a genuine outsider who has a delightful tendency to say what he thinks, and often to do what he thinks is best without regard to political implications or realities.”

In Virginia, Heyser covered Medicaid and also uncovered that the Virginia State Police was investigating allegations that one of the governor’s political action committeeswas eavesdropping on calls between constituents and their state senators.

While at Sac State, Heyser says, professor Bill Dorman had the big-gest impact on her critical thinking skills. And she’s thankful for fellow journalism student Annette Laing, who helped her conquer her fear of going after her first story assign-ment.

Heyser lives in Orangevale. Her significant other is Hank Shaw, who is the capitol bureau chief for the Stockton Record.

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Glen Johnson
Big man in Pullman

In the small college town of Pull-man, Wash., it sometimes seems as if Glenn Johnson (’66, Speech) is everywhere. He might be in the Washington State University press box announcing a PAC-10 football game, speaking at a Veteran’s Day parade, or teaching students at the scene of a police standoff.

Johnson is WSU’s popular “Voice of the Cougars,” the city of Pullman’s mayor, a WSU journal-ism professor, and a volunteer spokesperson for the fire and police departments—among other things.

Sometimes he combines duties. Johnson once conducted a broadcast class from the scene of a 12-hour standoff between police and an armed man at a Pullman nursing home.

“Because of my position, I gave my students the access and the availability to learn from a real world experience,” he says.

While he was a Sac State student, Johnson worked as a reporter for KFBK 1530. He later earned his master’s degree from UCLA and a doctorate from the University of Iowa before return-ing to Sacramento to be station manager for KGMS and KSFM. In 1975, he was the first reporter to get a live television feed from the State Capitol when Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to assassinate President Ford.

Johnson was drawn into the public arena soon after moving to Pullman in 1979. The city’s mayor asked him to co-chair an effort to pass a bond for a new police station. When it passed with 70 percent of the vote, Johnson was hooked.

He got involved with other civic projects and was eventually elected mayor in 2003. “I know what to do and what not to do,” he says. “In all of my years in journal-ism, I’ve seen plenty of politicians. And obviously I saw what was good and what was bad.”

He says his most important influences at Sac State were pro-fessors John Egan, Charles Hume and Robert Thompson.

Johnson met his wife Kathryn in Sacramento, and they have two children.

Trombonist Steve Turre—who has played with the likes of Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock—was a student at Sac State when he first heard his idol J. J. Johnson perform live.

“It was like a saxophone student hearing Charlie Parker play (for the first time),” says Turre. “It was quite inspiring and humbling.”

Turre, now a 20-year member of The Saturday Night Live Band, has recorded 12 albums and appears on more than 200 recordings. Aside from playing the trombone, he has created a musical following using the conch shell as an instrument, forming the critically acclaimed group Sanctified Shells.

He has consistently won both the readers’ and the critics’ polls in JazzTimes, Downbeat and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscel-laneous Instrumentalist on the shells.

Turre attended Sac State from 1966 to 1968. While here, he played with his salsa band, the Escovedo Brothers, and the University’s jazz ensemble, symphonic band and orchestra. Although he grew up with strong musical influences, he says his first college experience made him serious about his education and play-ing music professionally.

“I studied my behind off for the first time,” Turre says. “I realized I could do whatever I wanted if I applied myself.”

Turre got his big break in 1972 when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later Turre’s mentor, Woody Shaw, brought him into Art Blakey’s Jazz Mes-sengers. Turre went on to work with a diverse list of jazz, latin and pop musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J. J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Max Roach and Rah-saan Roland Kirk. Kirk introduced him to the distinct sound of the seashell.

Turre fondly remembers Sac State trombone instructor Norman J. Hunt, and he says professor Herbert Harrison had a great impact on his career by sug-gesting he go to a school where at the time they had a jazz degree. “It takes a rare guy to encourage one of his better students to go some-where else because they didn’t offer what I needed,” he says. “A person can really make a difference.”

Turre earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

A father of two, he lives in New York with his wife, cellist Akua Dixon. He is on the faculty at Manhattan School of Music and is a member of McCoy Tyner’s Big Band, the Latin Jazz All Stars and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.

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Don Anderson
Security matters

Name an arm of law enforcement, and retired U.S. Coast Guard Reserve Commander Don D. Anderson (’67 criminal justice) has probably been in it.

But of all of his positions, few have had the urgency as the two roles he played for the Coast Guard soon after Sept. 11, 2001. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, Anderson was activated to help form the 11th District Homeland Security Branch that now secures ports and waterways throughout California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah.

A year later, Anderson was named chief of the security office, and found himself responsible for field units protecting all seaports along California’s coast.

“My job was to see that they had the best possible equipment, training and staff that we could manage with the limited resources of the Coast Guard,” Anderson says.

His field crews monitored and boarded as many as 200 commercial ships that arrived each week at ports including Humboldt Bay, Oakland, Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Port Huemene, Richmond, San Diego and San Francisco.

The crews escorted and provided on-board security to potential shipping targets or ships that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Since graduating from Sac State, Anderson has been with the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve for 27 years, and has also been employed by the California Highway Patrol, the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, the State Department of Boating and Waterways, the California State Fair Police and the State Department of Insur-ance Fraud Division. He currently works as an investigator for a private company, United Services Automobile Association.

Anderson says there is no doubt that the Sept. 11 attacks helped to identify stateside law enforcement weaknesses.

“Everyday, new measures are devel-oped in response to new or potential threats to this country,” he says. “I have seen many changes for the better.”

Anderson has also worked as an educator. He has taught marine law enforcement courses at the Regional Criminal Justice Training Center and was a part-time Los Rios College District instructor. He also has taught insurance fraud investigation for the State Depart-ment of Justice.

Anderson retired as an active duty commander from the U.S. Coast Guard last October. Upon retiring, Anderson had received more than 12 awards, most notably the Coast Guard Commenda-tion Medal from the Homeland Security Branch and the Coast Guard Achievement Medal for search and rescue detachment.

Anderson, who lives in Citrus Heights, raised two children with his wife Connie.

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Carole Nutt and Libby Fernandez
Answering the call

Social workers Carole Nutt (’77 government, ’92 social work) and Sister Libby Fernandez (’85 humanities, ‘94 social work) both say it took several years to answer their true calling.

Nutt spent 20 years working in government and Fernandez spent 10 years in the military before each decided to make a change and earn a master’s degree in social work. The two now find themselves together at Genesis, a walk-in mental health care center at Sacramento’s Loaves and Fishes program. The free program provides psychiatric assessments and referrals to home-less adults without insurance. Since opening in 2001, the center has served 4,200 people.

Fernandez, a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, is the program’s founder and co-director. Nutt is co-director and a part-time counselor.

“We see up to 100 new faces each month,” Fer-nandez says. “We try to restore a sense of dignity.”

Walk-in visitors are seen by counselors and referred to potential mental health programs. If they do not qualify for government-funded services they meet with one of three of the pro-gram’s volunteer psychiatrists or two volunteer licensed clinical social workers. Medications, donated by more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, are also available.

The program also helps clients by referring them to potential housing and other assistance including clean and sober programs, attorneys, housing projects, shelters, and Disability and Carole Nutt and Libby FernandezSupplemental Security Income contacts.

Nutt says she came out of retire-ment because she believes in the program. “People come to Genesis because they know it’s a safe place. We see people who aren’t served anywhere else.”

Nutt spent 17 years working for the Franchise Tax Board and three for the Department of Motor Vehicles before deciding to pursue her high school dream of becoming a social worker. After earning her degree, she initially worked at Chartar Hospital.

Nutt says she has always had a strong social conscience and is happy putting it to work professionally. She says she still follows advice given by government professor Eugene Shoemaker, who told her it is not only important to stand up for what you believe in, but to know why.

Fernandez says she’s proud to have been part of starting such a much-needed program. After several years in the Air Force, she started Don AndersonAnswering the calla new life when she joined the Sisters of Mercy and worked for Mercy Housing, then St. Francis Terrace Housing, and later the Bishop Francis A. Quinn Cottages. She then became part of Maryhouse, a Loaves and Fishes program that assists homeless women and children.

Both say it’s rewarding knowing they have helped people off the street. They’re also encouraged by California’s recently approved Proposition 63, which taxes personal income of more than $1 million to fund expanded mental health services. Fernandez says mental illness is a big contributor to homelessness.

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