Dr. Seuss, Toys, and a Mission
Policarpo | Dec 2002

An Interview with NewTek's LightWave Evangelist, William "Proton" Vaughan

William Vaughan - LightWave 3D Evangelist, NewTek
A recipient of several New Media Addy awards, William Vaughan brings broad-based experience to the position of LightWave Evangelist at NewTek, having done 3D work for print, web, multimedia, games and broadcast.

Over the past ten years, Vaughan has established a strong reputation for his award-winning work for clients such as Compaq, New Line Cinema, and Halliburton. He has also worked in the LightWave® community as an instructor at North Harris Community College. Vaughan's other activities in LightWave® user education include training companies such as NASA, Fulbright & Jaworski, and KHOU Channel 11, the CBS affiliate in Houston to use LightWave®.

I recently had the chance to pull William Vaughan, aka Proton, away from his busy work day to talk about the 3D industry, his role as NewTek’s LightWave Evangelist, and his love of Dr. Seuss.

Image: William and his alter ego proton

Policarpo Wood (PW)- Tell us a little bit about yourself.

William Vaughan (WV)- Let's see…Where to start? I'll try and keep this simple and clean…this is a family site right :). I've had quite the “career roller coaster ride” over the last 10 years, and the ride keeps going. About ten years ago I decided to go to school to study design and illustration and break away from fine art a bit (the starving artist role wasn't cutting it and I was getting tired of Ramen 5 days a week :)). After a year of working in advertising, I discovered the world of New Media, and I was instantly hooked.

You see, with New Media, it was all about absolutes. In the world of print, you never know what the final product is going to look like. You have to rely on too many other people. I always dreaded going to the printer to see if they got the colors right, or if they made sure the low-res images were swapped with the Hi-res images. With New Media, what you saw on the computer screen was pretty much what the end user would see. After 6 years of working on everything from Websites, Interactive CD's, Enhanced Cd's, Kiosks, 3D Children's books, and more, I got the gaming bug.

A good friend of mine, Philip Nelson, suggested that I pick up a game (Serious Sam), and once I played with the editing tools that came with Serious Sam I was hooked. A few weeks later I moved to Indianapolis to work on a game using the Serious Engine.

A year later I moved back to Texas to take on the role of LightWave Evangelist for NewTek.

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