- Born
- Died
- Birth nameThomas Arndt
- Tom Arndt was born in 1945 in Portland, Oregon. Tom inherited his life long passion for film from his parents. When he was 7 months old, his parents Bud and Mary Arndt, started what they called the "Circuit Theater." With a Bell and Howell movie projector and a 8' X 10' screen, they traveled to towns near Baker, Oregon to show movies. They charged admission. In high school, Tom became a magician. He honed his performance skills through a tour of Minnesota and Alaska shortly after graduating from high school. He was a member of the Society of American Magicians his entire life and was president of the Portland Chapter in 1975. During the Vietnam War Tom served in the U.S. Navy, on a diesel submarine. His personal animated films, Lavender and Bloom, have an anti-war theme. Tom graduated from Portland State University with a B.A. in Painting. Tom began to teach himself stop motion and cartoon animation while still in college. In the 1980's Tom worked as animator on music videos among which are Paul Simon's The Boy in the Bubble and Michael Jackson's Leave Me Alone. Tom animated the skeleton of the Elephant Man that Michael Jackson dances to in this video. Leave Me Alone won a Grammy for Best Short Music Video in 1990. Tom was visual effects supervisor for Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho which was released in 1991. Tom was a render artist for Lucas Art's The Curse of Monkey Island 3. From 2005-2012, He was a full time instructor of animation and visual effects at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Eleanor Landi
- On his mother's side, Tom was a descendant of "Daniel Boone," the real man not the TV show character.
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