Adam Lebowitz

Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz of Foundation Imaging, was a computer graphics animation and CGI supervisor on that company's work for , and the first season of . He has also worked on the DVD, for which he was interviewed in its "Redirecting The Future" special feature. Lebowitz won an Emmy Award for his work on the Voyager episode , whereas he was previously nominated for the episode .
Unlike most of his co-workers, Lebowitz opted not to follow them into the employ of Eden FX when Foundation closed its doors (following the first season of Enterprise), but to continue his work as an independent contractor. Mojo shortly thereafter continued his work on Star Trek when he became the visual effects supervisor for the Star Trek: The Experience movie Borg Invasion 4D at Threshold Digital Research Labs in Santa Monica.
While working on the episode , Lebowitz hit upon the idea for what eventually became the successful Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series. Around the same time he also co-wrote the reference book, Star Trek: Starship Spotter. More recently, Lebowitz supervised the design of some of the starship models for the Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection partwork magazine.
The Ships of the Line calendars were a testbed by Lebowitz and colleague Robert Bonchune for the ultimately unrealized "Unseen Frontier" coffee table book, for which Lebowitz had hired aspiring CGI artist Ed Giddings build additional CGI models (the book was eventually scrapped due to a projected cover price which Pocket Books feared would be too high). Giddings went on to yet make contributions to the official Star Trek franchise. In hiring Giddings, Lebowitz became, alongside former Foundation colleague Doug Drexler, one of the few (former) Star Trek production staffers who granted budding CGI artists a chance to create work for official Star Trek print publications. Lebowitz had also granted the same opportunity to fellow Borg Invasion 4D digital artist Fabio Passaro. Both Passaro and Giddings were introduced by Lebowitz to Ben Robinson, the project manager of The Official Starships Collection, and both became regulars on the publication as digital modelers. (Star Trek: Shipyards - Starfleet Ships 2151-2293, p. 6)
==Career outside Star Trek==
A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, Lebowitz started out his working career as a freelance reporter for Starlog Press, for whom he submitted an interview article on Original Series cinematographer Jerry Finnerman, published in their Cinemagic magazine. Afterwards, he embarked on his own professional motion picture industry career, when he joined newly formed Foundation Imaging in 1992 where he worked as a visual effects animator on Babylon 5, as specialist in then new technique of computer generated imagery (CGI). Upon closure of Foundation in 2002, he was one of the few CGI staffers that did not follow his former Foundation co-workers into employment at Eden FX, the company that from then on was the sole CGI supplier for the remainder of the Star Trek television franchise. After having worked on the Borg Invasion 4D ride in 2004, he was employed by Zoic Studios to work on the first season of Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica.
Between the first and second seasons he contributed to in 2005 and then continued on Galactica through 2009 (he has the distinction of being the only Visual FX artist to stay with the series from the first episode to the last). He shared two Emmy nominations for his work on this series, one in 2005 and another in 2007 and won the latter nomination.
From 2009 onward, Lebowitz was employed by The Third Floor, Inc. as pre-visualization artist & stereoscopic supervisor. He contributed to , , (all three 2012) and Jack the Giant Slayer (2013). In 2012 he joined Persistence of Vision, working as a pre-visualization artist on (2013).
In 2014, Lebowitz (along with CGI model maker Ed Giddings) created & supervised the photoreal illustrations for the Eaglemoss Publication Klingon Bird of Prey Owners' Workshop Manual. Following this effort, the duo continued creating content for Eaglemoss' line of Trek and Batman collectibles.
2016-17 saw Mojo provide graphics for NBC's "The Brave," and in 2018 he spearheaded the re-creation of visual effects in HD for the Deep Space Nine documentary "What We Left Behind." This included re-rendering Foundation Imaging's space battle from the episode Sacrifice of Angels using the original and updated assets.
Mojo currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he heads the VFX company FXTC Digital.
== Emmy Awards ==
Emmy Award credits in the category "Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series":
* Emmy Award nomination for the episode , shared with Eric Chauvin, Arthur J. Codron, Paul Hill, Koji Kuramura, Greg Rainoff, Mitch Suskin, and John M. Teska
* Emmy Award win for the episode , shared with Rob Bonchune, Elizabeth Castro, Arthur J. Codron, Dan Curry, Don Greenberg, Paul Hill, Ronald B. Moore, Mitch Suskin, Greg Rainoff, and John Teska
==Star Trek interviews==
* "Redirecting The Future", DVD-special feature, Disc 2, 6 November 2001
* "Ships of the Line", Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, Bonus Issue 12, 2019, pp. 10-11
==Bibliography==
*"Careers: Gerald Perry Finnerman", Cinemagic, issue 36, Fall 1987, pp. 32-37 – Interviewer, Author
*"A Month in Hell", Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models, issue 32, September 1998, pp. 51-52 – Author
*"What's Going Down in MojoWorld?", Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models International, issue 41, October 1999, pp. 24-25 – Author
* Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series, 2001-2003 issues – Co-illustrator/Editor
* "'Ships of the Line' Calendars", , January 2002, pp. 102-104 – Author
* Star Trek: Starship Spotter – Co-illustrator
* Greater than the Sum – cover art with Alan Dingman
* Klingon Bird of Prey Owners' Workshop Manual – Illustrator
*Star Trek: Shipyards - Starfleet Ships 2151-2293, 2018 – Co-Illustrator
*Star Trek: Shipyards - Starfleet Ships 2294 to the Future, 2018 – Co-Illustrator
== External links ==
* 
* – Adam Lebowitz's personal blog
* 
* 
es:Adam Lebowitz
fr:Adam Lebowitz
Category:Special and Visual effects staff
Category:Emmy Award winners
Category:Emmy Award nominees
Category:Star Trek calendar artists
Category:Star Trek novel artists
Category:Star Trek reference artists
Category:Star Trek publication editors
Category:Exhibit and attraction staff