John Bell

Recent years, the art of John Bell has been published in traditional rod and kustom magazines around the world. This has helped Mr Bell become one of the most popular gearhead artists around. 8 years old John started attending drag races. In the following years Hot Rods and Funny Cars became an important piece of John's life. In the early nineties he became a regular visitor to the Paso Robles show. On Paso Robles he was introduced to Rat Rods, and the people that built them. He found the people & cars had such an abundance of character and personality that he thought he needed to create paintings which caught that flavor.

John Bell is an academy award nominated art director who has contributed to some of the most significant special effects films made in the last decade. Upon graduating Art Center College of Design with a B.S.in Transportation Design, John began his career working for General Motors in their Advanced Concepts Studios in Detroit, Michigan. He moved to California to work at AtariGames in their Advanced Concepts Division. In 1985, he joined Lucasarts’ Industrial Light &Magic as an illustrator and visual effects art director working on numerous film and commercial projects including, `BACK to the FUTURE 2’, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. John was also a storyboard illustrator in the movie about the Tucker automobile. In 1990, John was promoted to Co-Creative Director of ILM`s Art Department.

In 1991, John left ILM to become art director on Steven Spielberg`s `JURASSIC PARK’. At the conclusion of the film, John relocated to Oregon to work for NIKE as a member of their design group at the NIKE World Campus. In 1994, he returned to California where he worked successfully as a freelance designer on numerous feature film projects, as well as toy and product design. In 1996 John was contacted by DreamWorks to become Production Designer of the computer-animated feature `ANTZ’ at Pacific Data Images. In 2000 John left PDI Dreamworks to pursue a freelance career. Recently Nike, BMW and Electronic Arts have employed Johns talents. Currently, John is employed as an Art Director for Electronic Arts where he's just completed designing exciting worlds for the fantasy motocross game FreekStyle.

John is recently in the process of souping up a 62 Falcon Woody Wagon. The car will be given a dragster push car vibe when John is done. Look foreward for an upcoming feature on this ride.