Starting his pinball art career back in 1979 at the original Advertising Posters, Doug Watson went on to create artwork for games for Gottlieb, Stern, Bally and Williams. In all, Mr. Watson contributed illustration and game design for 30 pinball games and nearly 50 arcade video games. He was a major creative force during the Golden Age of Pinball, renowned for his talent for integrating popular contemporary art elements into the pingame format, for his strong, dynamic figurative compositions and for the strength of his portraiture of contemporary movie stars.
Mr. Watson’s career spanned the period of memorable original themes from the 1980’s to the transition to motion picture license titles of the 1990’s. Right out of college Doug began working alongside the great Gordon Morrison and studied the techniques of pinball art legends like Dave Christiansen, Paul Faris and Kevin O’Connor. Later he went on to work alongside the great Greg Freres, Pat McMahon, Tony Ramunni, and John Youssi.
You may know Doug’s work from his long list of original titles like Quicksilver, Barracora, Swords of Fury, The Getaway, F-14 Tomcat, Black Knight 2000, and Attack from Mars. Or you may recognize Doug’s work on Hollywood-based projects like Terminator 2, Indiana Jones, The Shadow and Demolition Man.
Doug’s long list of arcade video titles included Discs of Tron, Gaplus, Berzerk, The Predators, Scramble, Super High Impact, and NARC.
Mr. Watson’s illustration career also included years of illustration work for TSR Publishing; the creators of Dungeon’s and Dragons as well as providing primary art assets to the home video game market such as EA’s The Lord of the Rings, Big Bat Baseball, NASCAR 2000, The Legend of Alon’ Dar, and Revenant
Most recently Mr. Watson taught for eight years at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University for the schools of Illustration, Foundations, and Visual Development.