Ed Verreaux graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970.After serving his apprentice-ship with Chuck Jones, the academy award winning animation director, and working at several of the other animation studios in Hollywood, Verreaux began working with Robert Abel & Associates, the leading visual effects commercial studio in the industry. Many of the people who went on to create the effects for films like “Star Wars”, “Poltergeist”, “Star Trek” and other high concept visual effects films passed through the doors of the Abel studio. Aside from creating groundbreaking award winning commercials, the studio was developing new computer camera systems and doing pioneering work in early digital film media development.
In the late 70s’ Abel films won the contract to create the visual effects for “Star Trek, The Motion Picture” and Verreaux was assigned as one of the earliest designers on the “Trek” project. After "Trek”, Verreaux began working with Steven Spielberg on” Raiders of the Lost Ark”. He worked with Spielberg on many of his subsequent film projects including, the “Raiders” films, “Poltergeist”, “Empire of the Sun”, “The Color Purple” and a little film called, “E.T.” During that time, Verreaux also spent a year working in Australia on “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” with director George Miller.
After returning to the U.S. in the middle 80s’, Verreaux continued to work with Spielberg and several other directors including Clint Eastwood on “The Rookie”, and Robert Zemeckis on “Back to the Future 2 & 3”. He also worked on such films as “Casper the Ghost”, “ The Distinguished Gentleman”, “How to Make an American Quilt” and “Honey I Blew Up the Kid” the sequel to “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” at Disney. In the mid 1990s’ Verreaux production designed the film “Contact”, starring Jodi Foster and directed by Robert Zemeckis. After that he designed “Jurassic Park 3”,“Mission to Mars”, and “The Scorpion King.