Robert Swarthe (born September 6, 1942) is a special effects artist who started out directing short films. He has two Academy Award nominations.

Academy Award nominations

• 48th Academy Awards – Nominated in the category of Best Animated short, Kick Me, lost to Great.^[1][2]
• 52nd Academy Awards – Nominated in the category of Best Visual Effects, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, nomination shared with John Dykstra, Grant McCune, David K. Stewart, Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich. Lost to Alien.^[3]

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved Kick Me and The Unicycle Race by Swarthe.^[4]

Filmography

As director

• Uncle Walt (1964)^[5]
• The Unicycle Race (1966)
• K-9000: A Space Oddity (1968)^[6] with Robert Mitchell ^[7]
• Kick Me (1975)

As special effects artist

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
• One from the Heart (1982)
• The Outsiders (1983)

In addition he appeared in a making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind video in 2001.