About - Floating Rock

Aiko Sato

Talent and Project Manager

Aiko is an established project manager with extensive experience working in WētāFX, Ministry, universities, and other multicultural organisations. She is a musician and enjoys working with creatives. Aiko has a strategic mind with a critical eye, providing analytical and innovative advice to the team.

Alex Ronco

Senior Animator

Alex is the best animator at Floating Rock (according to Benji.) Alex is french like over half the team here at Floating Rock but based in the Caribbean islands. Alex recently worked on one of our biggest projects Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn.

Benjamin Mulot

Senior Animator

Benji is an artist who animates with an incredible eye for timing and weight. He has animated countless creatures and characters, including “Kong vs Godzilla, “Eternals”, “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Game of Thrones”.

Chay Johansson

Technical Artist

Chay is a Technical Artist with over 16 years of experience in film and games, having spent a good chunk of his career working at Weta Digital on creature fx for movies such as Avengers Endgame, Disney's Jungle Book, and Avatar 2. Chay specialises in muscle and cloth simulation as well as working closely to provide other rigging and pipeline solutions.

Garrick Rawlingson

Director/Creative Lead

Garrick is an animator worked at powerhouse VFX studios like Weta Digital, Animal Logic and did keyframe character, FACS animation, previs, and mocap improved motion. Throughout his career, he worked on blockbusters such as Battle Angel, Hunger Games, Valerian or the Hobbit 3 and most recently he just wrapped production on Animal Logic’s latest project, Peter Rabbit 2.

Gregoire Dehame

Rigger

Gregoire is versatile across both character and creature rigging. He has created his own proprietary rigging system, along with tools to allow for increasingly efficient animation and overall production. During his time at Luma Pictures, Gregoire worked on projects such as The Tomorrow War

Henry Bennett

Senior Animator

Henry worked in Animation at Weta Digital, Animal Logic Sydney, and various advertising studios as a character animator and rigger. Henry’s passion lies in 3D character animation but he also enjoys delving into all aspects of the film making process and creating tools to speed up animation workflows.

Jarrod Crossland

Production Manager

Jarrod is a local Rockie working in our production team, he has been in VFX for 8 years and leading production teams on everything from Game of Thrones to Avatar 2. Outside of work, he is a hiker, bike rider, excel guru, and proud dad. Jarrod is super excited to be part of the growing Floating Rock family!

Jonathan Meret

Senior Previs Animator

Nearing a decade of camera work in the animation industry, Jonathan has worked on projects such as Arcane, Moon Knight, and most recently as director of photography on the short film 'Canary'. He finds his happiness in creating compelling camera shakes, subtle zoom dollies, and helping the audience forget that there is even a camera there at all.

Kezzia Flynn

Production Assistant

Kez has worked on some really exciting game trailers and commercial spots since starting with Floating Rock. But that’s not all she does, her other duties include, assisting with marketing and communications, by writing copy and content for the website, press releases, and social media. Much to the relief of her family, Kez is indeed using that English degree they all thought would be useless.

Laurent Herveic

Director/Creative Lead

Laurent has modelled memorable creatures on characters on movies such as Alita: Battle Angel and Planet of the Apes from Weta Digital. With over a decade of experience he’s able to lead other artists and his technical skills are on par with his specialities that lie in facial modelling and FACS. His work on Pogo from The Umbrella Academy has been nominated for the prestigious VES award.

Lukas Niklaus

Director/Creative Lead

Lukas is an Animator and has worked at almost all major Visual Effects studios including Industrial Light & Magic, Framestore, Weta Digital, MPC and Animal Logic. Despite his VFX heavy resume, his passion was always bringing true genuine performances to life. With this experience, he is able to direct motion capture shoots on stage to capture performances needed for projects.

Mel Chatain

Animator

Mel is up for any challenge, creative or technical, when it comes to animation. Her animation career started in video games at Ubisoft but a passion for character animation led her to seek out the feature film industry.

Nathan Santell

Executive Producer

Nathan is based in Montreal although soon to be making the big move to NZ. He is an Emmy-nominated Producer, Consultant, Project Manager, Writer and Development Executive with deep experience in animation, visual effects, story development, artist management & live-action production. Nathan’s strengths include company building, business development, brand strategy, team management, leadership and communications. As Executive Producer for Floating Rock, he is focused on drumming up business on the service side of the company, making sure those projects run smoothly and he’s also instrumental in the development and sales of Floating Rock’s IP’s. He's worked on feature films (Mad Max: Fury Road, Gravity, Iron Man 2&3, Sonic the Hedgehog, Oz the Great & Powerful, Total Recall, Men in Black 3, Avengers, Hunger Games, and so much more.

Nayoon Levitin

Junior Asset Artist

Nayoon’s keen eye for creation was honed while working as a graphic designer. This fine art skill combined with her computer studies has made for high quality execution as she pivoted into 3D. Nayoon is a skilled artist, thoughtful designer, considerate teammate, and someone who is always observant of a modelling and lookdev work.

Omar Elshamy

Facial Modeller / Character & Creature Artist

Omar is a creature and facial modeller artist with over 7 years of experience in game cinematics. He worked on Alan Wake 2, The Callisto Protocol and more. His work is a testament to his dedication to pushing artistic boundaries and his commitment to storytelling through the lens of 3D art.

Pavithira Raj

Pipeline TD

Pavith is very passionate about tech, workflows, automation, and pretty much anything to do with new tech. He started out as a generalist and slowly moved into pipeline, working as a Pipeline TD here at Floating Rock.

Rafael Gonzalez Quinones

Animator

Raf’s career began at Weta Digital after winning a month-long internship through the Rookies competition. A month turned into 3 years, after which Raf spent some time abroad honing his animation skills at other large VFX houses like Method Studios. Now Raf has focussed his strong artistic skills on storyboarding, previs and supervision

Richard Cooper

Operations Manager

Richard is our math whizz and cocktail making expert, who makes sure everything is running smoothly here at Floating Rock. Highly versatile, he has over 25 years of experience in different roles. He led teams of Marketing, Finance and IT specialists and managed external PR, social media, and communications strategies. Richard is educated in Maori and Pacific Studies with Minors in Maori Business and Resource Management, giving him a unique understanding of complex relationships, histories, and cultures. Additionally, he is a strong mentor and believes in growing skills and abilities for all staff. Is there anything he can’t do?

Ruby Cumming

Line Producer

Ruby has 10+ years of film and TV production experience, mainly in VFX. Ruby oversees all aspects of production at Floating Rock, ensuring timely and budget-conscious completion while finding creative solutions to maximize potential. She finds great fulfillment in exploring creativity in her role, working closely with creative teams to bring their visions to life.

Steff Parker

Director/Creative Lead

Steff is an animator and loves creating empathetic moments for the audience through the movement of characters to tell stories. Some of her feature film experience has been with Sony Pictures Imageworks, Animal Logic and Spire Animation Studios. Some of the films she’s worked on are Hotel Transylvania (2&3), Angry Birds (1&2), and Peter Rabbit 2, and Oscar winning: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Steffen Schubert

FX/Generalist Artist

Steffen is a highly experienced professional in the VFX industry with over 20 years of expertise. He has previously worked as a CG Supervisor and Creative Director in LA and a tenure at Weta FX, where he served as a Technical Director for 7 years. Driven by his deep-rooted love for art, he spent 5 years studying and teaching Advanced Drawing and Oil Painting at The Florence Academy of Fine Art. Steffen continues to push the boundaries of visual storytelling and create groundbreaking visual effects here at Floating Rock.

Stein Lotveit

Senior Animator

Stein is one of our remote Rockies based in Norway. He is an experienced animator having worked previously at Sony, MPC, Framestore and Animal Logic. Stein has worked on, Spiderman Into the Spider-verse, Spiderman Far from home, Spiderman homecoming, Alice in Wonderland 2, Cinderella, Gravity, The Meg, and so much more.