Derrick Carter, Founder & Managing Director. Derrick’s beginning into media production started at International Rocketship, consulting for Marv Newland, the renowned animation director. Over a twenty-year period, he worked on feature animations to commercials & film shorts; he would later acquire experience at Mainframe Entertainment and the National Film Board. Prior to digital media, Derrick was in package design. He co-founded Stoney Creek Wine Press, a small wine label company serving the Canadian market. Eventually he would oversee the company’s development to create an American-wide distribution network for select wineries, becoming one of the continent’s leading sources of alcohol beverage design and attract attention from mainstream media. Derrick also served as a faculty member for many years at Emily Carr College of Art and Design (ECUAD) in Vancouver and conducted seminars at several of Canada’s prominent design institutions from Université du Québec à Montréal to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSUAD).

Ivan DeWolf, Founder & Executive Producer. After studying at art school, Ivan moved to Hollywood and worked on several groundbreaking visual effects films. He saw a need for better visual effects tools and founded Martian Labs in 2000 to create software and produce visual effects imagery. He was awarded a Visual Effect Society award for his work on Smallville. In 2007, he located to Vancouver working with Rainmaker, Deluxe/CIS, Embassy Effects on some of the first, large VFX projects completed in BC. After nearly two decades in film, he began to focus purely on software development, crossing over to the video game industry building procedural content generation tools for artists at Electronic Arts and Sony Pictures Imageworks. Ivan is currently at Meta Vancouver.

Alastair Mcleod, Founder & Software Development. Alastair has been working in VFX as a Motion Capture consultant and software developer for many years. He has worked on iconic movies such as Lord of the Rings, Matrix Reloaded, 2012, Twilight and with game developers such as Mainframe Studios and Radical Entertainment. His software is known in the industry to be essential artist tools including his proprietary motion capture solver for Autodesk Maya called PeelSolve used on a number of film and game production pipelines. He has a keen interest in how users interact with technology and has experimented with combining high fidelity passive optical motion capture with low latency virtual reality experiences. Alastair taught media courses at Capilano University and Vancouver Film School, created workshops and consulted with institutions such as Emily Carr University of Art & Design in British Columbia. He currently is based near Los Angeles.

Aaron Hilton, Founder & Research Partner. Aaron is a visionary who believes in uplifting the human spirit through design and advanced technology. Chairman and co-founder of Conquer Mobile, he drafted the first prototype VR medical simulation, PeriopSim VR. He founded VanVirtualReality.com for Virtual Reality enthusiasts, the largest VR Meetup group in Vancouver. He co-founded Conquer Mobile in 2007, which has since grown to become one of the most advanced app developers in Vancouver—focusing on the user experience, real time collaboration and medical haptic simulation. With his company Steampunk Digital, Aaron currently is based in Japan where he focuses on VR, developing immersive and mixed reality experiences.

Roz McNulty, VR Business Development & Research Partner. Since 2018, Roz has been immersed in the 3D apparel industry, bringing together fashion and technology in one of the first online VR fashion museums. Her roots in fashion started with her own shop in Chelsea Green – London, England, selling her own designs. In 2005, Roz launched PitchPage.com, where as a producer and editor in motion graphics, photography, large scale photography and 360 video, she created some of the first online news and demo reels for the film industry. Bridging her passions in apparel and digital media, Roz is known as a ‘Digital Magician’ – a designer, educator, and advisor in fashion tech. Recently, she developed and is teaching her fourth hybrid course in CLO 3D, virtual 3D fashion design and simulation software, to the creative industries. In 2024, she also took on lead organization of the Vancouver VR Meet-Up Group.

Noah Miller, Technical Operations Lead & Research. Noah is dedicated to creating profound experiences, working on interdisciplinary projects, and applying new technologies in creative ways. Notable projects include developing software to measure cognitive decline currently being used by astronauts on the International Space Station, making the Oculus Quest 2 work in microgravity, and working on real-time motion capture and the Unreal Game Engine for Renaissance Opera live theater performances. He has a Bachelor and Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota Duluth. During this time, he also worked in the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary MMAD Lab as a motion cap­ture tech­ni­cian and research assis­tant where he worked with biomechanics, engineers, dancers, artists, and mathematicians.

Thalita Karina, Post-Production Lead & Motion Capture Technician. Thalita is a Motion Designer and Animator who holds a Master in Digital Media degree from the Centre of Digital Media, Vancouver BC. Prior to coming to Canada, she worked for seven years as a Motion Graphic Artist at the largest television network in Indonesia. Upon completing her Master degree in 2019, she joined The Sawmill as an intern before becoming a Motion Capture Animator. Thalita has taken a few different roles to expand her creative skills outside of The Sawmill. She worked on the Polly Pocket project as a FX Artist at WildBrain, was a Medical Animator for Cyberpatient virtual training developed by CanHealth International, and worked as a Motion Designer for a movie: Corrected Measures, produced by Arcana Studio. At The Sawmill, she handles all the post-production processing to finished stage and delivery.

The professional backgrounds of our team and partners in visual effects, gaming, design and software development has created an intersection of different media experiences allowing for a broader scope of innovation. The Sawmill also works with artistic and community groups such as ReOpera. Then in 2023, The Sawmill ramped up on initiatives with university partners in research, education and internships.