Ziva Co-founder & CEO, James Jacobs, is an Academy Award winning VFX artist with over 25 years of expertise as a Technical Director and Software Engineer. James has held leadership positions at the world’s top VFX and animation studios, including Weta Digital, Digital Domain, Dreamworks, Mr. X and Method Studios. He has received critical acclaim for his professional contributions to blockbusters such as Avatar, Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Prometheus, and King Kong.

In 2015, Jacobs co-founded Ziva Dynamics, a technology company dedicated to solving the most challenging and high-value character obstacles within the media & entertainment space. Ziva technology is considered the gold standard for creature work across Hollywood, and now, Ziva is tackling the real-time game industry.

A classically trained concert pianist and graduate of the renowned Odessa national A. V. Nezhdanova academy of music, Mohsen was both a musician and technologist from his pre-teen days.

In 2012, Mohsen joined Scanline VFX in their Vancouver studio, acting as digital effects supervisor on A Good Day to Die Hard and 300: Rise of an Empire, for which Scanline handled almost 700 water-based sea battle shots. He then served as VFX Supervisor for the Vancouver studio on San Andreas, helping develop the company’s proprietary city generation software. That software and pipeline were further developed and enhanced for scenes of epic destruction in director Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day: Resurgence, for which Scanline also digitally recreated the original film’s iconic cloud tank effects. Mohsen also served as VFX Supervisor for Pompeii, which received the 2014 Canadian Screen Award (CSA) for Achievement in Visual Effects.

Mohsen was recently lead VFX Supervisor for Scanline on the Warner Bros. shark thriller The Meg, and is currently Scanline VFX Supervisor on the upcoming eighth and final season of Game of Thrones.

Raymond Chen is a VFX Supervisor at DNEG. He recently completed work on director Ericson Core's sled dog drama Togo as Production VFX Supervisor, overseeing over 900 shots.

He recently delivered DNEG's work on Alita: Battle Angel for director Robert Rodriguez. Prior to this, Raymond was DNEG VFX Supervisor on the Warner Bros. underwater action-horror movie The Meg.

His first role as VFX Supervisor was for 2006's The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift and he has subsequently gone on to work in the same capacity on films such as The Golden Compass, Night at the Museum 2, Chronicle and more recently Star Trek Beyond. He was also On-Set VFX Supervisor for 2014's Into the Storm.

Raymond joined DNEG in 2015 with over 20 years of experience in the VFX industry, much of it as a Lighting and Sequence Supervisor on films including Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and Mystery Men.

Steve Garrad gained his degree in Film / History at Canterbury Christchurch College and began his career in Visual Effects at Cinesite London in 1995, where he spent the next 6 years, followed by 3 years at Clear and 5 more years at Double Negative.

Steve relocated with his family in 2009 to Vancouver, BC, Canada from the UK joining Image Engine, where he spent the next 6 years helping to build the facility's presence in the film market. When Double Negative opened a new facility in Vancouver in 2014, Steve was the first employee. He then went freelance working on The Meg as VFX producer for Warner Bros. He recently finished The Unforgivable for Netflix and is currently working on Joe Kosinski's next film Escape from Spiderhead, again for Netflix.

Over those twenty five years, Steve has worked on a broad variety of visual effects work, from multi award-winning commercials (BBC talking heads: director Tim Pope), and award-winning music videos (Queens of the Stone Age – Go with the Flow: director Shynola), to Emmy nominated television (SGU: Stargate Universe, nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 2009 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series) and of course, numerous feature films working for VFX facilities and studios alike.

While working as a VFX Producer / Executive Producer, he has had the pleasure of working with directors of the ilk of Danny Boyle, Guillermo Del Toro, Edgar Wright, Pete Berg, Kathryn Bigelow, Jon Turteltaub and Joe Kosinski.

Coming soon.