Steamroller Animation has announced that Shawn Dunn will be joining the studio as Chief Technology Officer. Dunn will be responsible for guiding and overseeing the studio’s technology vision, most notably Steamroller’s continued exploration into feature quality animation utilizing real time workflows.
Prior to joining Steamroller, Dunn was a Senior Product Manager at Epic Games, where he was instrumental in the company’s development direction of Unreal Engine in order for it to be easily adopted and used in the media & entertainment industry in virtual production, visual effects and feature animation. He spent three-and-a-half years at Original Force, a privately owned animation studio with bases in L.A., Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Chengdu, where he was responsible for overseeing the technology foundation of the company, implementing IT and workflow innovations that support the creative and artistic process. Dunn also spent 13 years at Wētā FX, where he served as Head of Research & Development for the motion group, managing R&D for its animation, motion editing, previz and crowd simulation units.
Throughout his 28 year career, Dunn worked on over 30 feature films, including Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin and The BFG, James Cameron’s Avatar, Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Dawn of the Planets of the Apes, The Avengers, X-Men: First Class and The Jungle Book.
“In talking with Jalil [Sadool, CCO] and Aaron [Gilman, CEO] at Steamroller Animation, it was very clear that they have big ideas and goals that they are driving towards,” said Dunn. “I have worked in the industry for many years and most of my experience has been developing workflows and pipelines to enable companies to work on projects of any scale while being artist and production friendly. I have also been pushing real time workflows for most of my career and these are both areas that Steamroller Animation has been striving towards.”
From its inception in 2014, Steamroller Animation has provided services in animation, rigging, story development, character and concept art across all sectors of the entertainment industry. The studio has supported projects such as Blizzard’s Overwatch 2, Epic Games’ Fortnite and LEGO Fortnite, Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water, Netflix’s Slumberland and Yu Yu Hakusho, and Guerilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West, to name a few. The independent company has studios in Florida, Mauritius and Vancouver, with 260 staff globally.
In 2020, Steamroller released its award winning short film, Spice Frontier, with a pilot episode for the animated series currently in production. In 2021, Steamroller released a teaser for Master, created by Jamaal Bradley. In 2022, the studio released Curse of the Deadwood, a video game available on the Steam platform.
“Shawn is a perfect match for us, not only because of his constant drive to use technology to improve efficiency but also because of his love for storytelling and original IP development”, says Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer, Jalil Sadool. “He always has the artist in mind whenever he is championing a new technology. It’s incredibly refreshing to have someone with so much experience who also really sees himself a servant to everyone on his team. We think the timing for Shawn to join us is perfect! His knowledge will be essential for these next critical steps in our journey as we continue to develop new tools for all departments in our real time pipeline.”
Aaron Gilman, Chief Executive Officer of Steamroller Studios says, “We are beyond excited to welcome Shawn to Steamroller. I worked with Shawn for years at Wētā FX where we formed a great relationship collaborating on cutting edge visual FX and animation projects. At Steamroller, we’ve built this amazing real time animation pipeline for Spice Frontier. But there’s still a huge amount we need to develop as we look to adapt this technology to our slate of original content. With all the new tools and workflows we see in our future, Shawn is going to be instrumental in the next steps of our journey.”
With production on the pilot episode of Spice Frontier wrapping this year Steamroller plans to shift its focus back to developing Master into an animated feature, along with a number of other original stories.
