Ollie Rankin is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and futurist from Aotearoa New Zealand. His feature film visual effects career spans 20+ years and 26 films. A background in programming and specifically the field of artificial intelligence led him into what was then the brand new discipline of “crowd simulation”, building virtual brains and choreographing battle sequences for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He went on to be involved in many of cinema’s biggest franchises, from the Matrix trilogy, to the X-Men, Transformers and Alice in Wonderland series. But he had fallen in love with VR in the 80s when it was little more than a figment in the imaginations of visionary Sci-fi and cyberpunk authors. He’s spent the last several years working in various capacities to help realize their visions.

Since 2014, Ollie has been involved in the creative and technical execution of over a dozen VR & AR projects, from interactive narrative and educational experiences, to immersive music videos and multiplayer mixed reality games. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he brought two of the world’s biggest music festivals into VR.

Ollie is also an advocate and activist for inclusivity, fairness and sustainability, through his non-profit United Humans Foundation.