Ken McGaugh

Ken’s recent projects include supervising Wētā’s work on Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) for which the team developed a new method for animating vignettes to create the key third-act sequence where hundreds of vicious CG mandrills chase the main actors across swinging rope bridges. On Mortal Engines (2018) he supervised virtual world building, including the design of a new pipeline to create the gigantic moving city of London. He was part of the supervisory team on Steven Spielberg’s The BFG (2016) and supervised Alvin and the Chipmunks (2015), Wētā FX’s first animated feature. 

Ken joined Wētā FX to work on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). He won an Academy Technical Achievement Award for his role in creating the breakthrough technology used to render the CG character Gollum’s translucent skin. The characterization of Gollum made possible by this achievement also won him a Visual Effects Society Award. Over the next decade Ken was a Visual Effects Supervisor at Double Negative, supervising films including Batman Begins (2005), Godzilla (2014) and Avengers: The Age of Ultron (2015). In 2010, while at ILM, Ken won a second Academy Technical Achievement Award for ambient occlusion in rendering, now a standard tool in CG lighting. 

Ken is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.