Creative Art Director Gino Acevedo has played a key role at Wētā FX for over a decade, building on his previous ten years at Weta Workshop.

In 1998 Richard Taylor asked Gino to bring his expertise in physical makeup and creature effects to Weta Workshop for The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3). During production of The Two Towers, he was invited by Weta Digital’s Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri to recreate the texture painting on Gollum based on the practical model he painted at Weta Workshop. As Art Director of digital creatures and the liaison between Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, Gino pioneered the use of traditional methods of life casting to create skin textures.

Gino was Weta Digital’s Creative Art Director on James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), leading his Textures team of up to fifty artists in using innovative life-casting techniques to produce a digital library of highly detailed skin textures instrumental in creating the Na’vi and creatures of Pandora. He went on to lead the Textures team on many iconic films, including The Adventures of Tintin (2011), The Hobbit trilogy (2012–14), Pete’s Dragon (2016) and The BFG (2016).

Gino’s contribution to Weta’s primates stretches back to King Kong (2005). His passion for apes and deep understanding of their anatomy, behaviour and expressions were key to creating the photorealistic skin and fur of the digital characters in the Planet of the Apes trilogy (2011, 2014, 2017), Jungle Book (2018) and Rampage (2018). Gino has recently brought this expertise to The Umbrella Academy’s Pogo.

He is currently working on the Avatar sequels, developing comprehensive art reference for character elements, creatures and props.