Greg Maguire

Greg Maguire, Humain CEO and Professor of Animation at the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. He has been instrumental in the launch and development of numerous heavy hitters of animation including Walt Disney Feature Animation, George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm Animation, Digital Domain, and Zoogloo. His credits include Academy Award-nominated "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004), Academy Award winning "Happy Feet” (2006) and “Avatar" (2009). He sits on the board of Northern Ireland Screen and is a member of the VES (Visual Effects Society).

In 2010, Maguire was invited to Chair the Animation programme at the University of Ulster in Belfast as Professor of Animation. He is responsible for the founding and development of the university’s animation programme from undergrad to postgraduate research. In 2013, he founded 3D Dojo, a weekly computer animation programme teaching child between 10-18 years old.

In 2017, he founded Humain to create digital humans for world-leading entertainment and technology companies. Their customers include HBO, Microsoft and Steve Rosenbaum, the VFX Supervisor of Avatar.

Maguire co-founded Inlifesize Ltd. in 2011 with game designer Phil Campbell. As long-time collaborators they spotted an opportunity to apply their respective experience and research to create unique entertainment concepts ideally suited to smartphone mobile gaming. Inlifesize's first application, “Fairy Magic” (2012), the award-winning augmented reality app, was released to critical acclaim in 2012. Deep Paper (2013), Inlifesize’s digital comic platform powered Simon Bisley’s “13 Coins” (2013) and has been described as ‘revolutionising comics’.

Maguire co-founded Zoogloo LLC, San Francisco in 2006, a creature technical direction service to clients such as multiple Academy Award-winning Digital Domain to Animal Logic, who won the Oscar for best animated feature, “Happy Feet” (2006). Their clients also included Warner Brothers, Image Metrics, The Weinstein Company, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Halo Pictures, Proof Inc., and Sesame Street.

Before founding Zoogloo, Maguire served as R&D Supervisor and Creature Supervisor at two Lucasfilm

Divisions:  at Lucasfilm Animation since its formation in 2003 as a global digital animation studio on

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) and at Industrial Light & Magic on the Academy Award nominated, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) and the Academy Award winning “Avatar” (2009).

Prior to his role at Lucasfilm, he was Technical Animation Supervisor (Creature Supervisor) on Walt Disney Feature Animation's first computer animated feature, Dinosaur (2000).  At Disney, he was responsible for rigging, developing and maintaining the pipeline for Dinosaur's 80 diverse creatures. For two years at WDFA he animated Plio the matriarchal hero of the lemur clan.

A Northern Irish native, he began his career in 1989 at Don Bluth Studios in Dublin, integrating computer graphics into traditional 2D classical animated features.  At Colossal Pictures, Little Beast and Wild Brain, he supervised and animated numerous award-winning projects which included work for Peter Gabriel “Steam” (1992), Coca-Cola, MTV’s Liquid Television, animated pop icons Hershey's Kisses, Hershey's “Twizzlers”, Nabisco's “Ritz”, Pillsbury's Green Giant and “Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds”.

He is a member of the Visual Effects Society and sits on the Board of Northern Ireland Screen. He is a graduate of MIT’s prestigious Entrepreneurship Development programme.