Steve Nichols

Biography:

Steve Aplin is a British animation director at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Educated at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design, he began his professional career at ILM in 1996 as a modeller. His early work included digital modeling and model development on Men in Black (1997), Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the 2002 Special Edition of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). He worked as an animator on Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Eragon (2006), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), and Star Trek (2009). In 2009, he was promoted to Animation Sequence Supervisor. Aplin joined Double Negative in London in 2009 as an Animation Supervisor, then became Creative Head of Animation in 2011. During his time at the studio, he supervised animation on John Carter (2012), Jupiter Ascending (2015), and Captain America: Civil War (2016). In 2016, Aplin returned to Industrial Light & Magic, joining the company's London studio as Animation Director. Since then, he has supervised animation on Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017), A Quiet Place (2018), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), Aladdin (2019), Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019), Gladiator II (2024), and Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025). He also served as Animation Supervisor on the concert production ABBA Voyage (2022), which combined live performance with advanced digital human technology. As part of the visual effects team for Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017), he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects alongside Neal Scanlan, Chris Corbould, and Ben Morris. His work on ABBA Voyage (2022) earned the Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project, shared with Ben Morris, Edward Randolph, and Ian Comley. For Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025), he received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, the Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature, the Hawaii Film Critics Society Award for Best Visual Effects, and the Astra Creative Arts Award for Best Visual Effects.