Art direction and visual development for animated films.

Spellbound: island palaces and waterfalls Spellbound: palace island, falls, and bridge Spellbound: palace courtyard, fountain, and bridge
Spellbound Production designer
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World — Ruffnut dragon armor How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World — warlords How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World — windswept tree on the shore
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World Visual development
The Magician’s Elephant: hill town, fountain, and butterfly The Magician’s Elephant: boy and the elephant The Magician’s Elephant: theater at night
The Magician’s Elephant Art director
All work

About


Iuri Lioi

I’m an art director and production designer with more than twenty years in animation, currently working on something exciting at Warner Bros. My career includes nearly a decade at DreamWorks, with films such as the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, which earned an Annie Award nomination for Best Production Design. Since then, I’ve been production designer at Skydance Animation on Spellbound, art director at Netflix Animation on The Magician’s Elephant, and Development Art Director at LAIKA, alongside years of freelance and consulting work across a wide range of projects and studios.

What excites me most is finding the ideas that give a film its identity and carrying them all the way to the screen. I love collaborating with directors in development, using blue-sky exploration to push possibilities and discover the worlds, characters, and visual language that make a project unique. In production, that exploration becomes creative problem solving, multidisciplinary collaboration, and the pursuit of a clear, cohesive vision. Whether shaping a world, designing a character, or composing a shot, I’m always looking for the same thing: images where every choice serves the story.

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