Steven Ilous

Steven Ilous (born 2 June 1981) is an entrepreneur, director, writer, and producer. He is the leading founder of Monolith, SMI Entertainment and is best known for his expertise in visual effects, having worked in the visual effects department on over 15 films, including The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

In early 2015, Ilous's short film Polis won New Regency and Defy Media's PROTOTYPE competition. As a result, he and screenwriter Daniel Perea were awarded a feature film development deal at New Regency.

The Superslice listed Ilous 25th on their list of the Top 100 cultural influencers of 2012.

Steven Ilous is based in Los Angeles, California.

Ilous began in visual effects at the age of 18 working with Stan Lee at Stan Lee Media, where he became a Senior Animator. One year later, he became a part of the visual effects team on The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. In 2004, Ilous helped create facial motion capture technology used in The Polar Express, Monster House, and Beowulf.

In 2008, Ilous teamed up with Michael Davidoff, Bill Rosenthal, and Steve Freeman to write The Life and Times of Jimmy Jaxx for 20th Century Fox, an animated series loosely based on the life of Tommy Lee. Ilous then made his directorial debut in commercials with the World of Tanks video game teaser for Gamescom 2011. The video has received over 10 million YouTube views and took 60 artists 60 days to create. He has also directed and produced music videos for Electric Youth, Bloody Beetroots, Theophilous London, Gary Go, and Benny Benassi. His music videos have appeared on MTV, VH1, and CMT. Ilous also created original video content for Kanye West's live tour which debuted at Lollapalooza in 2011.

In November 2012, Ilous released a proof-of-concept teaser for his sci-fi feature film project "2088'.Described as "a visual style reminiscent of Blade Runner",Wired.com summarizes "The brief piece of “found footage” sells a gritty urban vision of the future, when cops from Los Angeles’ Non-Human Crimes Division get squashed by a Transformers-meets-King Kong robotic thug."Currently 2088 is in development as a feature-length movie.

In January 2015, New Regency and Defy Media announced Ilous and Daniel Perea the winners of their filmmaking competition PROTOTYPE. The two won with their 5 minute short film, Polis, a sci-fi thriller. The competition's prize was a development deal with New Regency, where Polis is to become a feature-length film. In early 2015 Polis became a Vimeo staff pickand was named "Short of the Week" at OneRoomwithaView.com in February 2015.

Ilous has served as a guest lecturer at the USC School of Cinematic Arts along with DJ Hauck. He also acted as Gotland Games Awards judge and guest lecturer from 2009 to 2011 at Gotland University a division of Uppsala University in Sweden, an institution with the first video game education program in Northern Europe.