Lilli Thompson

Artist, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Filmmaker, Parent, Technologist

I'm a computer scientist by background, with a deep love of 3D art and graphics programming. I’ve taken a windy career path which started as game programmer and lead through tech lead at Google, character animation school, design and ux consulting, a stint as a professional conference speaker / technical communicator, and 2 startup acquisitions. I joined Oculus in 2018 and am now the Product Lead for Quill [a virtual reality painting and animation tool], which has been an amazing opportunity because it’s all of my favorite things at once: 3D art and animation, and games / film industry software, and an awesome team. At home I have 2 mini-humans, ages 1 and 3, who keep me very busy, but in any time left over I love 3D modeling & animation, illustration, film production, and working on personal game, app, and art projects.

As general topics, I love virtual reality, media theory, video games, art history, and comic books. In terms of causes and ideas, I'm passionate about the well-being and fair compensation of creative people. We live in a perverse time where we are barraged by media on all sides and CONTENT is more inescapable and interwoven into our lives than ever, and yet somehow creative people across fields find it harder and harder to make a living. How is it that we have so much power, and yet beautiful things are becoming harder to create? These trends threaten our long term culture, intellectual well being, and sense of beauty and wonder. I love to think and talk about what can theoretically or practically be done in the world to help change the tide.

Virtual Reality Media is the next frontier in entertainment, and, at the moment is a completely open field. There's a unique opportunity to define what the next format will be--what's a "movie" in VR? What's "TV"? What's a novel or a comic book? There's so much to discover, and I can't wait to see what happens next!