About

Invalid Symbol is a creative production studio building film, games, and interactive — with AI, finished like film.

The studio that renders what the old pipeline couldn't.

Invalid Symbol is built for a new era of storytelling. We make original film, games, and interactive work by pairing trained filmmakers with a director-led generative pipeline. Craft comes first — lens behaviour, light logic, the way a scene is staged — and the tools are how we render it, revise it dozens of times, and finish at a scale and speed the old pipeline couldn't sustain.

We build story worlds.

We design worlds that can live across a film, a game, and an interactive experience — built with character, tone, and a visual language that holds up frame to frame, and made to scale across formats. Whether a piece is fully generative or a blend of AI and live action, the world comes first.

We're an end-to-end studio.

From first concept and worldbuilding through production, post, and delivery, we work across the whole pipeline. Moving fluidly between fully AI-native and hybrid live-action lets us pick the right approach for each story — delivering cinematic work while keeping creative intent and quality intact at every stage.

Production and IP, under one roof.

We produce for brands, studios and artists — and we develop our own originals across film, series, games and immersive. The same director-led team does both, so every client production sharpens the worlds we own, and every original pushes what we can make for clients.

Leadership

Creative Director

J. Lee Williams

Director · Writer · Producer · VFX + Animation · AI · Interactive

J. Lee Williams is a Chinese-Canadian director, writer and producer working across film, visual effects, animation, immersive VR and games. He's spent more than twenty years making images — over fifteen of them as a VFX supervisor — directing commercials for Coca-Cola, collaborating with David Cronenberg, and directing the sci-fi immersive series Lightcatcher for Ridley Scott's RSA Films.

His VR documentary Cut-Off for VICE earned a Canadian Screen Award nomination, and Survivorman VR — where he was Interactive Director and VFX Producer — won the Canadian Screen Award in 2024. At Invalid Symbol he is Creative Director of the original game Mojii, AI-VFX Director on Eli Roth's feature Ice Cream Man, and is developing his first feature as director, Paper Sons.

In production
Ice Cream Man
AI-VFX Director + Artist · dir. Eli Roth · Cream Productions
Feature
Mojii
Creative Director · Writer · Game Designer · Invalid Symbol
Game
Film · series · immersive
Lightcatcher
Director · Writer · Producer · RSA Films
Series
Survivorman VR
Interactive Director · VFX Producer · Cream Productions
VR
Cut-Off VR
Director · Interactive Designer · VICE Media
VR doc
Jook-Sing (S1)
Director · Writer · Producer · Invalid Symbol
Series
Body.Mind.Change
Director · VFX Supervisor · Canadian Film Centre
Short
Sharkwater Extinction VR
Director · VFX Supervisor · Sharkwater
VR
FIFA World Cup
Director · Writer · Producer · FIFA, Qatar
VR
Commercial
Coca-Cola (×3)
Director · Writer · VFX Supervisor · Bell Media
Spot
Red Bull — Crankworx
Director · VFX Supervisor · Producer · Samsung
Short
Lincoln — Elevate Your Everyday
Director · Writer · VFX Supervisor · VICE Media
Short
Puma
Director · Producer
Social
Music video
Drake — “Started From The Bottom”
VFX Supervisor · OVO Sound
MV
TALK — “Train”
Director · VFX Supervisor · Capitol Records
MV
Steve Aoki — “Feedback”
Animation Director · Dim Mak
MV
Marianas Trench — “Here's to the Zeros”
VFX Supervisor + Artist · Interscope
MV
Zeds Dead — “Lost You”
Animation Director · Mad Decent — MMVA Best Post Production
MV

Careers

We're always looking for people who bend pixels in new ways.

Traditional or tech-savvy, seasoned or just getting started — if you're a production pro, a worldbuilder, or a filmmaker curious about what the new tools can do, we'd like to meet you. Tell us what you're making and where it's stuck.

Get in touch ▶