Our Story

Having contributed to many animated feature films and visual effects movies internationally for the past decade, we saw the wheel was constantly being re-invented at many big-budget production studios. Also from our experience, we saw that advanced tools and workflows were not available to customers outside these big-budget studios, customers that didn't necessarily have the budget for an in-house research & development department. We saw a real need globally for production-ready shading software for films, television, and any high end 3d rendering solutions to individual customers as well as studios who don't have the resources for an in-house research & development team. Founding Lollipop Shaders in 2010, we have been providing custom software plugins for clients around the world, as well as consulting, software development, and training. How can we help you?

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to find out more about what we do and how we work with clients.

Christos Obretenov, CEO and Shader Architect

Educated at Simon Fraser University with a BSc in Computing Science specializing in Computer Graphics, Christos Obretenov started contributing to the Animation and Film industry at Mainframe Entertainment in conjuction with Simon Fraser University. He continued his career by designing and developing shading software for Walt Disney's "The Wild" feature film, followed by shading and lighting for Superman Returns, Spider-Man 3, Beowulf, Christmas Carol, Mars Needs Moms, Life of Pi (which won the 2013 Oscar for Best Visual Effects) feature films. With Lollipop Shaders, Christos oversees and is the shading architect for feature film projects including Sausage Party, Michael Jackson Slave to the Rhythm, and work with Sony on Mitchell's vs Machines. Recently co-founding LollipopShaders.com, Christos develops procedural solutions to shading and lighting, currently experimenting with Non Photoreal Shading (NPR). He resides in Vancouver, Canada.
LinkedIn Profile
IMDB Film Credits



Ernst Janssen Groesbeek, Look Developer

Founder of 9to3animation, Ernst's company collaborates with us on our latest Stylized Non Photoreal Rendering projects.


Project Contributors

Richard Purcell, Look Developer

With experience primarily in look development, Richard believes that achieving a great image begins with a great shader. He has diplomas and degrees from the Banff School of Fine Arts, University of Waterloo School of Architecture, and the Bell Center for Creative Communications. His career spans over 20 years of creating images for architecture, urban planning, medical research, film, and television. Currently his passion is finding shading solutions that reproduce real-world materiality accurately, efficiently, and easily.
LinkedIn Profile


Tom Sirdevan, Shader Architect

With concurrent degrees in Computer Science and Visual Arts from Western University, Tom Sirdevan has appropriately made his professional career one of telling computers how to present pixels. Starting out in Toronto at ATI (now AMD) and learning the ins and outs of graphics cards, he then moved on to explore his creative side in Vancouver. There he worked on AAA video game titles at Electronic Arts before jumping ship to film, working in animation at Vanguard Animation, Rainmaker Entertainment, Pixar Canada, and more recently live action films at Image Engine, all in various roles as graphics programmer, texture artist, and everything in between. Tom has also taught materials / shading, lighting and visual fx at VanArts College.
LinkedIn Profile
IMDB Page


Einar Gabbassov, Developer

Einar Gabbassov is a technical artist and creative director. A graduate of Istituto Europeo di Design in Milano, Italy, Einar spent eight years working on various commercials and feature film VFX across Europe and Central Asia.In 2012, exploring new creative horizons, Einar took part in developing the high-end kids’ animation TV series ‘Tellur Aliens’. He served as the Director and Creative Group Head for the series. In addition to his creativity, Einar has strong skills in CG lighting and rendering, Image Processing programming, and RenderMan development. Through this blog, Einar shares his knowledge and opinion on various creative and technical aspects of his daily job. Einar’s client list includes international companies such as Kimberly-Clark, Caspian Beverage Holding,Wrigley, RG Brands, Kaspersky Lab, Efes Beverage Group, British Tobacco, Crea Young & Rubicam, DDB, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO and others.
LinkedIn Profile
Einar's Industry Blog


Arkell Rasiah, HDR Lightmap Photographer

Arkell Rasiah graduated as an E&E engineer from Imperial College, London. After completing his PhD with the Dept of E&E Engr at University of W. Australia, he began working life as a software engineer in Programmable Logic for Motorola and then Altera spanning a period of eight years. He switched career tracks joining ILM's R&D dept from 2001-2011; working on software infrastructure, previsualization, stereo3D layout and HDRI capture pipeline for application in digital matte/global illumination workflows. From 2011-2013, he worked for Red Digital Cinema in cine post tools as a RedCineX GPU/OpenCL and image effects developer. Arkell lives in Ross, CA and works for Tweak Software. He continues to maintain his interest in panoramic photography and light map capture for GI lighting with Renderman.
LinkedIn Profile

On top of our core team, we have talented engineers with high-end feature film development experience available for custom client work as we take on projects of larger size.


The Lollipop Shaders office is located in the Creekhouse building on Granville Island, Vancouver, Canada.