Director Phoebe Arnstein Signs With Biscuit Filmworks for Commercial Representation
May 20, 2026
Nexus Studios director Laurie Rowan powers up the kitschy fun of an 80s training montage in this keynote film for Google’s I/O 2026 event, a cheeky and tactile merger of 3D animation, puppetry, and AI.
Laurie Rowan: “To tell the story of Google’s TPU chips, Nexus built a bespoke hybrid pipeline combining handcrafted design and puppetry with the very AI technologies those chips help power.
“This type of filmmaking allowed us to indulge in a wide range of processes with a wide range of people and funnel all of their approaches into one cohesive whole with Google’s generative AI tools as a final rendering layer.
“The process kept creative control where it belonged, with the artists, who drove every key decision across direction, performance and design.”
“The puppetry shoot embraced a deliberately lo-fi aesthetic: handmade proxy sets, cardboard characters and pipe-cleaner puppets that fed directly into the film’s animation. The approach encouraged rapid iteration, spontaneity and play throughout production.
“The process kept creative control where it belonged, with the artists, who drove every key decision across direction, performance and design. It was built to honor the imperfections and physicality of live puppetry, not sand them away.
“The result is a hybrid craft-and-AI pipeline that brought the same level of made-by-hand artistry Nexus brings to its most traditionally crafted work.
“The rapid iteration built into both the physical and digital pipeline gave artists room to shape and refine their work in real time, creating a more fluid collaboration across disciplines that are too often treated as separate.”
Client: Google
Production: Nexus Studios
Director: Laurie Rowan
EP: Anthony Austin
Producer: Electra Fotopoulou, Jo Bierton
Production Manager: Soulla King, Sarah McDonald
Runners: Adam Vincent, Jack Taylor
ECD: Chris O’Reillly
Creative Director: Ryan Delehanty
Technical Director: German Diez
Studio CG Lead: Florian Caspar
AI Compositors: Zsolt Sebok, Miguel Basulto
Compositors: Caroline Pires, Nicholas Neff, Pedram Razi, Ioana Staiculescu, Ignacio Vicent,
Claudio Marcos
Character Designer: Antonin Herveet
Character Modelling & Texturing: Lucas De Miguel
Props Modelling/Texturing: Irina Nguyen
Environment Artist: Alfred Llupia
Environment Modelling: Andy Spence, Patrick Tomasini, Zach Pindolia
3D Previs: Steve White
3D Rigging: Niko Rossi
Lead 3D Animator: Steve White
3D Animators: Jean Guillaume Culot, Marta Pevida, Rodrigo Torres, Martin Rossi,
Syed Arif Hassan
Physical Model Build: Anastasia Rondanini
Puppet Build: Arch Model Studio
Puppet Maintenance: Ben Cockerill
Camera Operator: Jen Armstrong
Puppeteer: Olly Taylor
Lighting & Rendering: Pawel Adamiec, Lucas De Miguel, Patrick Tomasini
Storyboard Artist: Morgan Ritchie
Motion Designer: Michael Muller
AI Concept: Pablo Romanos
Matte Painting: Pablo Romanos, Alfred Lupia
Editor: David Slade
Associate Editor: Andrea Zantiras
Head of Production: Rachel Moss
Creative Manager: Lisa Kenney
PR/Marketing: Bruce Bigg, Nancy Edmondson, Esme Harvey Otway
Talent Acquisition Manager: Sophia Whyte
Talent Manager: Indiana Wilson
BTS director: Joshua Bamford
BTS camera assistant: Joe Hofmann
Audio Post: Factory Studios
Sound Design/Mix: Josh Campbell
Senior Audio Producer: Olivia Endersby
VO Artists: Ryan Delehanty, Vanessa Marshall, Topher Ngo
