About
Short Bio
I am Peter Ariet, a Creative Producer and technical artist, and Co-Founder of Studio Syro. I lead end-to-end XR productions across VR, AR, and location based experiences, bridging storytelling, team leadership, and hands on technical problem solving. My work includes the Meta published VR animated series Tales From Soda Island and the immersive album experience The Art of Change, with projects showcased at Venice, SXSW, and SIGGRAPH.
If you want to collaborate or talk about art and emerging tech, feel free to reach out.
Email: pjpariet@gmail.com
Full Bio
I am a producer and technical artist based in San Diego, operating at the intersection of storytelling and emerging technology. I co-founded Studio Syro to build immersive worlds where hand crafted art direction and real time production can live together, and I specialize in aligning creative teams, technical constraints, and partner expectations to ship audience ready experiences.
At Studio Syro, I lead production across the full lifecycle, including scoping, budgeting, scheduling, resourcing, risk management, and delivery. I also contribute as a technical artist, with a focus on shader development and optimization for headset class hardware, Quill to engine workflows, and performance planning (frame time, draw calls, memory, lighting, VFX). Across studio projects, I have supported source control and production tooling (GitHub and Perforce collaboration workflows) and helped build reliable pipelines for artists and developers working in Unity and Unreal.
My studio credits include Tales From Soda Island (sponsored and published by Meta) and Reimagined Vol. I: Nyssa, plus a range of commercial and music driven work. Tales From Soda Island includes:
- Chapter 1: The Multiverse Bakery
- Chapter 2: The Neon Jungle (SIGGRAPH 2021 VR Theater)
- Chapter 3: The Quantum Race
- Chapter 4: The Golden Record
- Chapter 5: The School Trip
- Chapter 6: Silence (Webby Awards nominee)
- Chapter 7: The First Ingredient (80th Venice International Film Festival)
I also produced and supported The Art of Change (81st Venice International Film Festival), directed by Simone Fougnier (Funilab) and Vincent Rooijers (Droeloe), and worked on Reimagined Vol. I: Nyssa (79th Venice International Film Festival), directed by Julie Cavaliere. Additional credits include development and technical production across a vertical slice for Flipside (unreleased), commercial work with Level99 and Area23 (unreleased), and live visuals for artists including Bad Bunny and Mr. Bill, plus the music video Dreaming of You / Far Away for Slushii.
More recently, I served as Lead Producer at WEVR for the large scale location based VR experience Emperor: Dust-Covered Empire (Terracotta Warriors: Secrets of the First Emperor’s Mausoleum), in partnership with HTC VIVE Arts and China based stakeholders. I guided delivery from greybox to beta and deployment planning, built production systems (SOWs, addenda, milestones, invoicing, vendor coordination), and ran zone based QA tracking (Z01 to Z16) to keep fixes, defers, and acceptance criteria aligned across multiple teams. I also helped coordinate narrative, dialogue review, and VO timing passes and approvals, while managing historically sensitive review cycles and documentation for culturally significant content. On the technical side, I collaborated within Unreal Engine pipelines and worked with engineering to navigate Perforce constraints and make pragmatic performance decisions and content cuts for headset class limits.
Alongside shipped work, I prototype and build toward new interactive products. Recent initiatives include early production leadership for PondQuest (mixed reality gameplay) and Dear Metaverse (a hand tracking MR messaging experience), defining scope, KPIs, and vertical slice deliverables.
Before Studio Syro, I worked at the AR startup KWEST as a Technical Artist and later as Producer, leading creative and technical development for platform features and narrative driven AR experiences playable anywhere. Earlier roles include Technical Sales Engineer at e-TechServices, where I designed and supported customized server solutions and infrastructure planning, and Technical Artist Intern at Perilous Orbit, where I gained hands on experience with Unreal Engine 4, shader networks, visual scripting, and C++ while researching technical art best practices for VR tool design. I also worked at the University of Florida Digital Worlds Institute as an AV Technician and Student Assistant, supporting classroom operations, live streams, lecture capture, and building wide technical support.
I care deeply about the synergy between creative and technical disciplines, because that is where the strongest work happens. My job is to keep vision, process, and execution aligned so teams can do their best work and ship with confidence.
Email: pjpariet@gmail.com
Experience
Studio Syro (2019 to Present)
Co-Founder, Studio Head, Producer, Technical Artist
- End-to-end production leadership across VR titles and partner deliverables
- Cross functional coordination across artists, developers, audio, and external stakeholders
- Technical art support, including shader optimization and Quill to engine workflows
- Source control and pipeline support across GitHub and Perforce workflows
- Selected technical credits: Unity Quill shader development, spatial audio coordination for VR animated shorts
- Selected project contributions: Paradiddle VR (environments for Quest release, Unreal Engine and Quill), Dawson College Virtual Vernissage (web metaverse platform, Unity and Quill)
WEVR (2024 to 2025)
Producer (VR LBE)
- Lead producer for Emperor: Dust-Covered Empire (Terracotta Warriors) in partnership with HTC VIVE Arts
- Zone based QA systems, cross stakeholder approvals, deployment readiness support
KWEST (Dec 2018 to Dec 2019)
Producer and Technical Artist (Apr 2019 to Dec 2019), Technical Artist (Dec 2018 to Apr 2019)
- Feature delivery and production coordination across a multidisciplinary team
- Technical art implementation, VFX, materials, shaders, and optimization
e-TechServices (Mar 2018 to Dec 2018)
Technical Sales Engineer
- Customer focused server solution design, configuration, and technical support
Perilous Orbit, Inc. (Sep 2017 to Feb 2018)
Technical Artist Intern
- Unreal Engine 4, shader networks, visual scripting, and C++ exposure on VR projects
University of Florida Digital Worlds Institute (Aug 2016 to Jun 2017)
AV Technician and Student Assistant
- Classroom operations, live streaming, lecture recording and editing, technical support
Selected Work
- The Art of Change (Studio Syro)
- Tales From Soda Island (Studio Syro, Chapters 1 through 7)
- Reimagined Vol. I: Nyssa (Studio Syro)
- Emperor: Dust-Covered Empire (Terracotta Warriors) (WEVR)
- Flipside, Vertical Slice (unreleased)
- Level99, Commercial Work
- Area23, Commercial Work (unreleased)
- Bad Bunny, Concert Visuals
- Mr. Bill, Concert Visuals and Album Visuals
- Slushii, Dreaming of You / Far Away, Music Video
Recognition and Awards
View all recognitions and awards →
- SIGGRAPH Spatial Storytelling 2025, Proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference, Spatial Storytelling
- SXSW 2025, The Art of Change
- 81st Venice International Film Festival (2024), Immersive Media, The Art of Change
- Mediterranean International Film Festival (Malta) (2024), Best VR Works, Tales From Soda Island, Chapter 7
- Webby Awards (2024), Nominee, Best Narrative Experience (Immersive Features), Silence: Tales From Soda Island, Chapter 6
- 80th Venice International Film Festival (2023), Immersive Media, Tales From Soda Island: The First Ingredient
- 79th Venice International Film Festival (2022), Immersive Media, Reimagined Vol. I: Nyssa
- SIGGRAPH 2021, VR Theater, Tales From Soda Island: The Neon Jungle
- Published paper (2018), Springer International Publishing, Advances in Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering: Assessing the Effectiveness of Emoticon-Like Scripting in Computer Programming
Skills and Tools
Production: Agile and Scrum, Kanban, roadmaps, budgeting and burn tracking, risk management, SOWs and milestones, vendor coordination, festival submissions and marketing deployments
Engines and XR: Unity (Quest and Android), Unreal Engine 5, OpenXR, Meta Presence Platform tooling, hand tracking, passthrough workflows, LBE workflows
Technical Art: GLSL, HLSL, Shader Graph, profiling (Unity Profiler, UE Insights), LODs, lightmaps, performance budgets
Backend and Networking: Firebase (Auth, Firestore or Realtime DB, Cloud Functions, Storage), Photon (rooms and matchmaking), REST and WebSocket basics, basic Node.js
Tooling: GitHub, Perforce, CI and CD basics, Figma, Adobe CC, Miro, Notion, Asana, Trello
Audio: Pipeline coordination, dialogue and VO review oversight, Ableton Live, music and sound design