Justin van der Lek

Justin van der Lek (born October 14, 1982) is a Dutch visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, van der Lek began his career in commercial and music video visual effects work at Condor and Look! FX, and also worked as an environment artist at Guerrilla Games, working on the video game Killzone. Van der Lek transitioned to Hollywood productions during his tenure at Digital Domain. He worked on Iron Man 3's "Barrel of Monkeys" sequence, which received a nomination for the Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture alongside Michael Maloney, Francis Puthanangadi, and Howard Cabalfin. After working at Digital Domain, van der Lek joined Weta Digital and later Industrial Light & Magic, alternating between the two companies on a range of high-profile productions. His work on the "Falcon Chase/Graveyard" sequence in Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned him a Visual Effects Society Award in 2016 for Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature, shared with Yanick Dusseault, Mike Wood, and Quentin Marmier. Van der Lek later specialized in StageCraft and virtual production workflows within the Star Wars television universe at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. His work on Ahsoka earned him a nomination at the 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or a Movie, shared with Richard Bluff, Jakris Smittant, Paul Kavanagh, TC Harrison, Scott R. Fisher, Enrico Damm, Rick O'Connor, and J. Alan Scott.