For creative and media-production studios
IT support for creative studios in New Zealand
Specialist IT support for VFX, animation, video, design and digital-production teams. Workstations, storage, networking, remote artists, backups and production infrastructure — without treating your studio like a generic office.
Why studio IT isn't office IT
Most IT providers are built around email, laptops and a printer. A studio's real work happens somewhere else: on GPU workstations, shared storage and the network between them, often under a client deadline.
What generic IT support optimises for
- Standard laptops on a standard image
- Small files in Microsoft 365 or Google Drive
- Whatever Wi-Fi and switch came with the office
- Tickets closed, regardless of whether a render is waiting
What a production studio actually needs
- GPU-heavy Mac, Windows and Linux machines tuned for the apps your artists run
- Multi-terabyte projects on shared storage that several people hit at once
- A wired network fast enough to edit and composite directly off that storage
- Updates and changes timed around deliveries, not in the middle of them
Creative businesses we support
Small studios and teams — roughly solo through 20 people — whose output depends on their technical setup working every day.
VFX and animation studios
GPU workstations, shared project storage, render and compute machines, and licensing for tools like Nuke, Blender and Unreal Engine.
Video production and post-production
Editing and grading suites, DaVinci Resolve and Adobe workflows, camera-card ingest, and storage fast enough for multiple editors.
Design agencies and content studios
Adobe Creative Cloud seats, shared brand and asset libraries, client file delivery, and contractors who come and go between jobs.
Photographers and photo studios
Large RAW libraries, reliable backups for irreplaceable shoots, and a sensible long-term archive.
Game-art teams and freelance collectives
Distributed artists, secure remote access to shared projects, and clean onboarding and offboarding as the team changes.
Sound familiar?
- The NAS is nearly full, nobody knows what can be deleted, and it's the only copy of half the projects.
- Scrubbing footage or opening a comp off the server is slow, and nobody's sure if it's the network, the storage or the workstation.
- Remote artists sync files through a mix of personal Dropbox accounts, WeTransfer links and hope.
- A workstation update broke a plugin or GPU driver the morning of a delivery.
- Licences are spread across personal accounts, a dongle in a drawer and a licence server nobody remembers setting up.
- Freelancers still have access to client projects from jobs that wrapped months ago.
- Backups run, apparently. Nobody has restored a full project from them.
- Finished jobs sit on drives on a shelf, and finding one for a client revision takes an afternoon.
None of this means the studio is badly run. It means the technical setup grew job by job, and nobody's job is to own it.
What's covered
IT and infrastructure for production teams
The same ongoing CreatorOps ownership as every engagement, applied to the systems a studio actually produces work on.
Creative workstations
Windows, Mac and Linux artist workstations, including GPU-heavy machines — drivers, updates, application compatibility and consistent setup, with changes scheduled around deliveries.
NAS and shared storage
Sizing, structure, permissions, health monitoring and capacity planning for shared storage — whether that's a Synology, QNAP or TrueNAS box, or a server.
Studio networking
Wired 10GbE and 25GbE networking between storage and workstations, switching, Wi-Fi, and finding the actual bottleneck when large files are slow.
Large-file workflows and cloud sync
Ingest, project structure, proxies, client delivery and cloud storage or sync services, set up so large files move predictably rather than by whoever has the fastest upload.
Remote artist access
Secure remote connectivity using WireGuard or Tailscale-style private networks, remote desktop into studio machines, or cloud workflows — matched to file sizes, bandwidth and client requirements.
Backups and archive
Backups for active projects with an offsite copy, a separate archive for finished work, and restores that are actually tested.
Creative software and licences
Adobe Creative Cloud seat management, licence servers and activations for tools like Nuke and DaVinci Resolve Studio, and a clear inventory of the SaaS the studio pays for.
Asset access and permissions
Project-level access for staff, freelancers and clients, so people see what they need and lose access cleanly when a job wraps. See fractional technical operations for the full accounts-and-access scope.
Onboarding and workstation lifecycle
New starters and freelancers set up with the right machine, apps and access from day one; ageing hardware tracked and replaced on a plan instead of on failure.
Render and compute infrastructure
Where relevant, keeping render nodes and shared compute machines healthy, along with the storage paths and network they depend on.
Monitoring and incident response
Monitoring for storage health, disk space, backups and key services, with remote troubleshooting when something fails.
Cloud and self-hosted infrastructure
Where it helps, cloud storage, virtual machines and self-hosted tools — plus your studio's domain, email and website. See domain, DNS and hosting support and Google Workspace support.
CreatorOps looks after the infrastructure your pipeline runs on. It isn't a pipeline TD or a tools developer — custom pipeline scripting and major builds are scoped separately, and CreatorOps is happy to work alongside the people who do that.
Remote-first support that fits how studios work
Most studio IT — updates, storage, permissions, monitoring, remote access, troubleshooting — is done remotely. That keeps support fast and affordable for studios in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch or anywhere else in New Zealand, and for teams whose artists aren't all in one building.
How day-to-day support works
Requests are handled during normal New Zealand business hours, with urgent operational issues prioritised. After-hours help, such as cover for a crunch weekend, is available by arrangement and charged separately.
When something needs hands on hardware
Installing a NAS, cabling a rack or swapping a switch is scoped as a project, with a clear plan that a local installer or your own team can follow.
Production continuity: planning for the bad day
Downtime in a studio isn't an inconvenience — it's artists sitting idle and a delivery at risk. Continuity work is about deciding in advance what happens when something fails.
Single points of failure, mapped
Which storage, switch, licence server or person the whole studio silently depends on — and what the fallback is for each.
Restores that have been tested
Regular test restores of real projects, so you know how long recovery actually takes before you need it.
An agreed recovery order
Which projects, machines and services come back first when time is short.
Change windows around deadlines
Updates, upgrades and risky changes planned around your delivery calendar, not on top of it.
Protecting client IP and unreleased work
Studios often hold unreleased footage, pre-launch campaigns and client assets under NDA. The practical controls that protect that work are part of the service.
Least-privilege project access
Access granted per project and per person, reviewed regularly and removed as soon as someone rolls off a job.
Secure remote connectivity
Remote artists reach studio resources over private, encrypted connections instead of open file shares or personal cloud accounts.
Device and network hardening
Multi-factor authentication, disk encryption, sensible network segmentation, and separating guest and production networks.
Client security requirements
The technical groundwork that client security questionnaires and assessments tend to ask about. CreatorOps doesn't issue certifications or act as an assessor.
Access stays under your control. Never send passwords, MFA or recovery codes, private keys or API tokens — CreatorOps uses account invitations, delegated access, SSO or another owner-approved method agreed during onboarding.
How it starts
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Technical Health Check
Answer a few questions about how your studio's setup works today. It's free and takes about 3–5 minutes.
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Free review
A free 20-minute call to walk through the risks, bottlenecks and priorities in your current setup.
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Onboarding
If it's a fit, CreatorOps maps your workstations, storage, network, accounts and access, and agrees what gets owned first.
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Ongoing ownership
Day-to-day ownership of the agreed scope, month to month. See pricing for what's included.
Is this a fit for your studio?
Good fit
- Studios of roughly 1–20 people with shared storage, several workstations or remote artists
- Teams where the "IT person" is currently an artist, editor or the owner
- Studios that want to stop losing production time to technical problems
Probably not a fit
- Large facilities that need a permanent onsite IT team
- Studios looking for custom pipeline development as the main service
- Teams that need enterprise 24×7 coverage as standard
Questions studios ask
Scope
What does IT support for a creative studio actually include?
The workstations, shared storage, network, remote access, backups, licences and accounts your team produces work on — plus monitoring and troubleshooting when something breaks. The focus is keeping production moving, not just keeping email working.
Do you support VFX and animation studios in New Zealand?
Yes. CreatorOps is based in New Zealand and supports small VFX, animation and other digital-production teams remotely. The focus is the infrastructure your artists work on — workstations, storage, network, remote access and backups — rather than pipeline development or artist tooling.
Can you support both Mac and Windows workstations?
Yes. Most studios run a mix — Macs for editorial and design, Windows or Linux boxes for GPU-heavy 3D, compositing and rendering. The aim is one consistent approach to updates, access, storage mounts and backups across all of them.
Can you manage Adobe Creative Cloud and other software licences?
Yes. That includes Adobe Creative Cloud seat assignment, licence servers and activations for tools like Nuke and DaVinci Resolve Studio, and keeping track of which SaaS subscriptions the studio pays for and who uses them.
Storage, networking and remote work
Do you set up NAS and shared storage for video editing?
Yes. That covers choosing and sizing storage for how your team actually works, structuring shares and permissions, keeping it healthy, and backing it up. New hardware and deployments are scoped and quoted as a project; ongoing care of the storage is part of the monthly service.
Is 10GbE worth it for a small studio?
Often, yes — if several people edit or composite high-bitrate media directly off shared storage. But the network is only as fast as the storage behind it, so the right answer depends on your media, your NAS and how many people hit it at once. Sometimes the bottleneck is a single cable or switch port, not the whole network.
How do remote artists securely access studio files?
Usually through a private network overlay such as WireGuard or Tailscale, a remote-desktop setup into a studio workstation, or a cloud-sync workflow — depending on file sizes, bandwidth and what your clients permit. Each person gets access only to the projects they need, and it's removed cleanly when they finish.
How should a creative studio back up projects and archive finished jobs?
Keep active projects backed up in more than one place, with at least one copy offsite and out of reach of ransomware, and move finished jobs to a separate, cheaper archive tier you can actually find things in later. Most importantly, test restores — a backup nobody has restored from is an assumption, not a plan.
Working together
Do you offer on-site IT support?
CreatorOps is remote-first, and most studio IT work can be done remotely. Hands-on hardware jobs — installing a NAS, rewiring a rack, replacing a switch — are scoped as separate projects, and can be done with a local installer or your own team following a clear plan.
What happens if our storage fails in the middle of a deadline?
Urgent operational issues are prioritised during New Zealand business hours. The bigger win is preparation: knowing in advance what fails over to what, which backups to restore first and how artists keep working in the meantime. If you have a crunch weekend coming up, after-hours cover can be arranged in advance.
Can you help us meet a client's security requirements?
CreatorOps can do the practical technical groundwork — access control, device hardening, network segmentation, logging and documentation — that client security questionnaires and assessments tend to ask about. CreatorOps doesn't issue certifications or act as an assessor.
How much does it cost?
The ongoing service is the single CreatorOps offer: NZ$995 a month plus NZ$750 onboarding. Hardware, new storage deployments and network rebuilds are quoted separately as projects. See full pricing and what's included.
Who is behind CreatorOps?
CreatorOps is run by Rob Parkes through NCRYPT LIMITED, a New Zealand company — see the nCrypt website. Read more about Rob's background in IT, infrastructure and networking.
The rest of the technical layer
CreatorOps owns these together, as one scope, rather than as separate retainers.
Start with the free Technical Health Check
See where your studio's workstations, storage, backups and access actually stand, in about 3–5 minutes.