Technical Animation Lead

STUDIO

THE ROLE

• Proactively collaborate with Directors, Character Artists, Animators, Designers and Engineers to help deliver the highest quality assets possible within the constraints of a real-time development environment.
  • Consistently partner with animators to unblock their potential.
  • Support artists and animators in developing new techniques to solve character production, pipeline challenges and ensure clean handoffs.
  • Collaborate with the stakeholder teams to understand the technical and creative requirements for assets and suggest solutions for technical issues.
  • Work with the concept team to ensure downstream considerations are evaluated and discussed early.
  • Ensure the outsourcing partners have the resources to be productive and informed.
  • Help identify workflow deficiencies and communicate requirements for improvement with the tools team.
  • Partner with production to budget, prioritize, assign, track and organize all content deliverables.
  • Ensure a constructive, collaborative relationship between the Modeling, Rigging, and Animation departments.
• Oversee building of prototype assets where applicable to unblock teams.
• Ensure creation of robust, efficient and intuitive body and facial controls.
• Ensure team growth and mentorship in craft excellence.
• Ensure creation of documentation, onboarding plans, and feedback for the technical production of characters, animation and prop assets.
• Brings teams together through consistent and effective communication.
• Represent studio values through modeling behaviour and approach as a leader.

KEY QUALIFICATIONS:

• 7+ years of experience as a 3D technical artist in video games and film.
• Have worked on at least one major project as a team lead.
• Experience setting up and maintaining 3D art pipelines and workflows.
• Intimate knowledge of Maya and strong understanding of Maya's rigging tools.
• Ability to pioneer practical production-oriented rig systems and workflows.
• Deep knowledge of animator workflows.
• Ability to apply technical skills to solve rigging and animation problems.
• Strong understanding of rigging optimization and budgeting as they pertain to game engine.
• Proficient with modeling and topology adjustments related to character deformations.
• Expertise in Python and/or C++ – specifically as it applies to programming and tool creation in Maya (MEL and API).
• Working knowledge of shaders, specifically as they relate to animation.
• Experience with Project Management (Jira, Confluence, SharePoint) tools.
• Experience with Source Control (Perforce) software.

YOU SET YOURSELF ABOVE WITH:

• Proactive, technical problem solver and a team player.
• Driven by cross-discipline collaborative environments.
• Excel at constructively giving and receiving feedback.
• Experience supporting and maintaining cinematics workflows.
• A strong understanding of the principles of animation.
• Ability to research and apply new approaches to push our character capabilities.
• Ability to create high quality content.
• Stay adaptable to the iterative needs of the team by leaning into curiosity, experimentation and growth mindset.