ILM Immersive Department Supervisor, Creature Dev
The Walt Disney Company
- San Francisco, CA
- $164,000-200,000 per year
- Permanent
- Full-time
- Lead a team of real-time Creature Technical Directors (“TDs”) in creating and supporting a complete character development pipeline to accomplish ILM Immersive’s mission; develop and hone the team’s skills to continuously raise the quality bar
- Set the discipline’s standard for artistic and technical excellence, efficiency and performance by creating exemplary work that meets project requirements, and providing training and guidance to direct reports
- Collaborate closely with artistic directors, cross-functional peers and product owners to achieve the artistic vision of the director(s) and deliver the highest quality characters possible
- Oversee the optimization of animated assets to achieve optimal scene performance in the 3D engine
- Work with tools engineers to develop appropriate art pipelines, scripts, and plug-ins necessary to ensure the high productivity of the animators and artists; when the development of systems is required, contribute to the visual prototyping of tools, as well as R&D with systems programmers
- Partner with Producers in the planning stages of proposed projects to advise on the scope of the work and resource requirements, and make recommendations accordingly; work with production to provide task estimates, track progress, and solve production issues that arise
- Establish best practices and workflow for the discipline, and partner with other discipline supervisors to establish cross-functional workflow with other disciplines
- Through continuing hands-on work on projects, maintain deep knowledge and user experience on workflow and tools; innovate discipline workflow and keep up to date on new tools/applications/trends in the industry
- Collaborate with Talent Resource Managers on talent planning and casting artists to project assignments; act as hiring manager and liaise with the Recruiting team when new staff are needed; assist resource management in evaluating potential third-party production partners and collaborate with new partners to establish workflows
- Engage in regular conversations with artists to give performance feedback, facilitate ownership over the TDs’ respective specialties, gauge individuals’ interests and support their career aspirations, including cross-functional skill-building; perform management duties such as annual performance reviews
- Set the cultural tone & reinforce positive behavior within your group. Work with studio leadership to define and continually refine and shape ILM Immersive’s culture
- Define the discipline’s ‘Lead Artist’ project role per project. Help project leads solve scope, workflow, etc. issues throughout the project as needed
- Speak on behalf of the discipline in technology development discussions to ensure that new development aligns with the discipline’s strategy and workflow
- Undergraduate or graduate degree in game development, digital art, computer graphics, game design, or related field or equivalent experience
- Minimum of 10 years experience in game development as a Character Technical Artist (or equivalent) and a minimum of 3 shipped/released AAA titles as a Lead artist
- Expertise in Maya rigging techniques and experience with being responsible for supporting animation workflows and developing character pipelines and tools on a AAA product
- Experience leading and mentoring artists and helping them develop and grow their skills
- Artistic eye with advanced understanding of the creation & integration of 3D art & animation
- Advanced working knowledge of all the DCC standard software (Maya, 3Ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance Tools) and end-to-end content creation pipeline
- Excellent technical knowledge and familiarity with AAA game engines, particularly Unreal Engine
- Experience in tools and pipeline engineering utilizing Python, PySide/PyQt, and Maya API/Mel scripting
- Experience with source control via Perforce or equivalent
- Collaborative, team-player attitude: open & receptive to new ideas, constructive criticism, artistic direction and changes
- Experience leading artists to meet deadlines and mentoring artists to help them develop and grow their skills
- Strategic and analytical thinker with exceptional execution and problem-solving capabilities
- Excellent communication skills, especially with regards to illustrating technical processes
- Experience in and passion for real-time graphics and content creation for emerging platforms (XR, etc.)
- Portfolio that demonstrates professional tech art experience in the following areas: programming, tools and pipeline building, content management and optimization, character modeling, rigging, and animation
- Nice to have:
- Computer Science Degree or equivalent experience programming in C# or C++
- People-management experience
- Experience being responsible for outsourced work