Creature Development Supervisor

Creature Development Supervisor 

Position Summary

We are looking for a Creature Development Supervisor to lead a team of exceptional artists by both personally setting the bar in terms of skill-level, and managing each artist’s individual performance. This role is responsible for establishing the techniques and processes that bridge the gap between experienced artists/animators and programmers through ownership of the rigging and deformation pipeline and implementation of tools to efficiently facilitate the creation of articulated assets.

Highly Skilled, Artistic Vision, Performance Management are key words for the Creature Dev Department Supervisor.

This role is considered Hybrid, which means the employee will work 2-3 days onsite at our San Francisco office and occasionally from home.

What You’ll Do

• Lead a team of real-time Creature Technical Directors (“TDs”) in creating and supporting a complete character development pipeline. 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/guidance to other Creature TDs.  

• 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.

• Set the cultural tone & reinforce positive behavior within your group. Work with studio leadership  to define and continually refine and shape our studio’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.

What We’re Looking For

• 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++

• Experience being responsible for outsourced work.

• Knowledge of film/VFX pipelines and how they differ from games/interactive experiences.

A portfolio / reel submission - including a detailed breakdown of your work in each section - is required with all applications.