Lead Animator

Job Description

Lead Animator

San Diego, CA

PlayStation Studios Visual Arts, a passionate team within the PlayStation family, provides world-class content, development, and services to PlayStation's studios all over the world. Always at the cutting edge of technology, Visual Arts works with studios like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studios, Guerrilla Games, Insomniac Games, and more first-party teams. Our team is made up of game and film industry professionals working with some of the best minds and companies around!

Responsibilities:
• Bring the knowledge of multiple processes, workflows, toolsets, and styles for Keyframe and/or Motion Capture production to better improve and establish the project pipeline.
• Build A-tier in-game and pre-rendered animation according to the direction of the client and project while adhering to metric and schedule.
• Communicate with supervisors, management, production staff and peers daily. Understand and interpret feedback on all work from supervisors and clients.
• Aesthetically review animators' assignments and provide feedback to ensure all supervisor and client notes are fully addressed, while sharing tips with animators on how to be more efficient.
• Lead by example and work with animators to block and present concept ideas to supervisors.
• Update and maintain pose libraries.
• Alert Production if there are risks of tasks not being completed within the allotted time frame and communicate all technical issues to Production.
• Study kickoff and stage reference videos to better assist team members, and check scenes to ensure continuity.
• Have a full understanding of all animation tools being used both internally and client developed.
• Keep communication steady with other leads on the project to provide consistency.
• Attend reviews with supervisors and all animators on your team.
• Capture knowledge and updates regarding outstanding issues prior to a team member having a review.
• Sign off on shot approvals on a temporary basis if the supervisor is unavailable.
• Train and acclimate new animators to the team.

Required Skills:
• Expert in Maya – 5-7+ years' experience
• Work closely with multiple departments, including but not limited to members of Motion Capture, Rigging, Animation, Art, and Production teams.
• Share work for feedback and offer productive opinions while assisting all team members.
• Be open and available to crafting a strong rapport with other leads, supervisors, and technical artists to maintain and improve data quality.
• Keen understanding of animation production pipelines for character animation, motion capture animation, and technical animation.
• Be flexible to changes in direction yet work within defined procedures.
• Strong aesthetics of character animation and movement.
• Knowledge and ability to lead or assist in R&D projects, rig evaluations, and tool development.
• Knowledge of FACS (facial action coding system).
• Understanding of MotionBuilder.
• Strong pre-production skills including layout, animatics, and assembly.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-dyk2jm-18-224-67-149-42 in your application.