Creature/Character FX Department Manager

Job Description

As the Creature/Character FX Department Manager you will be reporting to the CG Producer. You will be responsible for managing, scheduling, and forecasting each artist in the Creature and CFX Department at both the asset, shot, and sequence level in collaboration with the Head of CG Production and the CG Producer. These key tasks will rely upon successful collaboration with Show Producers while liaising with CG Department Managers to inherit the required elements maintaining the established schedule, and ultimately handing off to fellow Department Managers to ensure successful project deliveries. Furthermore, establishing and nurturing a close partnership with both the CFX Supervisor and Character Supervisor will be imperative to the success of the team. Additionally, you will work closely with the Pipeline Team to identify tool support, and pipeline initiatives to support department efficiency. As the Creature/CFX Department Manager, your main daily responsibilities will include artist schedules, artist priorities, navigating department hand-offs, organizing daily meetings, supporting render priorities, and liaising guidance from Creative Supervisors. Your standard tasks will include:

• Autonomous scheduling and tasking, prioritizing and tracking deadlines across multiple projects, maintaining creative cohesion in task assignments across multiple projects simultaneously.
• Collaborating closely with Animation, Rigging, and Look Development.
• Reviewing bid and scheduled time for artists during project and floor launches.
• Determining departmental task requirements and identifying necessary material for successful task completion.
• Organizing dailies, rounds and department meetings including morning and end-of-day check-in, serving multiple projects and preserving a strict daily floor schedule.
• Scheduling online meetings, liaising open discussions via group chats during remote work periods.
• Identifying and communicating artist pressure points, bottlenecks, and timeline adjustments.
• Ensuring Shotgun (project management tool) statuses and task assignments are kept tidy.
• Ensuring clarity on deadlines, level of completion requirements, and weekly quota.
• Ensuring project scope, status and completion information is up to date via Shotgun.
• Monitoring and reporting on progress, issues, and forecasts and preparing corresponding reports.
• Familiarizing yourself with the Spin process and technical aspects of Creature and CFX in fur, muscles, skin, finaling, shot sculpt, Ziva, Zbrush and Houdini.
• Support department morale and Spin culture.
• Develop department initiatives with creative supervisors, and collaborate with pipeline team to ensure initiatives are met.
• Provide daily and weekly reports, and forecast with the Head of CG Production and CG Producer.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gpxk09-18-118-0-240-42 in your application.