Full Time Job
Lead Artist, Facial Animation
Warner Media
- Paid
- Full Time
Job Description
For the past 20 years Monolith Productions has been obsessed with delivering a unique gaming experience for our fans. Starting with Blood, our very first title – all the way to our most recent offering, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, we are constantly pushing the envelope to combine innovative gameplay, inventive narratives, cutting edge tech & AI, and stunning visuals. We are challenging ourselves even further to ensure that our next project is going to be our best yet. That's where you come in – for us to achieve that, we need the best and brightest talent the industry has to offer. Help us create our next AAA title.The Job
Monolith Productions, the award-winning AAA studio who brought you F.E.A.R. and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, seeks an Advanced Artist to lead the Face team who has a passion for creating emotional and nuanced facial animation performances and who loves to get into the technical details of how to get there. Along with creating exceptional facial animation content, candidate will work with the team on establishing, maintaining and continually improving the quality of facial animations for systemic in game presentations and real-time cinematics.
The Daily
The Face Animation Art Lead will oversee the day-to-day operations of the Face Pipeline while working closely with Directors, Art Leadership and other key stakeholders in the continued development and improvements of the facial animation pipeline to ensure that the team has a scalable and efficient toolset.
This role is responsible for researching, recommending, and developing new technologies to push the quality bar of facial animation content forward.
Candidate will have a deep understanding of facial performance, animation principles, face pipelines and associated art tools. The Lead will help build the face team, give feedback, and work with production to coordinate schedules and manage direct reports.
The Essentials
• 8+ years working as an animator in the entertainment industry with a focus on facial animation.
• Strong understanding of facial anatomy.
• Experience working in modern facial animation pipelines.
• Deep understanding of FACS based animation analysis and implementation (e.g. Faceware).
• Experience working in industry standard 3D software packages (e.g. Maya) and creating blendshape based facial systems and animations.
• Experience with industry standard 3-D animation packages (e.g. 3D Studio Max, Motion Builder, and Maya).
• Deep knowledge of facial topology, anatomy and rigging solutions to best support both automated and individually authored performances.
• Ability to direct and focus on the ''details that matter'' in emotional performances.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Portfolio/website/reel demonstrating fundamental foundational art skills, design sensibilities, and attention to detail.
• 2 shipped AAA titles.
The Nice to Haves
• Experience in a Lead or equivalent position.
• Understanding of facial likeness capture and scan processes including light stage, photogrammetry, HMC and hybrid approaches.
• Experience in motion and performance capture facial animation pipelines.
• Experience using audio analysis software for facial animation generation.
• Understanding of facial likeness capture and scan processes including light stage, photogrammetry, HMC and hybrid approaches.
• Experience developing blend shape instances or attribute libraries to support targeted performances across a range of humanoid facial variants.
• Experience with rigging solutions to best support both automated and individually authored performances.
• Management experience such as direct report career development and project/production/team scheduling.
• Familiarity with Shadow of Mordor or Shadow of War games.
Jobcode: Reference SBJ-g632oq-3-88-211-227-42 in your application.