Technical Animation Director

Requisition Number: 156806

Position Title: Technical Art Director

External Description:

Technical Animation Director

Electronic Arts Inc. is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA delivers games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets.

Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication are what make Maxis tick as we prepare ourselves for massive amounts of growth and an incredible amount of fun. We want to engage our players and create the most entertaining titles in the world. Come and see for yourself, the future is here.

At Maxis we’re pushing the boundaries on every front, so you’ll get a chance to stretch beyond your comfort zone and have the ability to learn while you contribute. Our team culture is collaborative and high-performance oriented. We expect everyone to think like game makers and approach development with a Player First perspective.

Job Summary

The ideal candidate for a Technical Animation Director has the skills to effectively communicate and collaborate with multiple disciplines. This includes but is not exclusive to, Animation Directors, Animation Leads, Technical Artists, and Engineers across the Division. The model applicant is passionate about finding efficiencies, exploring new technologies, implementing new tools, and identifying solutions for current and future game development for both existing and new IPs.

 

 Responsibilities and Duties

• Collaborate Closely with the Animation Director, Art Director, Engineers, Character Leads and Animation Leads to deliver tools, rigs and implementation with a forward-looking goal of delivering industry leading animation.
• Train, inspire and develop technical animators and tech artists in their growth while providing constructive feedback.
• Aid in developing, updating, improving and maintaining a technical pipeline for the Animation and Tech teams.
• Assist and guide in the creation of rigs, best practices and development tools requirements needed to obtain the highest aesthetic quality value.
• Keep up with the latest trends and technical tools for animation content development.
• Create prototypes and pursue research in varying engines for best fits on a variety of products while planning for future technologies in projects pertaining to Animation Tech.
• Firefight production issues, investigating hot issues and resolving roadblocks.
• Understanding of performance and optimization requirements and experience diagnosing and profiling content costs.

 

Qualifications and Skills

• Strong knowledge of the latest trends, technologies and tools for creating cutting edge animation visuals.
• Experience working in real-time engines such as Unity and Unreal Game Engine (additional experience in other engines is a plus)
• Ability to Communicate effectively across multiple disciplines, give clear direction and share your vision on tools and development of tech.
• Expert proficiency with Maya.
• Must be skillful at rigging and writing tools to aid animators
• Ability to juggle multiple projects simultaneously, work against a deadline, and agility to manage constant change.
• Ability to lead a team of Tech Artists/Animators while working with managers of various disciplines.
• Experience in optimizing animation pipelines.
• Passion, energy, enthusiasm, charisma and the ability to inspire.
• Knowledge traditional, mocap and procedural animation workflows.
• Ability to create solid documentation and training material.
• Has experience driving Tech to achieve the required aesthetic vision.
• Experience with designing animation content that integrates well with/responds fluidly to dynamic systems like character and world physics
• Experience with aggressive animation retargeting solutions (offline and in-engine) a plus
• Experience building custom deformers and blend shape solutions (experience with principal component analysis a plus).

Education / Experience

• Minimum of 7+ years of tech art/animation development experience in Maya and video games.
• Must have served as a Tech Anim Senior, Tech Anim Lead or Tech Anim Director on a published or soon to be published video game project.
• In depth experience with creating and maintaining high end character rigs.
• Proficient in Python & Mel (C# and other languages a plus.)
• Experience in Perforce
• Experience with version control software (Perforce preferred).
• Well versed in Shotgun, Jira or other bug tracking and project management software.
• Must have excellent communication and collaborative skills, coordinating and working with multiple departments to achieve set goals.
• Willingness to accept direction and redo/iterate work until it satisfies quality.

 

 

 

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Community / Marketing Title: Technical Animation Director

Company Profile:

Electronic Arts Inc. 是全球领先的互动娱乐软件公司。 EA 提供适用于联网主机、个人电脑、手机和平板电脑的游戏、内容和在线服务。

EEOText: EA 是一个奉行机会均等的雇主。 所有招聘决定均不考虑种族、肤色、国籍、血统、生理性别、社会性别、性别认同或表达、性向、年龄、遗传信息、宗教信仰、残障状况、医疗状况、怀孕状况、婚姻状况、家庭状况、退伍军人身份或其他任何受法律保护的特征等因素的影响。 我们也会遵照相关法律，考虑雇佣带犯罪记录的合格申请者。 EA 还会遵照相关法律，为符合条件的残障个体改善工作环境。

Days Open: 70

Can this position be remote?:

EEO Employer Verbiage:

EA 是一个奉行机会均等的雇主。 所有招聘决定均不考虑种族、肤色、国籍、血统、生理性别、社会性别、性别认同或表达、性向、年龄、遗传信息、宗教信仰、残障状况、医疗状况、怀孕状况、婚姻状况、家庭状况或退伍军人身份等因素的影响。 EA 还会遵照相关法律，为符合条件的残障个体改善工作环境。