Lead Rigger

The Rigging Lead’s primary responsibility is to oversee the day-to-day operations of the rigging team ensuring that highly versatile character rigging systems and animation interfaces are designed and created. These rigs will be used for the feature film in the animation of 3D characters and props.

Primary Responsibilities

• Oversee the daily operations of the rigging team.
• In conjunction with the CG Supervisor, is responsible for mentoring, managing, developing, training, and evaluating the performance of the rigging team members.
• Implements animation control rigging systems for complex characters and props using Maya
• Works with the CG Supervisor, Animation Leads and Modeling Department to ensure that all rigs meet the show’s requirements.
• Keeps CG Supervisor advised of various issues including staffing, resources, deadlines and issues, etc.
• Oversees the characters, vehicles and props rigging through the animation pipeline.
• Develops tools and plug-ins to optimize animation and rigging workflow.
• Additional responsibilities may include facial target modeling and other organic and non-organic modeling tasks.
• Ensure the CG characters will employ all current character setup procedures.
• Troubleshoot and wrangle character-rigging issues for artists within various disciplines.
• Keep constant communication with the Animation Supervisor to ensure the rigs meet animators’ requests. Additionally close communication and collaboration with US teams will be required.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent degree in Computer Science, Computer Visualization, or Computer Animation required or equivalent work experience.
• At least6+ years work experience required in 3D CG for Digital Animation, Visuals Effects or games.
• Previous experience in a leadership role on a Feature film or Animated Feature project
• Excellent communication skills required.
• Expertise in setting up cloth simulation rigs highly desirable.
• Expertise with Maya and/or other high-end animation software required.
• Experience with mel, csh, python, TCL, perl or other scripting languages a must.
• Skilled knowledge of anatomy for both human/biped and animal/quadraped.
• Demonstrated team leadership experience preferred.
• Must work well under pressure.
• A reel demonstrating artistic ability in rigging, scripting and tools or plug-in design.