Description
Technical Art Director/CG Supervisor
We are looking for a talented and experienced Technical Art Director to join an established team of developers working on an exciting, brand new AAA title in development at EA Vancouver. This is an opportunity to join a veteran team early in pre-production and help craft the vision and execution of a compelling and innovative action/adventure experience.
Are you an individual that knows the difference between a pipeline and runtime? Do you know how to craft shaders and how to squeeze out performance? Do you have a deep understanding of rigging, modeling, texturing, animation, lighting and more? Have you dabbled with cameras and can speak like a DOP? We are looking for you to help guide these pursuits in a cutting edge environment.
Candidates for the Technical Art Director role must demonstrate a deep understanding of both art and technology in the computer games context. Significant game development experience is essential, and working well with various clients simultaneous is expected.
Responsibilities:
• Define the technical roadmaps and long term vision for the tech art team as well as strategically plan against the needs of the various disciplines that are being assisted by tech art.
• Lead and mentor a team of skilled technical artists that will support and help the team with the development challenges associated with our new IP.
• Partner with the Art Director and creative team to drive and execute the vision establish for our title.
• Define, develop and maintain new technologies and pipelines created for this title.
• Responsible for building a relationship with the various teams within EA and collaborating to share and leverage technologies that would be in the team’s best interest.
• Keep abreast of the evolving media industry (games/film/movies/television) and the advancement being made in production, content creation, visual polish and quality while finding ways to help bring these advancements to the various stake holder on the team.
• Prototype cutting-edge approaches to art/content creation using internal or external frameworks in support of R&D efforts and new intellectual property.
• Accountable and responsible for integrating and reviewing technology (internal and external) in art workflows.
• Identify art workflow problems, and work with TA’s, Engineers, and Artists to solve them.
• Accountable for driving continuous asset build stability and provide mentorship to TA's to help debug asset failures.
• Drive budgets and performance across all platforms working with the Art Director and Technical Director
Requirements:
• At least 10 years games/animation/FX production experience.
• Need to have a creative eye and aesthetic judgement to help drive visual quality.
• Strong history of creative collaboration with teams during pre-production & RND phases.
• Comprehensive knowledge of CG fundamentals: modeling, texturing/shading/surfacing, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing.
• Strong understanding of game development frameworks and methodologies.
• Understanding of various gaming platform limitations with regard to visual assets.
• Expert understanding of at least one 3D package, preferably Maya and also other widely used production tools such as Zbrush and Substance Painter.
• Advanced scripting experience with Python and/or Mel/Maya API.
• Ability to deconstruct and modify proprietary tools and pipelines.
• Excellent aptitude for troubleshooting technical issues associated with lighting, performance, tools and pipelines.
• Ability to think creatively to resolve technical challenges and limitations.
• Strong understanding of good asset management & sharing practices.
• Excellent communication skills, with a willingness and confidence to provide a bridge between artists and software engineers.
• Experience mentoring a team of 10-20 artists, engineers, and/or technical artists.
• Experienced with cross team development and working with external vendors and partners.
• Ability to foster a strong community with an emphasis on high performance and guaranteed delivery.
Benefits:
We are proud of the great perks we offer like comprehensive health and benefit packages, tuition reimbursement, pension with company match and, of course, free video games. And since we realize it takes world-class people to make world-class games, we offer competitive compensation packages and a culture that thrives off of creativity and individuality.
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More about our location: http://careers.ea.com/our-locations/burnaby-eac