Principal Technical Artist, Characters

Description

Monolith Productions, developers of Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor and Middle Earth Shadow of War, are looking to expand its Technical Art group with a Principal Technical Artist focused on Characters. Join us in creating our next big gaming innovation, using our proprietary Firebird engine. As a principal we are looking for someone who will bring their industry renowned skillset to bear in helping us make the characters in the next generation of Monolith games the best in the business. This person should have an in depth understanding of all modern real-time character creation techniques, from the skeleton to surface interaction and all point in between. Along with the Director of Technical Art and the Character Art lead they will develop new pipelines focused on creating believable human characters that will interact with the player in our next Nemesis system based game. If your passion is the creation hi resolution, boundary pushing characters and optimized pipelines and workflows, this is the job for you.

What part will you play?

• Working with the Character Content teams on expanding and optimizing workflows
• R&D
• Support of Character Content workflows
• Generation of content for the Character Content team

• 12 years’ experience in the industry
• Contributed to several game titles that are recognized as having reached significant critical and/or commercial success
• Possesses expert knowledge of art composition principles such as color theory, layout, architecture, anatomy, physiology, perspective, proportion, form, lighting, texture, etc.
• Unsurpassed understanding of the content creation pipeline from design to implementation in the game engine. In depth understanding of animation, modelling, FX, rendering and surfacing methods. Uses expert knowledge to establish vision within their area of ownership. Able to break down vision and provide standards and guidelines for team members.
• Applies top of industry expertise in creating complex technical and/or visual game content and systems which respect game performance and engine integration constraints. Expert with rigging, weighting, polygon reduction, FX, and scripting. Writes complex code to streamline processes or create new systems (e.g. terrain) for the game. Works effectively across disciplines to analyze and solve the most complex and broad-reaching issues for the studio.
• Expert at researching, prototyping and creating new shaders, systems, pipelines, etc. Uses expert knowledge to assess feasibility, schedule, performance, etc. of new tools and systems. Establishes top of industry standards and develops effective integration plans with other disciplines or groups. Able to identify, implement and/or create industry leading best practices.
• Creates exceptional technical and functional specifications.
• Able to carry out the most complex tasks and produce work with an unsurpassed level of quality and efficiency without oversight.
• Is an expert with all relevant art and animation software suites. Demonstrates unsurpassed understanding of the mechanics of the art and animation software used in the studio and the relationship between the software and the engine.
• Expert level proficiency with multiple scripting and coding languages. Expert at creating highly complex systems to improve art and animation pipelines. Maintains an unparalleled understanding of existing proprietary software and tools through examination and analysis.
• Incomparable knowledge of applicable game engine and how it processes, blends and renders animations. Develops the most complex models and systems in the game engine and ensures fully-optimized in-game functionality.
• Ability to establish project taxonomy, file formats, naming conventions and source control parameters.
• Portfolio/website demonstrating your technical skills.