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LEAD TECHNICAL ARTIST
Smoking Gun Interactive is looking for a Lead Technical Artist to drive the art pipeline technology for our next generation cross-platform title.
Lead Technical Artist role requires an experienced and forward-thinking leader whose passion is to design powerful, artist-friendly, and game engine-efficient tools and pipelines that help shape and bring an artistic vision to life. Ideal candidate demonstrates an exceptional level of creativity, proficiency, and satisfaction in problem-solving both artistic and technical challenges as the project vision requires. He/She is a great communicator who possesses equal comfort level in collaborating with artists and programmers towards reaching the goal - creating high quality art assets that are easily integrated into the game engine and meet technical platform constrains without sacrificing artistic integrity.
Lead Technical Artist will define the production techniques used by artists, help design and document the art tools and workflow, educate/train the art team in the pipeline to ensure artists operate at peak efficiency, and supervise all technical aspects of art production over the duration of the project.
Responsibilities include:
- Researching and evaluating current and emerging technologies and off-the-shelf software to incorporate as part of custom-designed pipeline for the game production
- Designing, implementing, and maintaining new proprietary art tools, processes, and technologies for art production (including level art, modeling, character animation/motion capture, visual effects, lighting, UI, etc)
- Creating proof-of-concept files for real-time game art and/or pre-rendered assets as final visual quality proofs
- Authoring, maintaining and customizing scripts for art production
- Creating training files, examples, written tutorials and assisting art staff in learning new technologies and processes
- Collaborating closely with the Art Director to ensure the visual development and quality of assets produced in pipelines meets the artistic vision while meeting technical engine/platform constraints
- Establishing and facilitating a forum for continuing communication between art and programming disciplines throughout the duration of the project
- Assisting in creation and risk-management of milestone and project goals
- Hiring, supervising and managing technical artists on the team
- Providing mentorship, technology coaching, and troubleshooting pipeline/workflow issues with individuals on as-needed basis
Qualifications:
- Excellent leadership, verbal and written communication skills with ability to mentor and motivate others
- Exceptional organizational and risk-management skills
- Degree in Computer Science, Graphic or Fine Art, or related field
- 8+ yrs experience in game industry and/or related field
- 3+ yrs experience in a senior technical artist capacity using next-generation engine(s)
- Shipped at least 1 (one) AAA game title
- Expert working knowledge of at least one programming/scripting language (i.e. C++, MEL, MaxScript, Python, etc), and proficiency in others
- Expert working knowledge of multiple game development software packages and techniques (e.g. Maya, Max, Photoshop, Zbrush, Motion Builder, etc)
- Proven personal expertise in fine art skills and engineering concepts
- Proven ability to produce game art assets with exceptional capacity to troubleshoot and devise more streamlined error-proof pipeline/process improvements
- Keen interest in playing games and the future of gaming industry
Assets:
- Experience in cross-platform development
- Programming experience with Cg/HLSL shaders, C/C++, Perl, etc. and/or traditional drawing, painting, or sculpting skills.
- Experience in UI design of tools for artists/animators
- Background in film/TV visual effects and/or prior experience using motion capture data