Technical Animation Lead

at  Next Level Games

STUDIO

Next Level Games is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo Co. Ltd.
We’ve been passionate about video game development for 20 years now, shipping award-winning games for fans across the world and still going strong. Some of our titles include Super Mario Strikers, Mario Strikers Charged, Punch-Out!!, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Metroid Prime Federation Force, Luigi’s Mansion 3 and most recently Mario Strikers™: Battle League.
At NLG, we believe that a project finds success when we collaborate. Therefore, we place careful consideration to build an environment where everyone feels welcome and has fun in the process of achieving our shared goals.

KEY QUALIFICATIONS:

• 7+ years of experience as a 3D technical artist in video games and film.
• Have worked on at least one major project as a team lead.
• Experience setting up and maintaining 3D art pipelines and workflows.
• Intimate knowledge of Maya and strong understanding of Maya’s rigging tools.
• Ability to pioneer practical production-oriented rig systems and workflows.
• Deep knowledge of animator workflows.
• Ability to apply technical skills to solve rigging and animation problems.
• Strong understanding of rigging optimization and budgeting as they pertain to game engine.
• Proficient with modeling and topology adjustments related to character deformations.
• Expertise in Python and/or C++ – specifically as it applies to programming and tool creation in Maya (MEL and API).
• Working knowledge of shaders, specifically as they relate to animation.
• Experience with Project Management (Jira, Confluence, SharePoint) tools.
• Experience with Source Control (Perforce) software.

THE ROLE

We are looking for a Technical Animation Lead who is excited to bring Nintendo characters to life by understanding every detail of NLG’s character production workflow and who is particularly focused on how rigging supports our award-winning animation team.
At NLG, a diverse team of craftspeople each contribute their expertise toward a shared goal of lifting Nintendo’s legendary IP to new heights of expressiveness, storytelling, and gameplay. This person will be a bridge builder and can see the whole character production pipeline from start to finish, shaping how we build our characters. This person also understands the Art Director’s goals, the Modelers’ tools, the Animators’ wants, and the Engineers’ runtime performance budget. When a creative problem can be solved by multiple approaches, this person is comfortable weighing the differences and communicating those options and tradeoffs, collaboratively helping the team converge on the best creative outcome.
That collaboration is borne out in amazing control rigs which put smiles on our animators’ faces.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Proactively collaborate with Directors, Character Artists, Animators, Designers and Engineers to help deliver the highest quality assets possible within the constraints of a real-time development environment.
• Consistently partner with animators to unblock their potential.
• Support artists and animators in developing new techniques to solve character production, pipeline challenges and ensure clean handoffs.
• Collaborate with the stakeholder teams to understand the technical and creative requirements for assets and suggest solutions for technical issues.
• Work with the concept team to ensure downstream considerations are evaluated and discussed early.
• Ensure the outsourcing partners have the resources to be productive and informed.
• Help identify workflow deficiencies and communicate requirements for improvement with the tools team.
• Partner with production to budget, prioritize, assign, track and organize all content deliverables.
• Ensure a constructive, collaborative relationship between the Modeling, Rigging, and Animation departments.
• Oversee building of prototype assets where applicable to unblock teams.
• Ensure creation of robust, efficient and intuitive body and facial controls.
• Ensure team growth and mentorship in craft excellence.
• Ensure creation of documentation, onboarding plans, and feedback for the technical production of characters, animation and prop assets.
• Brings teams together through consistent and effective communication.
• Represent studio values through modeling behaviour and approach as a leader.