Technical Art 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.
• Expertise in Python and/or C++ – specifically as it applies to programming and tool creation in Maya (MEL and API).
• Ability to pioneer practical production-oriented rig systems and workflows.
• Proficient with modeling and topology adjustments related to character deformations.
• Deep knowledge of animator workflows.
• Ability to apply technical skills to solve rigging and animation problems.
• 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 Art Lead to bridge the art, animation, design, and technical aspects of our projects at Next Level Games. This role will help drive the technical aspects of animation and characters by partnering and collaborating with a large multi-discipline group. The successful candidate will assess the team’s needs and ensure that they can run efficiently and effectively, which will be key to our success.

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 concept team to ensure downstream considerations are evaluated and discussed early.
• Ensure that 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.
• Represent studio values through modeling behaviour and approach as a leader.