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Thursday 2nd September 2010

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Technical Art Director - MGS

The Technical Art Director position is a support, evangelism, and research role. It focuses on identifying and solving art-related issues common to both our internal and external titles, finding and promoting ways to innovate, and executing on the MGS-P vision for 1st party development.

Job responsibilities:

Broad scope:
  • Act as the technical art expert for MGSE-P Art. This includes handling all aspects of producing prototypes and samples: gathering requirements, scheduling resources, doing production work, analyzing results and communicating them as appropriate.
  • Research and develop tools and techniques to optimize current workflows and raise the quality bar of MGS internal studios and external partners. With a bias towards character centric issues, including manipulation of motion capture data, facial animation creation/capture and rigging being specific interest areas.
  • Work with studios across MGS and external partners to influence overall graphics strategies; to share and leverage graphics processes, technologies and methodologies.
  • Support and partner internal teams and external partner studios who are in production and who need help/support managing growth. Key responsibility for assessing, developing and implementing pipeline and workflow solutions within MGS and partner studios.
  • Work with MGS-P Dev teams to evaluate production issues and define solutions, whether they be knowledge/training, process, pipeline or tool related.
  • Project managing third party subcontracted suppliers, where necessary. Skills of planning, defining criteria for production worthiness, designing specifications, assessment / review, teaching and structured implementation are essential.
  • Work closely with the MGS-P Dev Leads to research and implement processes and methodologies that will take full advantage of Xbox360/Windows hardware and software capabilities with an eye towards innovation.
  • Maintain awareness of industry practices and state of the art for art development tools. Serve as point of contact and studio expert for all Microsoft developed art tools including 360 XDK and DirectX tools. Research and provide information and recommendations on specific tools or possible tool solutions for specific art production needs as required.
  • Conduct reviews and advise Senior Production staff of any concerns and where necessary design effective solutions for potential problems, ideally, before they arise in production.
  • Review commercial packages, tools and engines and make recommendations at the MGS and partner studio level. Maintain broad awareness of developments in game engines regarding art production/graphics techniques. Research and provide information and recommendations, including due diligence reports on specific game engines as required. Provide feedback on feature sets of engines in development by internal teams and publishing partners.

Core Competencies:

  • Creativity
  • Technical passion and drive
  • Action-oriented
  • Problem solving
  • Innovation management
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Negotiation/Conflict Management
  • Integrity and trustworthiness
  • Thrive in an environment of innovation and excellence.
  • Have extensive experience of working in challenging environments where problem solving and managing teams effectively are critical.
  • A proactive detail oriented problem solver who demonstrates a strong sense of artistic and technical creativity and respect for aesthetics

Skills:
In depth experience and skills relating to modeling, texturing, lighting, character rigging, animation, dynamics and particle systems. With an expert knowledge of what makes the resultant assets efficient and ergonomic.

A high level of expertise with at least two of the leading 3D applications (e.g. Maya, 3DSMax, XSI, Houdini, MotionBuilder, ZBrush and MudBox) as well as in depth experience of the leading image manipulation tools (e.g. Photoshop, Shake, After Effects, Nuke, Combustion, Flame and Digital Fusion).

Experience of motion capture systems and ability to work with motion capture data highly preferred.

Scripting skills with the leading 3D applications e.g. Maya, 3DSMax, XSI etc, plus Perl or Python considered a bonus.

Shader scripting/coding skills e.g. HLSL, CGFX, RenderMan, MentalRay or similar. Plus a good understanding of DX9, DX10 etc.

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