Overview

The Look Development Artist works with the Look Development Lead to define all the technical and creative aspects needed to create the appearance of CG assets for a particular project. The Look Development Artist should be knowledgeable in a variety of methods and renderers to satisfy a production’s creative needs.

 

Responsibilities:

•           The lookdev artist works with the show supervisors to create final looks, templates and materials for CG characters and environments to be used in production. They are adept at interpreting artistic direction from clients and supervisors.

•           Working with the lead lookdev artist they will define shader requirements, create shader networks, modify shader parameters, apply texture maps, and iteratively refine the look of production assets. They are a key player in accomplishing the art direction goals and integrating solutions into the production pipeline.

•           Participate as a team member in determining various design and technical solutions.

•           Work closely with texture artists to guide the creation of texture maps for hard surface and organic assets.

•           Work closely with grooming artists and cfx to help shade fur, hair, or cloth assets.

•           Write and/or modify custom shaders.

•           Work closely with Lead Lighting TD’s and supervisors to ensure that all assets work within the scope of lighting & color pipeline requirements.

•           Keep supervisors aware of problems arising in pre-production and shot production and offer creative solutions to those issues.

 

Qualifications:

•           3+ years production experience in feature film VFX, 5+ years preferred.

•           Experience in photo-real material/surfacing look development in visual effects production.

•           Experience in shot lighting and finaling.

•           Superior eye for light, shade, color, and detail in creating photo-real shaders and materials.

•           A passion for highly detailed work on a mix of characters, hard-surface assets and environments.

•           Experience in creating textures and clean UV layouts is a bonus.

•           Ability to balance quick turnaround with achieving a high degree of aesthetic quality.

•           Be willing to share knowledge and experience with others.

•           Must possess strong initiative, excellent communication, time management and problem-solving skills.

•           Must be able to work in a collaborative environment, taking direction positively from the Leads and Supervisors while keeping production staff updated on progress and scheduling conflicts.

•           Must have advanced experience with Katana, and Renderman. Additional experience in Houdini and Mantra is a bonus.

•           Must have experience modifying shading network GUI’s and defining templates for other artists.

•           Familiarity with Maya, Mari, or other texture map generation is a plus.

•           Possess familiarity with asset management systems and procedures.

•           Experience with shader programming for Renderman and scripting/programming languages (python, Lua, C++) is a plus.

•           Linux experience preferred