Blendshape Artists - Contract

Blendshape Artist

This is a contracted position through our staffing partner DZConneX with a high likelihood of extension.

Remote, United States

PlayStation Studios Visual Arts on our San Diego campus provides world-class content, development and services to Worldwide Studios. Our team is always at the cutting edge of technology and partners with the industry’s best minds and companies!

We are looking for a Blendshape Artist to come aboard and work in conjunction with our riggers, the Animation Supervisor and the Character Supervisor to bring highly-realistic faces to life for both cinematic and in-game sequences. You will work with our multi-award winning team while working with AAA Worldwide Studios like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio, San Diego Studio, Guerrilla Games, and more!

If you're someone who pays attention to detail, has an eye for minute differences in facial movements, and one of "those" artists comfortable making facial expressions in the mirror... We want to talk to you!

Responsibilities:

• The Blendshape Artist will be responsible for bringing highly-realistic faces to life for both cinematic and in-game sequences
• You will work with our senior and leads on the topology edge-flow and determine the final positioning and refinement to key assets such as eyes, teeth, tongue and eyelashes
• When the model face is finalized the artist will sculpt a full array of naturalistic FACs and corrective blendshapes for expressive photorealistic humans
• Sculpting a series of high-resolution wrinkle maps to add a final level of polish and nuance to the expressions
• Work closely with the external clients, internal artists and outsourcing partners to keep quality and style consistent across all characters
• Create and lead others in the creation of photo-realistic humans, with particular attention to advanced facial modeling and expression modeling
• Lead and mentor both internal character teams and outsourcing partners to reach aesthetic and technical goals
• Create documentation, communicate requirements, and provide feedback to internal artists and outsourcing partners
• Constantly and proactively seek to improve the production processes, tools and pipelines for character creation, rigging and animation and rendering

Qualifications:

• At least 2 years of professional character art experience in high-end 3D games and/or films
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent
• Grasp of realistic human anatomy with special emphasis on the head/face 
• Understanding of Maya and basic understanding/use of blend shapes
• Comfortable making facial expressions in the mirror and ideally capable of isolating difference expressions/actions in the face
• Must have extreme attention to detail and an eye for minute differences/movements in the face
• The ability to grasp technical concepts at least from a broad perspective and follow technical workflows while pushing artistic limit
• Self-manage and keep track of progress and troubleshoot technical issues with Maya
• Brainstorm ideas that keep in mind the overall goals of the project

Desired qualifications:

• Experience with facial rigging of any kind as well as sculpting in Zbrush, Mudbox, etc.
• Experience with facial blend shape workflows on realistic humans
• Expert understanding of human anatomy
• Experience with Blendshape Combination System plug-in
• Experience with Perforce

#LI-REINE