Job Summary
As a senior artist on one of our project teams, you use your acting skills to advance the design of the game you are working on through the creation of great performances by the characters you and your team build. You have a proven history of using core acting skills such as pose, weight, and timing to deliver great to create emotional connections between a wide range of characters and our players. Youe reel demonstrates an expert ability to tell stories and you as well versed in CG animation tools and techniques as you are in art classical animation and. Under the supervision of the Character Animation Supervisor, you work closely with the Art Director, Technical Artists and Game Design Teams, to create great character animations in an efficient but effective manner that truly realizes the intent of the character designs while working well with the game’s animation and AI systems.

As a senior character animator, you require nominal supervision. You draw from your experience, imagination and core animation skills to create unique and innovative solutions to character animation problems. You are a self starter who understands the need and value of proactively working with other animators on your team to ensure the characters performances are on model and consistent. You view tight constraints as opportunities to demonstrate creativity, not as excuses for low production values. You are articulate, able to present complex concepts in a clear and concise manner, as well as self motivated, well organized and a lifelong learner. Mentoring and growing people is as important to you is innovating and making games.

Requirements:

• Proven Craft skills across different genres. You must have the ability deliver great work regardless of visual style or if it has been established by another artist.
• Experience. At least 6 years experience in CG production with at least 3 years experience working with animated characters, ideally in film or games production. Must have worked on at least 4 complete/shipped film or game projects
• A portfolio that demonstrates:
  • An excellent understanding of classic animation principles and fundamentals (weight, staging, timing, movement, anticipation, exaggeration, follow through, etc.).
  • An ability to work in a breadth of performance styles as well as ability to stay on model and deliver performances that are consistent within a character’s personality
  • Strong storytelling and acting skills
  • Excellent keyframe animation skills in performances that range from subtle to dramatic
  • Acting skills that add value to a character’s design and on-screen presence
  • A strong artistic background with a numerous examples of human form (poses and motion studies)
  • Layout skills and/or character design are considered a plus
  • Good traditional skills in a related art form (i.e.; drawing, paint, sculpture, etc)
  • Excellent production values
• Strong working knowledge of the following
  • Motion trees (Structure, flow, How they work in Real time, use of Neutral Poses, etc.)
  • Real time character animation systems including how AI, scripting, compression, dynamics and procedural systems affect animations
  • Current real time rendering systems and game architectures with a strong understanding of modern game rigs
  • At least 2 major 3D content creation packages in use throughout the industry (Max, Maya, FBX, XSI, etc).
  • Driven to push boundaries while remaining deeply pragmatic.
• A good , practical knowledge base of art history
• Sound judgment and problem solving skills. You are pragmatic. You are willing and able to strike the elusive balance between time, money, and quality.
• A BFA or equivalent in Animation, Sculpture, Theater or a similar field.

Responsibilities
Working with nominal supervision:

• Creates character animations that are of a high acting quality and consistent to the character’s personality, design and movement style. Using your craft and acting skills, you build and deliver character performances of the highest production values that add create emotional connections between our players and the characters to which you are assigned. You work closely with the games design team and scripters to ensure your animations bring life to characters and perform as expected in the respective game engine, regardless of platform or technical constraint.
• Collaborate with the Character Animation Supervisor, Art Director and Technical Artists from pre-production to final approval. Creates and documents pose sheets and complete move trees for characters. May play a key role during pre-production (when requested) by helping to research and prototype animation poses and styles while remaining faithful to the art direction of the project.
• May be asked to supervise a small group of character animators or assist the Character Supervisor on a large franchise; may be asked to supervise a character’s performance across an entire game or franchise
• Supports high production values by completing all assigned animations/moves on time and works with other animators to ensure all delivered work is high quality and on-model.
• Proactively work to raise production values, identifies potential production issues and remove bottlenecks. Ensure that effective and efficient solutions are put in place in a timely manner by using experience, imagination and core animation skills to create unique and innovative solutions to character animation problems.

*Please send an link for your online reel along with an French and English version of your CV to montrealcareers@thq.com

*When sending your CV please put Sr Character Animator(Lien Multimedia) in the SUBJECT line of your email

Other IT news about THQ