Rigging Artist

Job Summary

The Rigging Artist is integral to The Third Floor London studio assets team. The role focuses on the technical and creative challenges of rigging across all of our projects. The Rigging Artist will work closely with other departments, particularly the Asset, Previs and Pipeline teams in London and LA.

(Please note: If an open position is not available at this time, we can retain your application and get in touch as soon as a suitable opportunity becomes available.)

Responsibilities:

• Involved in the development of rigging with the Head of Assets, focusing on the integration of characters, biped and quadruped rigs into the production pipeline.
• To work closely with the previs teams to create creature, character and facial rigs, which are artist-friendly and optimized.
• To research and develop new tools, techniques and workflows.
• Collaborate in the character design process, ensuring the rigs will allow characters to have the look as well as the complete range of motion required for the project.
• Work with other departments to facilitate the articulation of realistic and appealing characters.
• Ownership of own scheduled rigging tasks.
• Maintain a hands-on approach to rigging and problem solving as required.
• To distinguish and flag potential problems to Pipeline, Supervisors and Leads.
• To train artists in rigging tools and the best practices.

Essential Skills & Qualifications:

• An experienced rigger with broad rigging experience creating creature, character and facial rigs.
• Has a passion for creating believable CG characters and has excellent attention to detail.
• Advanced Maya, Python, Mel, GUI scripting and the ability to follow strict coding standards.
• Has experience with full scripted modular/functional rigging.
• The ability to analyse and optimise rigs for efficiency.
• Demonstrates analytical and artistic skills.
• Is creative, a visual problem solver and can troubleshoot.
• Accessibility and willingness to collaborate is a must.
• Excellent understanding of anatomy, structure, dynamics and character motion.
• Asset building would involve assembling characters, environments and props.
• Knowledge of real-time rigging for Unreal and Unity game engines.
• A good understanding of the entire visualisation pipeline.

Desirable Skills:

• To have rigged in previs before, however, rigging in VFX or gaming is useful also.
• Sculpting, modelling and texturing experience is a plus.
• Experience training others in the team would be an advantage.