Senior Facial Artist

We are seeking a Senior Facial Artist with a passion for bringing highly realistic characters to life to tell evocative stories. Working in a collaborative team environment with the character, rigging, animation and engineering teams to deliver stunning characters, using the best scanning and rigging pipelines. You will collaborate on the capture, creation, and final execution of all facial aspects of the characters for gameplay and cinematic AAA content. With your help we will push the industry to new heights of realism, gameplay, and storytelling. 

Responsibilities:  

• Build and direct fully polished cinematic and in-game facial assets while consistently assuring they are made to the highest possible standard. 
• Develop and refine all static and dynamic material assets for our heads and faces including but not limited to wrinkle, capillary dilation, roughness, specular and micro detail maps. 
• Maintain and oversee correct placement of topology for all heads and facial assets. 
• Model and polish sophisticated sets of blendshapes to define our characters facial range of (e)motion. 
• Work with all facets of art and tech art to improve the facial pipeline from acquisition to final in-game animation, lighting and rendering. 
• Work closely with and provide feedback to facial shape/rig vendors to ensure high quality motion-ready game asset deliveries. 
• Create guidelines for facial shape workflow, creation and management for both internal and external use. 

Requirements & Skills:  

• Proven experience in Facial shape and head creation for AAA video games.  
• Expert understanding of FACS and human facial anatomy. 
• Excellent understanding of, and ability to analyze human emotion, anatomy and organic deformation. 
  5+ years of professional character facial modeling experience in games or film. 
• Advanced Maya and Zbrush user. 
• Experience working with 3D and/or 4D scan data. 
• Good understanding of character pipelines and tech. 
• Strong collaboration and interpersonal skills. 
• Ability to work autonomously and interest in exploring new toolsets, pipelines and broadening your professional skillset overall. 
• (Bonus) Familiarity with and passion for doing look development of characters. 
• (Bonus) Possess Unreal Engine, Houdini and Substance Designer/Painter experience. 
• (Bonus) Has created characters for a shipped AAA title before. 
• (Bonus) Fine art background or education.  
• (Bonus) Experience with technical art or shader creation. 
• (Bonus) Experience facial animation or character rigging/weighting for games or film. 

Qualities:  

• Hardworking collaborator seeking to advance art and tech through intra-departmental and multi-discipline partnerships.  
• Effective team player, invested in personal growth and the growth of the character team through sharing, inspiration, inclusivity, and mutual respect.  
• Self-motivated to achieve excellence in design, process, and execution.  
• Strong interpersonal skills with a dedication to working in a diverse, hardworking, and empathetic team.  
• Skilled and efficient communicator adapt at providing and receiving constructive feedback & direction. 

TNM considers a number of factors when determining each role's base pay range, including industry benchmarks, location, experience, and other job specific skills. In addition to base pay, this role may be eligible for other incentive compensation including equity and profit share. The estimated base pay range for this role is U.S. only and not applicable for locations outside of the U.S.
TNM offers competitive and comprehensive benefits that include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) match, unlimited PTO, supplemental life and disability, and more. Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part-time or temporary employees. 

The estimated base pay range for this role is: $108,000 - $144,000