Technical Shading Artist

Job Description

Mikros Animation is a global CGI animation studio located in Paris, Montreal, Los Angeles, Bangalore and London, dedicated to feature films and episodic content. Since its inception, Mikros Animation has always put creativity and CG artistry at the heart of its animation and production activities, allowing our artists to work across a great variety of stories with a high level of stylized craft. So far, Mikros Animation has contributed to ten released feature animations and to numerous high-quality animated series, for the world's best-known animation studios, either as creative studio, line producer or executive producer. Mikros Animation has also produced more than 250 hours of programming, broadcast by notable channels including Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, TF1, France TV, Gulli, M6, Gloob, and Super RTL. Our animated episodic content airs and streams globally, in over 180 countries.

At Mikros Animation, we believe great animation is about making real connections with real people. By partnering with filmmakers to unite their creative visions, with our industry-leading craftsmanship and artistry, we create characters that connect with audiences on an authentic and emotional level to bring powerful stories to life.

At the heart of the process of Mikros Animation shows' look development, the Shading Technical Artist works in collaboration with the LookDev Studio Supervisor as well as with the Software team and the Surfacing / Lighting / Compositing Supervisors of each project in order to establish shaders adapted to each established graphic charter.

He plays a key role in stylistic research and graphic experiments that will meet the specific expectations of our projects.

Always attentive to the 3D animation sector and the graphic styles that are constantly developing and evolving, he is able to bring technical and artistic added value in order to continue to position Mikros Animation as an innovative player in the industry.

Under the responsibility of the Look Dev Studio Supervisor, your main responsibilities will be:
• Creation and maintenance of studio-wide shading Libraries
• Technical creation and maintenance of various shader recipes
• Creation of ''user interface equipment'' for easy-to-use operation by Surfacing artists
• Communication with the Surfacing Character and Environment Supervisors as well as the Software team to improve shaders, request new features, and create surfacing tools in Katana/Arnold
• Communication with Lighting and Compositing Supervisors in order to respond to their specific requests concerning, for instance, AOVs

Qualifications

Skills required...
• Previous experience in creating complex shading recipes (in Arnold or others)
• Theoretical understanding of image pipeline: shading + texturing + lighting
• Artistic experience in one, or several, of different ''image'' departments: shading / texturing / lighting / compositing
• Notions of scripting in Python

... and appreciated assets:
• Knowledge of other scripting languages, such as LUA
• Notions of the different color space existing, including ACES
• Knowledge of Katana
• Fluency in English

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rnmxx5-3-17-28-48-42 in your application.