Senior Environment Artist

Position Summary:

Founded by award-winning, record-breaking directors Anthony and Joe Russo, AGBO is an artist-led entertainment company focused on creating content born of innovative story universes across film, television, and digital platforms. This position is working for a prestigious and prolific production company run by directorial talent. This is an amazing opportunity for the right candidate to work in the heart of a fast-paced, well-connected, highly creative environment with competitive compensation commensurate with experience.
The Senior Environment Artist will help define overall quality and construct 3D environments to deliver consistent, high-quality environmental assets, and locations. The ideal candidate is a well organized artist with a strong, hands-on background. 

Responsibilities:

• Work with creative directors to establish the look and feel of scenes. Sometimes this work will be based on pre-existing concept art and sometimes it will be left in your hands to define. 
• Create detailed 3D models of environments and objects, ensuring they are accurate and optimized for animation and rendering. Develop textures and shaders for 3D models to enhance their appearance and realism under various lighting conditions.
• Set up lighting for scenes to enhance mood, depth, and realism, or to match specific artistic styles.
• Work with the technical team to help manage the rendering process, including setting up renders, troubleshooting issues, and optimizing render times while maintaining high-quality output.
• Create and integrate special effects, like fire, smoke, and water to digital doubles and magical effects.
• Work with the Pipeline / technical department to identify and solve technical problems related to the CG production pipeline, including issues with software, hardware, or the workflow itself.
• Contribute to the development and improvement of the studio's production pipeline, suggesting and implementing new tools or processes to increase efficiency and quality.
• Work closely with other department leads and team members, providing guidance, feedback, and support to junior artists. Coordinate with directors, producers, and other stakeholders to ensure the visual goals of the project are met.
• Ensure that all CG elements meet the project's artistic and technical standards, providing or implementing revisions as necessary.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest developments in CG technology and techniques, experimenting with new tools and methods to push the boundaries of what is visually possible.
• Provide mentorship where applicable to other artists to develop and strengthen the skills of the team around you. 
• Oversee the completion of CG tasks and projects, managing timelines, resources, and priorities to meet deadlines and deliverables.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of professional experience in computer-generated art for entertainment or games.
• Experience building environments from initial blackout to final polish/ship.
• A portfolio with examples of environment asset creation and/or world building.
• Ability to efficiently model, sculpt and texture both organic and hard surface assets to a high degree of quality.
• Have the experience to create assets for a range of art direction styles, from photo-realistic to stylized.
• Proficient knowledge of Maya (or similar 3D modeling software), Photoshop, Zbrush, and Substance Painter.
• Strong understanding of world building workflows, technical constraints and asset creation using Unreal Engine.
• A strong understanding of scene composition, scale/proportion and lighting.
• Excellent communication skills and enjoy collaborating with other team members and departments.
• A strong work ethic, are self-motivated, organized and work well with deadlines.
• Basic understanding of the Sequencer and Movie Render Queue.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience procedural world building methods & techniques (PCG, Houdini or other).
• Experience with creating real time vegetation/foliage assets using SpeedTree (or similar software).
• Technical Art background, knowledge of advanced Unreal Engine material creation, blueprints, Python/MEL scripting and creating efficient environment/world building workflows & tools.
• Experience lighting environments in Unreal Engine.
• Environment concepting skills.
• Experience with live shoots on a motion capture stage or experience with LED Wall projects.
  

Agbo Labs, LLC is committed to operating fair and unbiased recruitment procedures allowing all applicants an equal opportunity for employment, free from discrimination on the basis of religion, race, sex, age, sexual orientation, disability, color, ethnic or national origin or any other classification as may be protected by applicable law. We aim to recruit the right people for the jobs we have to offer, and to assess applications on the basis of relevant skills, education and experience.
This role is an onsite position at our Los Angeles studio.