Senior Technical Artist (Character) - The Sims

Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims, we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don't settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be.

Teams are building the next generation game and creative platform, Project Rene and reimagining The Sims that players know and love with even more new ways to play. We're excited you're interested to learn more about how you can join our team and dream big.

You will be reporting to the Senior Technical Art Director.

Preferred Locations: Vancouver, Seattle, Redwood City, Austin, Toronto.

As a Character Technical Artist at Maxis, you will collaborate with Art & Animation Leads, Technical Artists, and Engineers across the studio and EA, to push the boundaries of character technology. The model applicant is passionate about character development, exploring new technologies, and implementing modern game production solutions for existing and new IPs.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with Art & Animation Directors, Engineers, Character & Animation Leads to achieve look development, content pipeline, and runtime implementation goals.
• Create character look development prototypes, applying latest technologies to aesthetic and performance goals.
• Collaborate with technical directors to define character performance requirements, diagnose, profile, and manage content costs.
• Help develop a technical character pipeline from Maya to Unreal.
• Firefight production issues, investigating urgent issues and resolving roadblocks.
• Collaborate with teams across the studio and EA to improve character development practices and pipelines.
• Create solid documentation and training material.

Qualifications:

• Production experience in Unreal Editor with a focus on character pipelines, including skeletal mesh actors, rigs & animations workflows, blueprints.
• Understanding of human and creature anatomy, proportion, silhouette, & topology and techniques to create foundational models and textures.
• 5+ years of experience of Maya and industry leading tools for character development (Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, Marmoset Toolbag, etc).
• Proficiency in Unreal Materials with a focus on character look development.
• Fundamentals in PBR and proficiency in Substance Designer and Painter workflows.
• 1+ years of experience with runtime dynamics Cloth & Hair and related authoring techniques.
• 1+ years of experience designing and overseeing large character part systems.
• Proficiency in Python, Mel, and developing and maintaining artists production tools.
• Bonus Qualifications
• Experience developing and maintaining Maya riggs for game characters.
• Experience developing for iOS/Android.
• Experience developing for console hardware (XB1/XBX/PS4/PS5).

Visit us at: https://www.ea.com/ea-studios/maxis

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

The base salary ranges listed below are for the defined geographic market pay zones in these locations. If you reside outside of these locations, a recruiter will advise on the range and benefits for your specific location.

EA has listed the base salary ranges it in good faith expects to pay applicants for this role in the locations listed, as of the time of this posting. Pay offered will be determined based on numerous relevant business and candidate factors including, for example, education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, and business or organizational needs.

BASE SALARY RANGES

• British Columbia (depending on location e.g. Vancouver vs. Victoria):
º $115,100 - $161,200 CAN Annually
• California (depending on location e.g. Los Angeles vs. Sacramento):
º $140,700 - $204,700 USD Annually
• Washington (depending on location e.g. Seattle vs. Spokane):
º $125,300 - $198,100 USD Annually

Base salary is just one part of the overall compensation at EA. In the US, we offer a package of benefits including paid time off (3 weeks per year to start), 80 hours per year of sick time, 16 paid company holidays per year, 10 weeks paid time off to bond with baby, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity. For British Columbia, we offer a package of benefits including vacation (3 weeks per year to start), 10 days per year of sick time, paid top-up to EI/QPIP benefits up to 100% of base salary when you welcome a new child (12 weeks for maternity, and 4 weeks for parental/adoption leave), extended health/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement plan to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.