Technical Director (TD)

A Technical Director (TD) provides critical support to a show's artists and department heads. A Technical Director will design, develop, and implement new tools and processes for a particular show or department. As needed, a Technical Director may be asked to do shot work.

Essential duties and responsibilities:

• Provides technical support for aiding artists with the completion of computer graphics shots.


• Assists artists with troubleshooting and debugging of production issues.


• Support and develop tools and procedures, which maintain and enhance the production pipeline.


• Create documentation.


• Ensure software development follows studio policies and guidelines.


• Assist in training and mentoring of other TDs as required and appropriate.


• Assist in envisioning studio goals. Can work on goals with supervision.


• Works with multiple departments and across multiple areas of Technical Direction.


• Develops and implements new computer graphic techniques.


• Provide support and development of tools and procedures to extend and enhance the pipeline.


• Assist animators and artists with troubleshooting of shots. Issues may include problems with fur, clothing, particle effects, animation, and rendering.


• Support and work with multiple departments, including Modeling, Animation, Lighting, FX, and Research and Development.


• Work closely with other Technical Directors, Production Supervisors, VFX Supervisors, and Production Engineering to maintain and further the production pipeline.


• Assist in training and mentoring of other Entry Level and Associate Technical Directors.

Expectations:

• Ability to take direction and work in a team environment.


• Ability to pay close attention to detail; oftentimes on repetitive tasks.


• “Customer first” mentality and willingness to provide direct support to individuals.


• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.


• Experience with the Unix environment.


• Strong math and programming skills.


• Must have a positive attitude.


• Ability to support (non-technical) artists teaching or tutoring experience, project roles that interface between developers and clients.


• Excellent problem-solving skills involvement in small teams tackling big multi-discipline projects.


• Sound computer science knowledge object oriented programming (OOP), design patterns, projects implementing large systems, C++, Python.


• experience with computer graphics 3rd party packages like Maya, Max, Lightwave, coursework or other studies in computer graphics, 3D game development.