Electronic Arts

WE WANT YOUR BRAINS… PopCap is looking for brainy and skillful people with a passion for making the world’s best games. What’s in it for you? A super-fun environment, rewarding work, and lots of great perks. It takes big, delicious brains to make award-winning titles like Plants vs. Zombies that delight millions of players around the world every day. Are you up for the challenge?

We are looking for a Tech Art/Animation Lead to join us and help continue delivering a long-running and beloved IP to our players, Plants vs. Zombies! This artist will report to the Art Director and work on an upcoming Plants vs. Zombies mobile title. You will rapidly develop concepts to drive the creation of best-in-class visuals, bringing the world of Plants vs. Zombies to life. You have experience in art creation and leadership for mobile games with an eye for industry trends. 

Tech Art & Animation Lead  

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Art Director to establish and evangelize visual and technical benchmarks for animation, rigging, and VFX

• Oversee high-quality combat animations in a 2.5D “Saturday morning cartoon” style

• Review asset implementation in-game for quality and performance

• Act as the bridge between 3D and animation, providing feedback to 3D leads to refine assets for hand-off

• Investigate, vet, and supplement documentation of existing internal & external animation pipeline

• Propose and assist in improvements to current internal & external animations processes and pipelines

• Problem solve to mitigate bugs and  performance issues 

• Provide feedback in a clear and constructive manner for both internal and external production artists 

• Work directly with production to ensure that schedules and plans meet business and project needs

• Manage and grow the careers of a team of 3 animators and tech artists

• Contribute to PopCap’s Art team culture of learning and accountability 

Qualifications

• At least 5 years of experience as a senior animator/artist and shipped at least one mobile game with live-ops 

• Demonstrated ability to manage a small team of artists

• Demonstrated excellence in character rigging and character animation 

• Demonstrated ability to communicate visual and quality targets 

• Strong technical and creative problem-solving skills to build and improve workflows and pipelines 

• Demonstrated proficiency using Maya & Unity 

• Ability to give and receive respectful, constructive feedback

• Experience with VFX and shader graphs a plus