Electronic Arts

EA SPORTS is one of the world's leading sports entertainment brands, known for top-selling video game franchises, award-winning interactive technology, and cross-platform digital experiences. EA SPORTS creates connected gaming experiences that bring the emotion of sports to life through industry-leading titles, including Madden NFL, EA SPORTS FC, NHL, NBA LIVE, and UFC.

Meet the A-Team: an innovative Character Animation Research Team based in Vancouver, British Columbia, with talented remote members spread across North America. We are a cross-functional, applied R&D team, strategically positioned in EA to drive and disrupt the future of character animation technology. We are a self-motivated, collaborative team, empowered to constantly explore and leverage the latest innovations across the fields of animation, rigging, physics, and machine learning. Our technology has been used to create next-generation gameplay realism across EA titles including FC, Madden, NHL, UFC, Battlefield, and many others.  

This team works 3 days/week onsite in our Burnaby studio. 

Role Description:

The Senior Technical Artist will work with the A-Team Technical Art Directors, game team Technical Art Directors and central content teams to create tools, workflows and systems to achieve the highest quality character deformation. This includes investment in R&D for the future of rigging at EA.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop global rigging deformation workflows and systems with the goal of convergence and efficiency

• Participate in and enhance the EA character community

• Coordinate with content creators to achieve highest possible content to our game team partners

• Partner with Technical Art Directors on rigging content game integration

• Collaborate on solutions with other disciplines (Animation, Engineering and Art)

• Evolve rigging domain along with changing industry technology and trends

• Participate in development of training programs for A-Team

• Collaborate on and follow A-Team best practices (code conventions, versioning, node naming, directory structure)

• Participate in code and art reviews

• Communicate risks and concerns with A-Team leadership

• Work with A-Team on rigging deformation solutions

• Aim to improve cross studio communication and team culture

• Write documentation, where applicable

Required Technical Skills and Qualifications:

• At least 10+ years of rigging experience in games and film

• Expertise in creating common animation rigs, tools and workflows for rigging and animation

• Expert knowledge in Maya

• Expert knowledge in Python

• Working knowledge in Motion Builder

• Understanding of physical motion, weight, balance and form

• Knowledge of human and creature anatomy

• Experience with motion capture and motion retargeting

• Experience with editor-based game development environments (Unreal, Unity)