Animation Manager

PlayStation Studios Visual Arts and PlayStation Studios Malaysia primarily located on our San Diego campus provides world-class content, development and services to PlayStation Studios. Our team is always at the cutting edge of technology and partners with the industry’s best minds and companies. This is your opportunity to work closely with game and film industry professionals from all over the world and under one roof!

We are looking for an Animation Manager who is highly proficient in all aspects of high-quality animation supervision and management in the video game industry. You are an organized and diligent leader, strategic, and thoughtful in all interactions with the internal and external teams and partners. Work in collaboration with Animation and Studio Management at PlayStation Studios Malaysia to expand the capability and expertise of that studio to foster success for both teams.

Are you a dedicated, focused, self-motivated, and collaborative manager? If you have significant experience in business development, outsourcing, bidding, scheduling, and milestone accountability in a wide variety of animation subject areas including: pre-visualization, scene assembly, virtual camera, motion editing, motion capture animation pipeline, keyframe animation, AAA facial solving, cinematic animation, in-game/navigation motions, motion matching and technical animation workflows, we want to speak to you!

Responsibilities:-

Staffing

• Build and retain a talented and efficient team that produces and maintains the highest possible quality and standards.
• Partner with talent acquisition, management team and Supervisors to interview, evaluate, acquire, and retain top talent. Mentor artists of multiple disciplines and define recruiting goals for HR to maintain a balanced team.
• Remain current with industry trends in regards to salary and responsibilities across animation disciplines, and advise on the hiring and talent planning for the Malaysian studio growth and expansion.
• Provide individual feedback and career guidance for the members of staff who report into the Manager, and coordinate the efforts of Senior Staff to level up junior staff on the technical and creative requirements of delivering AAA animation work.
• Ensure training documentation and materials are maintained and accessible, and identify and provide Studio and Company resources in order to better support the team.

Production

• Support the creative and technical vision of our studios while collaborating with external clients, internal artists, and outsourcing partners while staying on schedule and budget.
• Document, communicate expectations and requirements, and provide leadership and guidance to studio artists for their profession development.
• Confirm all direct reports are billing projects properly each week.
• Collaborate with Studio Production and Animation Management in Malaysia to quantify and estimate the effort to execute the work allocated.
• Partner with the Manager of Production and the department stakeholders to create responsible and competitive bids and schedules.
• Be an advocate and strategic partner for studio level initiatives as they pertain to our world-class animation department, while identifying risks and opportunities in active projects to improve production and maintain department morale.
• Be financially responsible when forecasting and planning departmental needs for upcoming fiscal cycles.
• Cooperate with the Senior Manager of Animation at PlayStation Studios Malaysia as the teams develop close collaboration on the scopes of work allocated through Production.

Management/Strategy

• Lead in conjunction with the Animation Management team to develop an overall strategy for the department; successfully execute initiatives that would improve and maintain efficiency, reduce talents' idle time through leadership in business, service and talent development.
• Work with Animation Supervisors, Leads, Engineers and Technical Directors to develop future animation pipelines as well as maintaining and improving what we currently have.
• Constantly and proactively seek to improve the production processes, tools and pipelines for all animation disciplines and processes.
• Must create polished presentations and proposals to effectively communicate art services to all parts of Sony's PlayStation Studios.
• Guide Studio Art Director and Service Development to identify new areas of business, and lead internal business plans for new art services and pipelines.
• Work with Studio Stakeholders to create materials to justify projects to keep innovating services and process to improve the throughput and quality of animation.
• Continuously improving technical and human competencies so the team can manage and deliver high fidelity animation. \ Maintain a visible presence in the computer graphics and game industries, representing PlayStation Studios' interests with a high degree of professionalism.
• Work with Studio management to foster and maintain a positive identity for the San Diego and Malaysia studio

Qualifications

• 10+ years' experience in game or film production and have led or supervised teams of 25+.
• Ideally have worked in Game Animation environment as Supervisor or Manager.
• Bachelor of art, degree in business, or equivalent industry experience.
• Have the experience, skills, and knowledge to manage a team of animators, solvers, technical animators, and camera layout artists. Knowledge of the terminology and processes associated with these departments is a must.
• Understand how the different aspects of animation function within a game studio pipeline, and how to organize and supervise artists to accomplish their assignments.
• Excellent understanding of how engineering and technical art work within the organization, and how to collaborate across those departments.
• Possess strong technical knowledge and experience in 3D computer graphics production.
• Understand production and can schedule, communicate, and supervise tasks.

Required Skills/Tools:

• Strong understanding of artistic principals, techniques and practices, and technical understanding of animation process, limitations and dependencies.
• Significant Scheduling, Budgeting, and experience with Distributed Production.
• Excellent verbal, visual, and written communication skills. A balanced skillset between business development/strategy, technical knowledge, and people management.
• Word, Excel, PowerPoint/Keynote, Perforce, Shotgun, Google Suite, etc.

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