Senior Rigging Technical Director

About the Company:
AGBO is an artist-led Academy Award-Winning independent studio focused on developing and producing innovative story universes spanning film, TV, and digital platforms. Founded in 2017 by award-winning and record-breaking directors Anthony and Joe Russo, AGBO’s mission is to inspire and advance the next generation of storytelling to entertain and influence worldwide audiences. AGBOs recent productions include “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, Amazon series “Citadel”, Netflix’s “The Gray Man”, “Extraction”, “Extraction 2”, and “The Electric State”.

About the Position:
A Senior Rigging Technical Director (TD) is responsible for developing complex rigs and providing technical solutions to meet the artistic challenges of our projects. You will play a key role in shaping the tools and workflows that enhance our rigging capabilities.

Key Responsibilities:  

• Work with department heads to design and build sophisticated rigs using industry-standard software like Autodesk Maya, Houdini, Blender, or similar tools. This may include creating skeletons, muscle systems, deformations, and control setups.
• Mentor junior riggers and contribute to their professional growth.
• Create advanced rigs, incorporating a deep understanding of anatomy, movement, and mechanics. This includes setting up skeletons, muscle systems, facial expressions, and any custom controls required for animation.
• Design and implement advanced skeletal rigs for metahuman characters, enhancing realism and expressiveness.
• Develop rigging setups that are compatible with motion capture data, ensuring accurate and realistic character animation.
• Optimize rigs for real-time performance in virtual production environments.
• Implement FX such as fur, feathers, scales, and skin simulations to enhance realism or achieve specific stylistic goals. This involves working closely with the animation and simulation departments to ensure that creature effects behave naturally and are consistent with the overall visual style of the project.
• Implement realistic body mechanics in rigs, such as joint limitations, muscle simulations, and secondary animations like hair.
• Develop and maintain tools, scripts, and workflows to streamline the rigging and creature FX processes. This could involve customizing Maya’s features or integrating third-party tools to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Troubleshoot rigging issues and provide creative solutions to technical challenges that may arise during the animation process.
• Work closely with other departments (e.g., animation, modeling, visual effects) to ensure that creature assets meet technical specifications and artistic vision. This includes participating in reviews, providing technical support, and making adjustments based on feedback.
• Maintain detailed documentation and guidelines for the rigs to facilitate smooth handovers to animators and other team members.
• Test rigs and creature effects thoroughly to identify and fix issues before handing off to animation and other departments. Ensure that creatures perform as expected under a variety of scenarios and animations.
• Keep up-to-date with industry trends, tools, and techniques related to rigging and animation to ensure the team's work remains at the cutting edge of the field.

Qualifications & Skills:

• 5+ years of professional experience in computer-generated art for entertainment or games.
• Bachelor's degree in Animation, Computer Graphics, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Extensive experience with Maya, particularly its rigging and simulation tools. Familiarity with Maya’s scripting languages (e.g., MEL, Python) is highly beneficial.
• Fluency with industry-standard 3D software such as Blender, Houdini and Unreal Engine.
• Proven leadership abilities and experience in mentoring junior artists.
• A solid understanding of anatomy, kinematics, and character movement, enabling the creation of realistic and functional creature designs.
• Ability to develop custom tools and scripts to automate tasks and solve complex problems.
• Experience with dynamics, particle systems, and hair/fur simulations in Maya.
• A keen eye for detail, composition, and creature aesthetics and ability to translate conceptual art into 3D models and animations.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work creatively within technical constraints.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Familiarity with scripting languages like Python for automation is a bonus.
  

The typical base salary for this position ranges from $140,000-$155,000 annually. Actual offers will be determined based on experience.

AGBO Labs, LLC is committed to operating fair and unbiased recruitment procedures allowing all applicants an equal opportunity for employment, free from discrimination on the basis of religion, race, sex, age, sexual orientation, disability, color, ethnic or national origin or any other classification as may be protected by applicable law. We aim to recruit the right people for the jobs we have to offer, and to assess applications on the basis of relevant skills, education and experience.

AGBO participates in E-Verify - English | Spanish

This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee(s) incumbent to this position. This role is an onsite position at our Los Angeles studio.