Lead Crowd Artist at Pixomondo

ABOUT PIXOMONDO (PXO)

PXO creates industry-leading Virtual Production and Visual Effects for premium Film and Episodic content. With over 20 industry awards and nominations, PXO, a Sony Pictures Entertainment company, is a trusted partner for storytellers and showrunners worldwide. The company has been creating iconic work since 2001, from Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award winning Hugo and HBO’s Emmy winning Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, through to Amazon’s The Boys, Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and many more. 

In Virtual Production, PXO helps clients to realize their creative vision, from production through to post-production. Using interactive technology and proprietary software and solutions, PXO brings ideas to life by virtually immersing filmmakers in the worlds they imagined, throughout every stage of the creative process. The company’s latest LED volume work includes House of the Dragon, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Netflix’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

PXO has seven studios and three LED volumes in the US, UK, Germany and Canada. 

Pixomondo is seeking a skilled Lead Crowd Artist to manage and oversee the creation of realistic crowd simulations for our upcoming projects. This role requires a blend of technical expertise and creative vision to ensure that our digital crowd scenes are both dynamic and believable, enhancing the storytelling in our visual effects work.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the crowd simulation efforts on various projects, ensuring quality and ease of use within production workflows.
• Collaborate with Directors and other department heads to create realistic crowd behaviors that align with the project's artistic vision.
• Develop and implement crowd simulation techniques and pipelines using Houdini
• Lead the creation of crowd assets, including animations, shaders, and materials relevant to crowd simulations.
• Optimize crowd simulations for varying budgetary and technical constraints.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to junior artists and facilitate knowledge sharing within the team.
• Continuously research and experiment with new crowd simulation technologies and techniques to enhance production processes.
• Ensure that all crowd-related elements are delivered on time and to the highest standard.
• Prototype, develop and extend current Houdini crowd pipelines.
• Manage and organize motion for crowds 
• Animation and simulations on shots or sequences 
• Creating show-specific tools and setups to complement the crowd pipeline.
• Setting-up / troubleshooting crowd simulations 
• Setup and run cloth simulations on Crowd 

Qualifications:

• Strong knowledge of Houdini Software
• Strong crowd and layout skills including asset integration, scene setup and running simulations
• · Experience working on high end VFX or animated feature-film productions
• Experience working with motion capture and/or clip-based animation.
• Experience with VEX, Python and Houdini APIs
• Experience with Arnold

Benefits

Benefits vary by location due to regional regulations and company policies.

Pixomondo is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics.

PXO does not accept resumes from recruiters.  Unsolicited resumes are accepted directly from candidates only. PXO will not pay any fees associated with unsolicited resumes.