Remote Senior Rigging Artist

Company Description

Repeatedly voted one of Montreal’s Top Employers and Employer of the Year for the 2022 Mercuriades Awards, Rodeo FX is a high-end creative company offering services in visual effects, advertising, animation, and experiential.

Nominated for multiple Emmy® Awards for its work on the series Stranger Things season 4, The Witcher season 2, and The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power season 1, the independent, Oscar®-winning company boasts close to 900 artists crafting from studios in Montreal, Québec City, Toronto, Los Angeles and Paris.

Rodeo FX is a creative partner to the world’s best storytellers including Netflix, HBO, Disney, Marvel, Amazon Studios, Warner Bros., and Sony, and has collaborated on ads for YouTube, NBC, and Apple. Current projects include Blue Beetle, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon. Recently released projects include John Wick: Chapter 4, Black Adam, Disney's The Little Mermaid, and Love, Death and Robots Volume 3, for which the company won a 2023 VES award.

Work arrangements:

As a company founded and led by an artist, creativity above all guides us. Our mission is to provide our talents with the freedom and resources they need to deliver quality work and thrive in a stimulating, caring environment. While we require employees to be present in the studio at least three days a week, we maintain flexible work arrangements for the remaining days. This balance ensures that we foster collaboration, maintain our vibrant culture, and encourage in-person interaction and teamwork.

Job Description

The Rigging Artist designs and builds efficient, flexible rigs for a variety of objects, vehicles, characters, and creatures. They bridge the gap between modeling and animation by developing believable, performant deformation systems that meet pipeline requirements. At the crossroads of technical and anatomical expertise, they work closely with modeling, CFX, animation, and lookdev teams to deliver animation-ready, fully tested, and optimized assets.

Key Responsibilities:

Mastery of Craft

• Create modular or custom rigs for a wide range of objects, vehicles, characters, and creatures.
• Rig internal anatomy (skeletons, muscles) to drive external deformations (skin, face, feathers, cloth).
• Build clear, ergonomic control systems tailored to animators’ needs.
• Implement robust, reusable, and easy-to-maintain rigs for complex productions.

Creative Quality

• Collaborate with animators to adjust rigs based on narrative or stylistic requirements.
• Support accurate posing, expressions, and motion through precise and expressive setups.
• Anticipate visual needs and explore artistically relevant solutions (e.g., stylized facial rigging, secondary deformation, dynamics).
• Contribute to achieving the project’s visual style through thoughtful rigging choices.

Technical Quality

• Ensure stability, cleanliness, and efficiency of rigs within the production pipeline.
• Use Maya and Python to automate, optimize, or customize rigging workflows.
• Identify and quickly resolve rigging issues and anomalies.
• Collaborate in the creation of deformers, blend shapes, and animation test tools when needed.

Communication

• Maintain ongoing dialogue with modeling, animation, CFX, and supervision teams.
• Keep production informed about status, risks, and needs related to deliverables.
• Actively participate in dailies and review sessions with a constructive mindset.
• Document complex or unconventional rigs to facilitate their use and future modifications.

Learning, Knowledge Sharing, and Growth

• Share tools, scripts, and rigging approaches with the team.
• Contribute to the development of the studio’s rigging templates, standards, and processes.
• Explore new methods, including machine learning (ML), muscle simulations, or procedural deformation.
• Embrace feedback as a lever for personal and collective growth.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of production experience in rigging for the VFX industry.
• Proficiency in Maya for production rigging.
• Strong Python programming skills applied to rigging tools and automation.
• Solid knowledge of anatomy (bipeds, quadrupeds, muscles, facial expressions).
• Proficiency with blend shapes and deformation test tools.
• Ability to prioritize tasks, work independently, and deliver on schedule.
• Asset : Knowledge of PySide for UI creation.
• Asset : Familiarity with Flow or other production management tools.
• Asset : Experience with advanced facial solutions (e.g., FACS, stylized face rigs, facial capture).
• Asset : Experience developing or contributing to internal rigging frameworks.

Additional Information

• #LI-Hybrid

Diversity : At Rodeo FX, diversity is a core value. We’re committed to creating an inclusive, equitable workplace where different perspectives are embraced. Every team member brings unique insight that strengthens our creativity, challenges our thinking, and helps us deliver better work.

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