Ninja Theory developers of beautiful games such as Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey To The West and currently in production a new take on the Devil May Cry franchise. Through one popular form of social networking, Twitter i was able to follow the ongoings of Ninja Theory and their latest development, in which a job vacancy was tweeted. The job vacancy caught my attention as it was a lead environment artist, a role of which i am producing for as well as a company which has caught my attention for their colourful and outstanding visuals of each game and i believe is a company i would fit in as they exemplify their conceptual visualizations staright through to the final game. Here is the full job vacancy for a lead environment artist, working uder Ninja Theory which are a company residing in Cambridge, England.
Current Vacancies (updated 2nd February 2012):
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Lead Environment Artist
Now you too can become a Ninja, but without putting in years of martial arts training on mountain tops!
We are looking for a very talented individual to work alongside the Art Director team, other leads & senior management as Lead Environment Artist. It will be your duty to ensure the overall environment art vision of the game/project, as well as the production tasks needed to achieve this, are met. We will expect you to take the lead in advising your team of on-going scheduled tasks, to ensure the environment art demands are met on time and to schedule, but without sacrificing the high quality ethos of the studio. As Lead, you will have responsibility for managing the development of the Environment Art team and safeguarding the long-term career/development needs of the team, making sure these are met.
We will look to you to foster and maintain strong relationships and effective communication with the Art Director team, other art, design and programming leads, as well as with the Production team. In particular strong communication and day-today interaction with the Technical Art Director will be key. As Lead, we would expect you to establish yourself as the point of contact for all environment art related issues and actively take responsibility for performance and memory budgets allocated to art, working closely with the Lead Producer.
Your role as Lead will require you to create and maintain an atmosphere within the Environment Art team that encourages focus and efficiency, but at the same time actively inspires and motivates the team. You will need to draw on your extensive experience and knowledge to pinpoint potential risks within the Environment Art team's work and ensure that you thoroughly document such risks. As Lead it will be your role to ensure that communication channels within the Environment Art team itself are managed and monitored at all times, to keep the team running smoothly and effectively.
We will expect you to proactively manage the team's schedule and your own, working with the Art Direction team (who set the creative direction and workflow of project) to ensure tasks are set and prioritised to fit correctly within Studio milestones - ensuring work across the team is in line with, compliments and represents the overall vision of the Studio. As Lead, you will be responsible for maintaining an overall view of the project and be able to anticipate technical/workflow issues and subsequently provide solutions in relation to environment art objectives.
As a Lead, you need to be able to confidently build and maintain a strong and talented team through effective recruitment, development and personnel management - you need to be able to appreciate both the current and future requirements of the Company. We would like you to have overall control of the professional development of the Environment Art team and be able to work closely with HR to ensure all staff have regular appraisals, training and development opportunities. Actively keeping up-to-date with current techniques and tools used within your field to ensure that the ethos of continual learning is encouraged, is also paramount.
As Lead Environment Artist, we will expect you to work closely with the Art Director to establish the environment art aesthetic and technical qualities required on the project, as well as address any issues related to the creation of environment art, in order to deliver an efficient and stable pipeline of communication and work. You need to be confident in conducting all interactions with professionalism and in a timely manner, considering both the overall artistic vision of the studio and the actual feasibility of the requirements on the team.
It is important that you demonstrate and communicate the studio expectations for quality of work, productivity, communication and professionalism to the team. As Lead, it is you who will oversee the work of the environment artists on a daily basis, effectively communicating the art direction of the project, as well as delivering constructive feedback on work in progress. Your responsibilities extend to ensuring that work is undertaken by the correct team member, with consideration given to each environment artist's particular skills and their career development. You will be expected to juggle the efficient completion of tasks, at the same time as delivering a challenging and supportive working environment for each environment artist.
As well as your managerial responsibilities as a Lead, you must also be able to produce artwork to an exceptionally high finish, to agreed schedules and technical specifications.
To be successful in this role, it is essential that you can demonstrate:
- Experience of managing a team of artists including (but not limited to) recruitment, training and development, employee relations issues and scheduling demands.
- Extensive experience of working with Maya/Max, such that you are able to lead by example in terms of proficiency.
- A proficient level of experience of working with Photoshop.
- The ability to remain objective when evaluating projects.
- Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills.
- Excellent levels of literacy and numeracy.
- Highly creative and enthusiastic and the ability to pass this on to the team and inspire them.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills.
- Strong emphasis on quality and originality.
- Highly demanding of others and yourself.
- Ability to take charge and motivate others.
- Ability to help with scheduling and understand time constraints and dependencies.
It would also be great to see, (though not essential):
- Extensive knowledge of major console systems.
- Proven implementation of work, from conception to the final product.
To apply for this role please submit your CV, examples of your best work and a covering letter (with salary expectations & eligibility to work in the UK please) to jobs@ninjatheory.com by Wednesday, 7th March, 2012. Please quote reference NT/LEA/Feb12 in the subject bar. All applications will be reviewed after the closing date and we will be in touch shortly thereafter.
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Here is the link to the website:
http://www.ninjatheory.com/careers.php
What i took away from the job vacany
Looking at the expectations that Ninja Theory expect for the role of the lead environment artist they want a very talented individual to take the position of managing a team of artists and making sure schedules, quality, vision and the responsibilities of the artists are met. This responsibility is something which i find is too much for the skill level that i am currently at as i feel i need to develop much further to which i will be able lead a team and currently i have multiple briefs to which i am keeping under constant watch and maintaining the schedule to which if successful after the completion of the briefs i will be able to use that knowledge in the future so i believe that at this instant this portion of expectations by Ninja Theory are something of which i am on the right track towards.
Along with managing a team of artist i would also have to produce work of an exceptionally high finish and this is where i believe i am faulting over as i currently feel i am not on par with the standards of artwork that i wanted to be at but over the past few months all the 'mising pieces of the puzzle' have been coming together to the point where i see myself comign closer to a professional standard of work. Ninja Theory expect someone who wants apply fo rthis job to demonstrate these points:
Experience of managing a team of artists including (but not limited to) recruitment, training and development, employee relations issues and scheduling demands.
Managing a team is not exactly what i have been looking at as a role but working within a team is something of which i am currently working on as a i have two projects going on which are developing my skills around a group and learning from them and the responsibilities that the role of lead environment artist is something which i feel is too much of an addition to which i am not currently ready for .
Extensive experience of working with Maya/Max, such that you are able to lead by example in terms of proficiency.
My experience in working with Maya/Max is solely based on Maya as this is the lead software that i was taught about and so i have progressed further with and Max is another software program that i will be looking at as i have the software but have had no time recently to install and try out but will be doing so soon.
A proficient level of experience of working with Photoshop.
I have to say that my experience with Photoshop has progressed much more than my introduction to the software and i am still learning many tools to speed up my workflow and will soon be confident in my skills to take further in providing artwork for companies such as Ninja Theory.
The ability to remain objective when evaluating projects.
Evaluating projects is another area to which i am progressing to see the advantages and disadvantages of work and with my own work for example, is an area of evaluation which i constantly see myself being able to improve.
Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills.
Along with my artwork my confidence and communication skills have vastly improved to a point where i can talk and listen without either drifting off from subject or wandering away from the subject that is being told to me.
Excellent levels of literacy and numeracy.
Once again an area which i have improved upon my literacy has become more stronger as i can make my subject matter clearer and not repeated as i had done before and with my numeracy skills being at a level which covers the basics and further areas that i can deal with.
Highly creative and enthusiastic and the ability to pass this on to the team and inspire them.
I am pretty enthusiastic about a creative idea which allows me to want to take a concept as far as i can along with pushing myself.
Excellent communication and presentation skills.
These are again two areas which i have improved upon as my communication skills have become more confident so has my presentation skills to the point where i can have a presentation of images and i speak about each slides and the presentation skills can be improved as i limit the amount of text and jam pack the resentation with too many images which is an area to be worked on.
Strong emphasis on quality and originality.
I want to produce original work which can showcase my creative process from start to end and show this through high quality of work which i believe is currently at the stage of which is getting to the point of high quality but i feel i can take it further whether it be a large or small step or tool to improve the work i am open to the process.
Highly demanding of others and yourself.
I am very demanding of myself as i try to take myself to the limit to see what i can achieve and show people that i am capable of more to which i have faulted on and learned from and which i can lend to others as i am in two team projects the demands of others isn't at a high level but is one which will be constantly reminded to others to keep them on track.
Ability to take charge and motivate others.
My abilities of taking charge is dependant on the project, with my own projects i can keep everyone at the same stage as myself but within another team i can only encourage others aswell as find or show work of my own or others in the same area to motivate them to produce work at the same level.
Ability to help with scheduling and understand time constraints and dependencies.
My current workflow is pretty free with rough guidelines of schedules but when a deadline is aproaching i tend to focus on that project much more and because i try to take myself further i tend to overload myself with work and so quality becomes a loss but currently i am at a stage which i am following schedules and keeping up, with workflow speeding up allowing more free time to progress further and finish projects or objectives earlier.
Looking through this curent job vacancy from Ninja Theory i was able to grasp their expectations and learn that their current software use such as Maya/Max and Photoshop are two softwares which i have been taught showing the up to date and in tune with the current industries needs in the fact that i am able to produce artwork in Photoshop and even produce a 3D model. Also most of their expectations are areas of which i am quickly improving on, showing that i am on the right track but need to take it further and along with the right softwares i need to expand my knowledge of softwares to be available for other software packages.
