Job Summary:Swaybox Studios is seeking a creatively driven and technically adept Senior CG Lighting Artistto integrate CG facial performances into our cross-department workflows. This role is central to maintaining the emotional fidelity and character consistency of our hybrid puppetry performances, ensuring the final output meets the high artistic standards of the studio.
The Senior CG Lighting Artist will focus mainly on facial performance replacement with a handoff to the compositing team. This person will play a hands-on role in bringing our characters to life, improving workflows, resolving creative challenges, and collaborating with Supervisors and Technical Directors to evolve tools that enhance production efficiency. This is a perfect position for a VFX artist who understands the subtle art of expression, setting a mood, character performance, and hybrid storytelling.
Key Responsibilities:- Implement best practices in our face replacement pipeline, ensuring poses and expressions are seamlessly matched to animation and puppet facial performances.
- Replicate and adjust lighting from live action plates onto our characters with an emphasis on fine details, performance nuances, and the overall aesthetic of our film.
- Establish and maintain the tone, and mood across sequences, while also adhering to any pre-lighting or color keys that have been established in pre-vis.
- Work closely with outsource vendors and other CG and comp artists, collaborating on visual looks, tech, training, and workflow for faces and environments.
- Collaborate with VFX Supervisor, MoMo Art Supervisor, and TDs to identify areas of improvement in the pipeline, including tool and workflow development.
- Maintain output quality and momentum in a fast-paced environment.
- Preserve cohesive character consistency across facial replacements and ensure smooth integration of our internal puppet performances, animation, and live action plates.
- Communicate effectively with production and creative leads to align visual performance with narrative goals.
Required Qualifications:- 5+ years experience in high-end, live action VFX films, with a strong emphasis on beauty lighting.
- Expert knowledge and proficiency of Houdini and rendering in Arnold.
- Basic knowledge of compositing in Nuke to create and refine slap comps for presentation and handoff to the compositing team.
- Deep understanding of visual language- color, scale, perspective, proportion, spatial awareness, motion blur, depth of field, etc
- Comprehensive knowledge of physically based rendering and optimizations, using Arnold or similar engines.
- Understanding of photography, exposure, color grading, lens and camera behavior, and HDR workflows.
- Strong eye for cinematic and real-world lighting, color grading, and shot continuity.
- Robust problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and the ability to adapt quickly to unique or proprietary workflows.
- An artistic mindset and willingness to receive and implement constructive feedback, whether that's with draw-overs, over the shoulder adjustments, or team meetings.
Preferred Qualifications:- Understanding and experience with UV, texture, and shading is a plus.
- Understanding of CG modelling and rigging workflows.
- Basic knowledge of texture mapping techniques.
- Experience with Unreal is advantageous.
- Knowledge of Maya and Arnold rendering.
- Experience with ZBrush and other 3D software is advantageous.
- Familiarity with scripting or tool development (e.g. Python, MEL, etc.) to support pipeline enhancements.
- Background in traditional art.
- Prior experience in both stylized and realistic texture and shading creation of digital faces is great to have.
- Familiarity with hybrid workflows that span traditional VFX and digital puppetry.
