Visual Effects Supervisor
Complex seeks a Visual Effects Supervisor to lead and revolutionize VFX production at their NYC studio. This role involves establishing and leading virtual production workflows, including virtual set creation. The aim is to enhance creative control, speed up iteration, and integrate advanced technologies for innovative content. The supervisor will use Unreal Engine, motion capture, animation, and AI to create visuals exceeding expectations for a youth audience. Reporting to the VP of Production, this leader will drive innovation and technical excellence, pushing the boundaries of visual effects supervision and championing new technologies across teams.
What You'll Do: Architecting the Visual Future
VFX Leadership & Vision: Lead and meticulously oversee all facets of visual effects production, from initial concept development and pre-visualization through to final delivery. Ensure the highest creative and technical standards are consistently met, aligning with Complex's distinct brand identity and the director's specific vision for each project.
Collaborate closely with the VP of Production, directors, creative leads, and various production teams to define VFX requirements, develop innovative visual strategies, and ensure the seamless integration of VFX into all content formats, from short-form social media to long-form episodic series.
Virtual Production & Unreal Engine Mastery: Spearhead the design, development, and hands-on construction of dynamic, high-fidelity virtual sets and environments within Unreal Engine. These assets will be utilized across Complex's virtual production stages, supporting both ICVFX on LED volumes and green screen productions. This includes meticulous asset creation, detailed scene assembly, sophisticated lighting, and rigorous optimization for real-time performance.
Develop, implement, and manage robust virtual production pipelines. This involves integrating camera tracking systems, real-time compositing (e.g., leveraging Unreal Engine's Composure tool), and efficient on-set operations to facilitate cutting-edge in-camera VFX (ICVFX) and streamlined workflows.
Motion Capture & Animation Excellence: Oversee and direct all motion capture sessions, ensuring the acquisition of high-quality data for nuanced character animation and immersive virtual performances.
Manage the end-to-end motion capture pipeline, encompassing data processing, cleaning, sophisticated retargeting to various character rigs, and seamless integration into both Unreal Engine and Blender environments.
Utilize Blender extensively for a range of tasks including 3D modeling, intricate texturing, character rigging, keyframe animation, and complex VFX shot production.
Establish, maintain, and refine efficient animation pipelines. Uphold and champion core animation principles (e.g., squash and stretch, timing, anticipation, arcs) to deliver compelling, believable, and emotionally resonant character and object motion across all projects.
AI Integration & Innovation: Champion, supervise, and actively participate in the practical application of a diverse suite of cutting-edge AI tools across the entire VFX workflow. This includes, but is not limited to: Gemini for its multimodal understanding and analytical capabilities; OpenAI's Sora for advanced video generation, DALL-E for rapid image generation, and GPT models for scripting assistance and ideation; Anthropic Claude for sophisticated text generation, detailed analysis, and comprehensive documentation; Kling for high-quality AI video generation with a focus on character consistency; and Runway for its versatile generative video and AI-powered editing tools.
Proactively identify opportunities and implement AI-driven solutions for tasks such as concept art generation, pre-visualization, automated rotoscoping, creation of background elements and textures, enhancements to character animation, and overall workflow automation to significantly boost creative output and production efficiency. This role will be pivotal in strategically deploying these AI tools as creativity and efficiency multipliers, augmenting the capabilities of our talented artists.
SOTA Practices & Pipeline Management: Continuously research, evaluate, and implement State-of-the-Art (SOTA) visual effects techniques, emerging software, innovative hardware solutions, and evolving workflows to ensure Complex remains at the absolute forefront of visual innovation in the youth media landscape.
Design, meticulously document, and proactively manage efficient and scalable VFX pipelines. This includes ensuring crystal-clear communication across teams, optimal resource allocation, and the consistent, timely delivery of all projects within budgetary constraints. This individual will be an architect of new systems, particularly for virtual production and AI integration within Complex.
Provide expert on-set supervision during principal photography for all sequences involving visual effects. This includes managing complex virtual production shoots on LED stages or with green screens, overseeing lighting setups, camera configurations, and critical data capture processes to ensure flawless integration with digital elements. A key aspect will be bridging traditional VFX methodologies with real-time virtual production workflows.
Team Collaboration & Mentorship: Foster a highly collaborative, innovative, and positive environment within the VFX team and across other interacting departments (e.g., editorial, production, art).
Provide strong technical guidance, dedicated mentorship, and inspiring creative leadership to VFX artists, animators, and technical staff, nurturing their growth and collective capabilities. This is a hands-on leadership role, requiring the ability to both direct and execute.
Who You Are: The Ideal Candidate Profile
Core Experience & Leadership: A minimum of 7-10+ years of progressive, hands-on experience as a Visual Effects Supervisor. This experience should be in high-volume, fast-paced production environments such as broadcast media, streaming content creation, feature film, or AAA game development. A strong portfolio showcasing successfully shipped titles and projects is essential.
Demonstrable and proven leadership capabilities, including experience managing, mentoring, and inspiring teams of VFX artists, animators, and technical staff. A track record of fostering a culture defined by creativity, robust collaboration, and unwavering commitment to excellence is required.
Technical Expertise (Unreal Engine & Virtual Production Focus): Unreal Engine: Expert-level, hands-on proficiency with Unreal Engine (UE4/UE5) is paramount. This includes:
Deep, practical experience in designing, building, lighting, and optimizing complex virtual sets and environments specifically for real-time rendering and demanding virtual production scenarios (including ICVFX on LED stages and green screen compositing).
Advanced proficiency in Unreal Engine's Blueprint visual scripting system for creating interactive scene elements, custom tools, and dynamic virtual environments that respond to live inputs.
A strong, nuanced understanding of Unreal Engine's lighting systems (e.g., Lumen), shading techniques, material creation workflows, and rendering pipelines (including Path Tracing and Nanite technology).
Practical experience with Unreal Engine's Composure tool for sophisticated real-time compositing and the Sequencer tool for creating cinematic sequences and pre-visualizations.
Working knowledge of integrating professional camera tracking systems (e.g., OptiTrack) and managing critical genlock and timecode synchronization for stable and reliable virtual production shoots.
Virtual Production:
Extensive, practical experience across all stages of the virtual production lifecycle. This spans from comprehensive pre-visualization (including previs, techvis, and postvis) to decisive on-set supervision and flawless real-time execution during shoots. A thorough understanding of LED volume technology, including its best practices, operational challenges, and inherent limitations, is critical
Motion Capture & Animation: Demonstrable expertise in various motion capture technologies (e.g., optical, inertial systems), including hands-on supervision of mocap shoots. Comprehensive experience managing the full motion capture pipeline, from initial data acquisition and meticulous cleanup to complex retargeting and final animation integration, is required.
Strong, demonstrable proficiency in Blender for a wide range of 3D tasks, including modeling, sculpting, UV mapping, texturing, character rigging, keyframe animation, and generating VFX elements (such as simulations, motion tracking, and compositing).
A comprehensive understanding and consistent practical application of the 12 Principles of Animation. Proven experience in managing and optimizing both 2D and 3D animation pipelines and workflows to achieve high-quality, expressive motion.
AI Tool Proficiency: Proven, hands-on experience and a deep, practical understanding of leveraging a range of generative AI tools within a professional VFX and content creation pipeline. Specific, demonstrable expertise is required with:
Google Gemini: For its advanced multimodal understanding, complex reasoning capabilities, and potential applications in creative ideation, asset analysis, or workflow enhancement.
OpenAI Suite: Including Sora for sophisticated text-to-video generation and video manipulation; DALL-E for rapid and diverse image generation; and GPT models for tasks such as script analysis, creative content generation, or providing code assistance for pipeline tools.
Anthropic Claude: For its strengths in advanced text generation, summarization of complex information, creation of detailed documentation, code generation, and tackling complex reasoning tasks within a production context.
Kling AI: For generating high-quality text-to-video and image-to-video content, with a particular emphasis on its features supporting character consistency, nuanced camera controls, and detailed motion brush capabilities.
Runway: For its suite of generative video tools, AI-powered "magic tools" for asset manipulation, and intuitive video editing capabilities.
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