Hasta La Motion!

Issue 97 of 3D Artist goes deep on Allegorithmic’s Substance Painter and on Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings, both pieces I was stoked to have contributed.

Dion Vlachos

Nickelodeon seems to have made some changes in their hierarchy as they have now promoted known industry veteran Dion Vlachos to EVP of retail sales, marketing and publishing. Vlachos will be operating from New York and will be leading the retails business of the company’s famed properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, PAW Patrol, SpongeBob SquarePants, Shimmer and Shine and more.

Vlachos joined Nickelodeon in 2013 as a senior vice president of retail sales and marketing, has looked after Nickelodeon’s ecommerce and retail sections, and has assisted in the overseas launches of pre-school products for PAW Patrol and Blaze and the Monster Machines. He has in the past also worked as a key figure in the launch of movie merchandise for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and SpongeBob SquarePants. Recently, Valchos was bestowed with publishing licensed business for Nickelodeon in the USA.

The announcement of his new appointment was announced by Nickelodeon, president of consumer products and chief marketing officer, Pam Kaufman, to whom Vlachos will continue reporting.

Vlachos initiated his career at the communications department of Disney Feature Animation and managed promotion and marketing for features like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lion King, Alladin, Mulan and more.

Prior to joining Nickelodeon, Vlachos was associated with The Walt Disney Company for around 20 years in various marketing and communication positions. He had lead campaigns for films like WALL-E, Cars and more.

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Assemblage Entertainment, the studio which has created huge ripples in the animation industry in India in just a short span of two years, is on its way of getting bigger and better. The studio which recently delivered a major animated feature film Norm of North is now looking forward to strengthening its team and equipping its artists to raise the bar for its deliverables.

Priyank Raj has joined team Assemblage as the Vice President Operations recently on 11 July, 2016. Replacing Milind Shinde who served as the COO, Raj will manage the entire workflow in terms of operations, projects and artists. “Making sure production is in place, team structure is there, monitoring each and every project, bidding out projects in terms of manpower, setting the priorities for various projects, negotiating with clients in terms of time and deadlines and getting some new hires are all part of my profile. So, my profile is basically looking after every aspect of the company,” explains Raj.

Assemblage Entertainment, VP Operations, Priyank Raj

Priyank Raj comes with a great deal of experience of around 11 years in the media and entertainment industry especially in animation and VFX. He started his career in this industry at Crest in 2005 where he worked as line producer. He thus worked on major projects like Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, Alpha and Omega and the pilot of How to Train Your Dragon. Further on he worked with Reliance MediaWorks and Prime Focus on notable feature films like Mary Kom, Kick, Aashiqui 2, Jai Ho and Dabangg 2.

His last workplace was Riva Animation and VFX where Raj served as the head of production and led the theme park project. He also worked on the Final Fantasy project.

Assemblage is looking forward for various new changes in the system with the experience and expertise of Priyank Raj. He adds, “Since the time I have joined, various new policies and process changes, initiatives, training sessions conducted for artists by artists have been implemented. So, I want to strengthen the artists by giving them a vision of what’s in store for them and keeping them excited about the ongoing projects.”

Replacing Upen Desai who served as Head of IT at Assemblage is Samuel Vinod Kumar who joined the enigmatic team from 18 July, 2016. Kumar too hails with a great deal of experience of over 26 years in the Information Technology field.

At Assemblage Entertainment, Kumar will be managing the entire IT infrastructure with all the technical processes both in terms of hardware and software. He will supervise all the IT systems and technical production softwares for the entire team.

Samuel Vinod Kumar has emerged from Prime Focus where he served for over eight years venturing into various fields. At Prime Focus, Kumar explored the advertising and production field, VFX and post production arena in terms of technology and later worked with Prime Focus Technologies. He is also responsible for various cutting edge projects like IT Infrastructure for Indian Premier League (IPL) 2009 and 2014, migration of Star TV and Zee TV’s IT Infrastructure and for rolling out various IT service portals.

Assemblage Entertainment, Head IT, Samuel Vinod Kumar

Kumar defines his aim at Assemblage by saying, “We are a two year old studio and thus want to end the ‘survivor’ phase. Now, we want to enter the phase of competitiveness; we want ourselves to be competitive in this fast paced industry. By implementing efficient technology, automation, good quality infrastructure and speedy IT systems, I want to enhance the production capacity of Assemblage.” Kumar is currently focussing on a complete Cloud based system to make the content available for clients at any corner of the world.

With Priyank Raj and Samuel Kumar adding to the enhancement of Assemblage, Arjun Madhavan who is the son of Assemblage CEO, AK Madhavan has also grounded his foot in the strengthening and development of the studio. Arjun is currently involved in strategising and implementing various new initiatives to make Assemblage an ideal place for artists, projects and for animation as a whole.

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Philm CGI -Animation studio, based in two leading IT Cities in India namely Mumbai and Pune having a team of 100+ Highly talented Artist with more than a decade of experience in CGI, providing Animation and Visual effects services in Feature Films and Television to the some of the biggest studios in Europe and Asia.

The team has worked on Numerous Feature Film projects like, Delhi Safari (2012), Shandaar (2015), to name a few exploiting the latest Technology available at their disposal. Our Recent Accomplishment Bobby and Bill ( Animation Series 26*12 ) for Europe and Shandaar (Bollywood Feature Film ) we have tied up with Amazon Cloud for Rendering, which has added to our infrastructure, scalability and flexibility making us more efficient in managing an expensive resource like Render farm.

Philm Cgi is currently hiring for below mentioned profiles and is a fantastic opportunity in a fast paced highly creative environment working with a great team on challenging environment, besides to be a part of an International Project to experience an excellent studio life.

1.3D Animator: Motion Philm Cgi is looking for 3D Animator with 4years of extensive experience into Animation.

Responsibilities:

• Producing dynamics, believable and appealing character animation by interpreting the sequences depicted in given storyboards and animatic.
• Exploiting their strong sense of visualization skills, aesthetic senses, good rhythmic sense in harmonizing sound animation and excellent timing skills to animate shots of multi­level difficulty such as comedy, dialogue, song and dance, action, character posture and movement, etc.
• Accurately address and implement the notes, feedback and comments from supervisory staff and ensure that revisions are completed in a timely manner and requires minimal iterations
• Manage time and work collaboratively to deliver the required quota of animation on time, meet deadlines and achieve production objectives
• Proactively recognize problems, troubleshoot solutions and perform self­quality checks on all of their work and flag issues, if any.

Requirements:

• At least 4 years of extensive experience in 3D Character Animation.
• Able to communicate in a professional and friendly manner with co­workers.
• Must be able to multi task and handle multiple projects at the same time.
• Although character setup is not required on the job, basic knowledge in character setup is preferred.

Required Software knowledge: Autodesk Maya & Unity 3D

Job Type: Full­time

Required education: High school or equivalent

Required experience:

• 3D Animator: 4 years
• Excellent career opportunity in a reputed Animation company, Achievements may result in stock option participation

2. CG Supervisor cum creative director taking a leadership role in CG Team: Delivering and direction of all phases of creative work from concepts to production.

As a CG Supervisor you will supervise the CG Elements as well as work on shots as projects will require, you will also involve into creating the vision and then the story narratives, presentation and engagements to bring innovation to our clients. You will provide leadership and direction to ensure initiative and strategies effectively to build high potential and high profession at both individuals and team levels.

Job Responsibilities:

• Direction and delivery of all phases of creative work from concepts through production.
• Identifying developing and maintain successful client relationship
• Responsible for leading and mentoring quality delivery projects to clients

Skills and Experience:

• 10 years of experience in creative leadership role in CGI Pipelines.
• In depth knowledge of all aspects of creative production CGI and Motion Design
• Strong ability to provide clean creative direction and feedback to improve creative processes to keep work on budget and schedules
• Excellent presentation skills and communicating abilities both internally and also with clients.
• Demonstrated ability to achieve goals through influencing and partnering at all levels of the company is essential.
• Bachelors degree required; Masters degree is preferred.

Job Code: MP/CD

3. Engineer -Python Programmer:

Description:

Position Details:

 Job Title:         Engineer – Python Programmer

Job Type:        Full Time

Location:         Pune, India

Salary:             Competitive base salary, negotiable

Benefits:          Competitive

Job Code:         MP/PP

Job Responsibilities:

• Developing new software applications in partnership with business analysts and technical architects.
• Upgrading existing software as the user/ organization’s needs change.
• Localizing software products for different markets.
• Testing software to ensure the code is correct, fixing (debugging) errors where they occur, and rerunning and rechecking the programmer until it produces the correct results
• Should be familiar with Python and any of its framework.
• Knowledge of CG Pipeline is a plus

Required Experience:

• Bachelors in Computer Science or equivalent.
• Strong programming experience in Python

4. Production Coordinator: Production Coordinator with an understanding of CGI Pipeline to join an existing production team.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate the creation of new characters, props, and locations for production, storyboard-animatic drawing retakes and, as required, stand in for production manager and attend layout approval sessions or animation approval sessions and assure accurate retake note taking and communication to artists.
• Excellent communication skills to support the Line Producer, Production Manager and to help ensure that departmental tasks are assigned, understood and completed as per instruction.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Must have a strong interest in 2D or 3D Animation Production, experience in series work is preferable, candidates from commercial animation backgrounds will be considered
• Minimum 1-2 years of experience in 3D Animation Production
• Able to understand and manage the relevant section of the production schedule
• Ability to organize, multi-task and prioritize
• Expert attention to detail and coordinating skills a must
• Proficient in Office package and basic Photoshop skills a plus
• Proactive and eager to take on a task, follow up and bring it to completion
• Lateral thinking ability
• Thrive in a high pressure deadline-orientated environment.
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills, both verbal and written.

Job Code: MP/PC

5. Technical Director Cgi: Technical Director will be responsible for creating and maintaining tools and applications which will help the CG production process; should be able to handle technical issues across various departments.

Required Skills:

• Strong Knowledge of Computer Graphics and Animation pipeline
• Should have good understanding of how Maya works
• Should be willing introduce new technologies to improve efficiencies and performance
• Proficiency in Python and MEL script
• Knowledge of windows and Linux operating systems
• Ability to adapt to new technologies and methodologies required by the project
• Strong troubleshooting skills

Qualifications:

• Must have strong drive to debug and problem solve
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills are required for communicating with the team, management, and other departments
• Must be able to context switch under pressure
• Must be able to work alone and collaboratively with multiple tasks
• Must be a team player
• Must be open to direction and able to embrace change

Job Code: MP/TD

6. Senior Rigger Artist/Rigger Artist: Motion Philm Cgi Pvt. Ltd. is looking for Character Riggers who will provide support throughout the character production process working closely with artists in the character team; using our tools to build rigs and maintain a high level of visual and technical quality for all characters. Candidates must be having a strong understanding of rigging, skinning and related character technologies and must have understanding of human body and facial anatomy as it relates to game assets and topology.

Skill set:

• Should possess extended rigging knowledge in Maya
• Minimum 3 years of experience in the feature fil/broadcast VFX Production
• Should have mastered the principles of animation such as anticipation, timing, weight, secondary motions
• A good sense of timing and composition
• Strong understanding of motion, size, ratios and perspective
• Strong acting skills preferred and / or a concise study of acting theory
• Understand fundamentals of animation, can work in a variety of styles, can work from creative briefs / storyboards to execute animation
• Deliver quality that the client is expecting, while being responsible for schedule and productivity
• Should have excellent problem solving skills
• Experience in MEL, Python, Pymel

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Create advanced rigs for a variety of characters and assets using Maya and other tool
• Create and maintain scripts and plugins for the Rigging department
• R&D new deformation approaches, and innovate methods to create rigs

Experience: 3 – 5 yrs in the feature fil/broadcast VFX Production

Software: Advanced knowledge in 3D Studio Max and Maya

Job Location: Pune/Koregaon Park

Job Reference Code: MP/RG

Excellent career opportunity in a reputed Animation company, Achievements may result in stock option participation. If you are interested in this opportunity and are independent, reliable, and flexible and you want to be part of a leading Animation Company, please Email us your

latest resume / C.V. along with Current CTC – Expected CTC, Notice period mentioning job code at hr@philmcgi.com

and you can get in touch at 020-65000447. Our team will give it due consideration.

The Job is based in Pune but may require short-term travelling to client site based.

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League of Legends has been a beacon in the gaming as well as the eSports industry for quite some time now. Acing almost every feat, Riot’s Games’ multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) has its own competitive tournament, the LCS, which sees participation from the world’s biggest names from the eSports industry.

So, if you’re a fan of League of Legends and all its elements and still can’t get enough of the game, there’s good news for you! There’s an upcoming, fictional show which revolves around a League of Legends player, his team (Their team is probably named Uncle Sam, as seen in the jerseys) and their zeal to play in the European LCS finals. The show titled ‘The Players’ which has just wrapped up the production process recently has been produced by beActive Media and created by Emmy-nominated writer Nuno Bernardo (Sofia’s Diary, Flatmates, Beat Girl).

The series will reportedly be available in various formats. There will be eight 12-minute episodes which will be available over the web, or you can choose two 48-minute episodes which will presumably be for television or you can also go for the 90-minute full version which comprises of the full story.

The series portrays the journey of the players through the eSports pipeline, what is it to be like when you are born in the digital age, where eSports is rapidly gaining ground and becoming more popular among children and young adults, which is presumably the target audience of the show.

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