Layout Artist Job Description
Layout Artist Duties & Responsibilities
To write an effective layout artist job description, begin by listing detailed duties, responsibilities and expectations. We have included layout artist job description templates that you can modify and use.
Sample responsibilities for this position include:
Layout Artist Qualifications
Qualifications for a job description may include education, certification, and experience.
Education for Layout Artist
Typically a job would require a certain level of education.
Employers hiring for the layout artist job most commonly would prefer for their future employee to have a relevant degree such as Bachelor's and Associate Degree in Fine Arts, Animation, Art, Computer Science, Graphic Design, Design, Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, Film, Computer
Skills for Layout Artist
Desired skills for layout artist include:
Desired experience for layout artist includes:
Layout Artist Examples
Layout Artist Job Description
- Expertise with Autodesk Maya
- Solid understanding of composition, cinematography & filmmaking process
- Experience setting a shot turn over pace that achieves a balance between meeting deadlines and exceeding quality expectations
- Work within a team of assembly/layout artists under the supervision of a layout lead and assembly supervisor
- Responsible for helping establish the cinematic staging and camera positioning as guided by the film's director
- Ability to follow direction and embrace change
- Take art direction from the Art and Creative Director
- Proactively provide solutions and new ideas to creative briefs to push creative boundaries using existing tools & processes
- Assist junior team members with any technical challenges
- Contribute creative feedback in reviews and be willing to assist junior team members in this area when required
- Proficient in SynthEyes and PF Track
- You must be a CTN exhibitor or attendee registered for a three-day eXpo pass or VIP pass
- Capable of managing a team of artists
- A minimum of 3 years’ experience in production or feature film experience in a layout or previz role
- Data administration experience
- Degree in Graphic Design with 1-3 years experience as a Studio Artist/Designer
Layout Artist Job Description
- Work closely with the Layout Leads and Supervisor to polish camera animation and lensing style which is in alignment with, the film director’s vision for the film and its narrative
- Work closely with the Stereo department to implement stereo qualities into the narrative
- Understand department pipeline including all assets and tools, and their purpose
- Leads a team under guidance from Layout Supervisor and production team, providing leadership, direction and allocating work to artists within the team
- Ensure all Layout Artists within the team are adequately trained to full fill the requirements of the production while mentors less experienced digital artists
- Support, establish and maintain an appropriate level of communication with all crew members and ensure they are properly supported and mentored
- Ensure conflict is identified early and constructive solutions are put in place to resolve/ diffuse
- Promote innovative ideas and approaches between different work groups and individuals
- Work closely with the Animation Director, Supervisors, Leads, and Technical Directors from other departments to ensure efficient pipeline management in and out of the Performance Unit
- Participate in brainstorming and problem solving to create and maintain production pipelines and support our overall technical goals
- Display a strong reel that shows examples of work done in a 3d computer generated environment, ideally on a cg animated movie or television production
- 4+ years of Previs experience
- Strong Animation skills
- Cinematography knowledge and understanding of story and scene layout
- Knowledge of traditional camera techniques and the principles of translating storyboards to 3d
- Ability to produce high-level camera work with an in depth knowledge of composition
Layout Artist Job Description
- Become proficient with the departments propriety tools and provide solutions and new ideas to creative briefs to push creative boundaries using existing tools & processes
- Adhere to deadlines and communicate with Production
- Understands the overall brief and goals of a project and communicates this clearly to each member of the team
- Delegates work responsibly to ensure successful completion of shots across team members of all skill levels
- Drives team reviews and, when appropriate, will offer creative/technical feedback on reviewed shots
- Review scripts and storyboards and/or attend kick-offs to understand creative intent of shot/sequence
- Create final camera/layout, blocking for animation, lighting and effects that meet the creative needs of the shot and show while ensuring that the technical needs of the pipeline are met
- Provide multiple iterations of a shot/sequence to assist Directors in determining the best layout and camera movement that will meet the shot’s objectives
- Model basic geo to populate layout as needed to achieve the compositional needs of shots
- Create/acquire and maintain a library of quick use temporary light assets to aid in developing quick iterations of layouts
- Excellent visual storytelling skills (ie
- Ability to work towards, and meet, deadlines in high-pressure environment
- Strong 2d tracking and camera matchmove solving skills, ability to deal with manually nudging difficult 2d tracks and setting manual keys to help solver along
- Strong skills in efficient 3d modeling
- Strong curve manipulation skills for smoothing, over-riding translations
- Ability to solve for object tracking
Layout Artist Job Description
- Collaborate with Supervisors to establish methodology and asset dependencies required to complete the assigned work
- Attend kick offs, dailies, and other meetings as required
- Aid with design and development of tools to help standardize and create procedure for camera and layout
- Generate renders for approval
- Ensure shot continuity is maintained
- Contribute to positive work environment
- Independently performs complex matchmove tasks such as camera tracking, character matching (matchanim), solving lens distortion, deformation matching of surfaces, solving native stereo plates
- Responsible for multi-plate splicing and stitching, adding creative plate post-moves, creative stereo
- Responsible for Previz, postviz and techviz (prep for location shooting or ride development)
- Photomodels, performs environment/scene setup verifying correct assets are being used, edit ranges are correct, and generating initial data for downstream artists including animation/TDs/comp, lidar processing, set dressing
- Ability to create rigs for cameras & create basic rigs for matching simple objects into scene
- Ability to understand and work with rigs for character match anim
- Experience with using Imocaptain / tracking and retargeting techniques for character matchanim
- Ability to move animation between different coordinate systems and constraint mechanisms
- Working knowledge of retime pipeline
- Ability to work with stereoscopic footage using a pre-defined workflow
Layout Artist Job Description
- Solve facial animation from face cams
- Independently set up the technical and aesthetic approaches of the matchmove work for a shot, sequence, or an entire aspect of a show
- Convert background plates to various formats to use with specific software to create digital motion files that match the plate photography
- Mentor Junior Layout Artists
- Create sequences of shots that tell a story through camera, staging, and rough blocking
- Work with existing storyboards or create new shot ideas to communicate the Director's vision
- Effectively collaborate with other production departments including art, modeling, and editorial
- Identify possible creative or technical issues and help find solutions
- Create previs models, lighting, fx, and any other assets needed for the previs process
- Deliver data to down stream departments that meet the needs of production
- Contributes to the technical design and implementation of shots
- Understands gimbal lock issues and ways to avoid
- High proficiency in troubleshooting shotfiles, caches and scenes being transferred between departments
- Understanding of how camera changes affect projection techniques being transferred between the DM and COMP teams
- Ability to estimate time to complete tasks
- Understands importing and exporting models across packages