Prep Artist

As a prep artist at ILP you are the first in a chain of great artists, and will have to provide the prep material before any other of the departments start with their work. You are expected to take ownership of your work. Specifically we are looking for our prep artist to be able to do roto and cleanup tasks, set up rotoguide and cleanupguide scripts from scratch, helping with any other prep work needed like making NoVfx shots, references, ImagePlane or at times use an agreed upon template or method, as well as share any good solutions you find with your colleagues and leads.
We want our prep artist to communicate with whomever they need to in order to do their tasks. This means talking with your prep Supervisor to resolve any issues with the renders or if your milestone targets are unrealistic. We want our prep artists to be able to add their creativity and ideas to their work and there are usually room for creative suggestions outside of the original brief.
Although years of experience are valuable, mostly we are looking for artists with a great attitude towards learning and a passion for doing quality work.


Your work will include:
Together with your supervisor or lead decide on how to tackle the tasks at hand
Set up roto and cleanup guide scripts from scratch without any template
Be able to understand what it is about the vfx of the shots that needs to be done, to have better understanding of what kind of roto, cleanup needs to be done by you or sent to outsource vendors
Be able to give your opinion when making the roto and cleanup guides
Be able to provide high quality roto and cleanup checking form the outsource vendors
Communicate with the Prep Supervisor on matters regarding your schedule and tasks
Providing high quality roto and paint on different shots with different levels of work by using different techniques
Work on some of the coolest shows in the business with some of the most talented colleagues
Deliver high quality roto and cleanup on time



Your need the following:
Solid knowledge of Nuke, our main compositing package
Ability to use the roto and cleanup nodes and any relevant nodes that can help with the work of roto and cleanup tasks
Very good knowledge of any other softwares that are good for any prep work like Silhouette or Mocha pro
Solid knowledge of roto and cleanup techniques
Understanding of motion blur, defocus, use of tracking and camera track
Understanding and using of vector tracking
Hand paint - frame by frame
Hand roto - one frame mask
Understanding of basic compositing
Keying green and blue screen, including setting up
Edge treatments, including DOFed and motion blurred areas
CG integration, that will help when doing the roto or cleanup tasks, or when doing QC on the outsource roto and cleanup material
Grain handling, color spaces etc.
You need to work in an organized fashion to be able to take over other people's work as well as handing over your work to a colleague
As English is our main language in production, you need to be able to communicate effectively in English, both written and spoken.
Where applicable, you need to adapt ILPs documented style guides and techniques
Be humble, helpful and put ego aside to help the show
Proactively and critically evaluate your own work, before presenting it to your lead or supervisor


The following are considered a plus:
Compositing experience
Scripting and programming for Nuke
Experience in Silhouette, Mocha pro, Maya
Documented leadership skills
Experience on delivering roto and cleanup on tight schedule for big movies or high end TV-series and commercial work under stressful circumstances


Other software we use (knowledge of these are a bonus):
RV
Shotgun
Silhouette
Mocha
Adobe Photoshop
Krita
Neat Video Reduce Noise