Animation Technical Director

 Animation Technical Director

In software development, a technical director is typically responsible for the successful creation and delivery of the company's product to the marketplace by managing technical risks and opportunities; making key software design and implementation decisions with the development teams, scheduling of tasks including tracking dependencies, managing change requests, and guaranteeing quality of deliveries and educating the team on technical best practices.

Typical responsibilities:

  • Defines the technological strategy in conjunction with the development team of each project: pipeline, tools, and key development procedures
  • Assesses technical risk and mitigation plan
  • Establishes standards and procedures to track and measure project's progression
  • Evaluates development teams, identifying strengths, problem areas, and developing plans for improving performance
  • Evaluates interview candidates for technical positions
  • Scouts for and evaluates new technology and tools as opportunities for innovation and development excellence
  • Oversees technical design documentation process for correctness and timeliness
  • Provides input to the other disciplines on the practicality of initial design goals and impact to the overall project timeline
  • Evaluates software implementation on design and task thoroughness
  • Helps to identify high risk areas for the project director
  • Identifies weak software systems that need code improvement and schedules corrective action, when possible
  • Creates automated test process for system features, where possible, and contributes to the build system
  • Aids in all stages of post-production including during finalizing

Film and games

In visual effects (VFX) (Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks), feature animation (Pixar, Dreamworks Animation) and game development (Naughty Dog), a technical director's responsibilities vary from studio to studio and as such, the term is not very well defined.

Typically, a TD is a combination of an artist and a programmer, responsible for the more technical aspects of film production, such as programming shaders, developing character rigs and animation setups, performing complex simulation tasks and setting up the pipeline (how the data is passed from one stage in the film production to the next). In contrast to a programmer, a TD would normally not work on large programming projects, but rather make heavy use of scripting languages such as Python, MEL, MAXScript, or shell scripting.[clarification needed] Another responsibility of a TD is to look after any technical problems the regular artists encounter and to develop custom tools to improve the artists' workflow.

In these industries, "technical artist", "technical animator" and "generalist TD" are sometimes used as synonyms.

Categorization of technical directors in film and games

Frequently, the role of a TD is more precisely defined. Various areas of computer graphics require a high degree of specialized technical/scientific knowledge and therefore merit more precise categorization. As an example, a skilled Character TD has a strong understanding of human/animal anatomy, movement, and mechanics, whereas a skilled Lighting TD might have a detailed understanding of the physical properties of light and surfaces.

Those categories include (but are not limited to) the following.

 

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