Senior Layout Artist

Title: Expression of Interest: Senior Layout Artist (Featurette)

Location: Vancouver BC CA

Job Description:

For more than 35 years, Bardel Entertainment has been growing and evolving, yet at our core, we remain grounded in the creative roots of the craft of animation.  Our pursuit of fresh ideas, techniques, and technologies is driven by the belief that together, through creativity and collaboration, we can accomplish anything!  If you want to be part of an environment that empowers you to experiment, learn, and contribute to exciting projects, come and join us.

What You’ll Do

• Establish the staging and camera positioning of scenes in a CG environment.

• Collaborate with the Layout Supervisor to align cinematography with the director’s vision.
• Interpret storyboards into 3D, offering solutions and pitching new ideas to enhance the visual story.
• Identify potential storytelling, staging, or technical issues early and propose effective solutions.
• Take ownership of challenging shots and sequences, working independently while knowing when to seek direction.
• Animate elements and characters for framing and story beats.

• Collaborate with leadership, production, and team members to solve problems and share insights.

• Engage in dailies, rounds, and team discussions to contribute to creative and technical improvements.
• Adhere to pipeline workflows and technical requirements for seamless integration into the production process.
• Serve as a resource for other Layout Artists, sharing knowledge, techniques, and best practices.

• Maintain consistency in quality while meeting production needs.

• Manage time effectively, working with production to stay on schedule.
• Keep the team and production staff informed about progress, challenges, and solutions.

Requirements

What You’ll Bring

• Previous production experience as a Senior Layout Artist (or similar) in featurette/feature (long-form) animation.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills to effectively communicate solutions, share knowledge, and incorporate feedback.
• Strong understanding of 3D space, cameras, transforms, animation, and scene organization.
• Understanding of cinematography principles including lens choice, focal length, perspective, depth, composition, camera motivation, and screen direction.
• Ability to make thoughtful cinematographic choices that support character, emotion, pacing, and storytelling.
• Maintain continuity of screen direction, eyelines, spatial relationships, camera language, and character geography across sequences.
• Experience with editing software
• Strong time management skills

Portfolio Requirements

A portfolio that demonstrates:

• A variety of sequences demonstrating strong cinematography, staging, camera placement, pacing, continuity, and visual storytelling, with thoughtful consideration of screen direction and character geography.

• Strong camera animation skills, including motivated camera movement, dynamic framing, and purposeful composition.
• Demonstrated ability to translate 2D storyboards, animatics, script pages, or director pitches into effective 3D scenes.
• Work that demonstrates creative problem-solving and the ability to make independent staging and camera decisions.

Benefits

Pay Range: CAD $1450 - $1700 per week   

This salary range reflects our current expectations for these roles as of this posting’s date. Your final salary offer will consider various key factors, including your education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographical location, as well as the needs and requirements of the business. 

At Bardel, we recognize that flexibility is key to doing great work. Our hybrid work environment is a valued perk designed to support individual accountability and empower our teams to work where they’re most productive. We offer the choice to work remotely, balanced with intentional in-person time for collaboration, creativity, and team building. This role requires in-studio attendance at our Vancouver studio during onboarding and predetermined Rush Weeks.