Surface Artists (Junior / Mid / Senior)

Overview

Able & Baker is expanding its Surfacing team for a highly stylised 3D feature film already in production. We’re looking for artists at every experience level who love hand-painting textures rich in style and far removed from photo-real procedural looks and who collaborate closely with Modeling, Layout, and Lighting to make every shot shine.

Responsibilities

• Paint stylised, hand-crafted textures for characters, props, and environments, ensuring visual consistency and production-ready optimization.
• Look-dev and shading: create and tweak materials in the pipeline (primarily Maya and Houdini) to achieve the desired artistic finish.
• Partner with Lighting and Modeling to guarantee surfaces respond correctly to illumination and meet camera and narrative requirements.
• Maintain pipeline standards: tidy scenes, follow naming conventions, manage UDIMs, and communicate proactively with production.
• Iterate on feedback from Art Direction, refining textures and shaders until the final look is achieved.

Required Skills & Experience

• Portfolio demonstrating stylized, hand-painted textures (both organic and hard-surface assets).
• Solid knowledge of Autodesk Maya and prior experience surfacing in Houdini.
• Understanding of lighting fundamentals (bonus if you have worked in Lighting).
• Proficiency with texturing tools (Substance 3D Painter / Designer, Mari, Photoshop).
• Strong UV, UDIM, and shading fundamentals (PBR & stylised workflows).
• Excellent teamwork, clear communication, and problem-solving attitude.
• All seniority levels welcome: Junior, Mid, or Senior (experience in film, TV, or games highly valued).

Nice-to-Have

• Vegetation texturing experience and familiarity with scattering/instancing workflows.
• Artistic background in traditional painting or stylised drawing.
• Familiarity with render engines (Arnold, Karma, Redshift, etc.) and ShotGrid or similar tracking systems.
• Spanish fluency; intermediate or higher English is a plus.

Work mode

Remote, on-site in our Madrid studio, or hybrid arrangements are all possible.

Join Us!

Be part of the studio behind Love, Death + Robots and Bad Dinosaurs and help define the texture and visual personality of our next animated adventure.