Modeling Supervisor

Everyone knows where babies come from: storks. But what about cartoon characters?

If you guessed Animators, you’re right. Sort of. Before your favorite cartoons can be animated, they’ve got to be created, and that’s the job of three dimensional modelers known in various circles as 3D Artists, Animation Modelers, and 3D Object Modelers.

As a Modeling Supervisor, you’re the head 3D Artist, in charge of managing the entire modeling department within your company, which might be a software company that creates virtual worlds, a gaming company that creates video games, or a Hollywood studio that creates animated television shows and movies.

Here’s how the modeling process works that you oversee as a Modeling Supervisor: The art department designs characters, settings, and props for a game or film, which involves creating sketches, illustrations, and sometimes three-dimensional sculptures. Using special software and tools, such as 3D scanners, it’s the modeling department’s job to digitize these creations by building computer models of them. Whether it’s a princess, a castle, or a sword, each model contains what’s called a wireframe — the basic shape of the object, as if it were being built with digital chicken wire — and polygons, which are the shapes that fill the wireframe to make it a finished graphic. Finally, the polygons are “textured” with color and detail, ultimately allowing the models to serve as templates for Animators so their animated images are consistent and correct.

Your role as Modeling Supervisor is simple: You oversee this process and participate in it, both delegating work and doing it, managing quality, resources, timelines, and morale as the modeling department’s team captain.