Being Facial modeler

focus_method

Is this like new job title or not?
I see some job positions on some artists "artstation" profiles called "facial modeler". I was thinking , (because sculpting faces is my biggest passion anyway)....just focusing on that and if i become very good in sculpting faces can i expect some job opportunities, maybe freelance, remote, whatever ?

Also i've noticed on artstation ,a lot of artists when uploading characters type down in their description who was responsible for which part of the character. One is responsible for hands, other for clothes, third for head and/or grooming etc.

pior

I would say : Yes, and no, and maybe.

Yes, it is totally possible to end up being the "head sculpting guy" on a project because of two reasons : 

1 • Full characters take an extremely long time to make, therefore it makes sense to split things up.
2 • Convincing faces (either stylized and realistic) require a pretty specific skillset, ranging from anatomy of course but also strong knowledge of illustration styles, and to an extent some pretty specific technical skills : knowing how to make eyes look lively with realtime constraints, how to make a character smile convincingly with blendshapes, and so on.

Now that said ... a big team/studio likely won't post a job opening for a "facial modeler" since this kind of work simply tends to go the most senior artists on the team, or to the lead. (Note that I am talking about the more "artistically involved" kind of head modeling here. If by "facial modeler" they mean someone doing resurfacing on 3d scans then that's a different story altogether).

From a career standpoint limiting oneself to anatomy and heads is certainly possible, but the thing to keep in mind is that the quality threshold (and time involvement required) to become hire-able will be much more strict than for, say, doing spacemarine armor. That's just the nature of the work : a lively expressive head is just an order of magnitude tougher to get right than the more straightforward kind of models. But at the same time now that game monetization is highly driven by character skins, people who know how to do heads well may become in high demand. In other words : something that was once limited to hero pieces (main characters and NPCs) is now becoming currency (new character skins every season). Food for thoughts.

thomasp

In my experience a facial modeller primarily deals with creating morph targets/blend shapes to be used in facial animation.

Not to be confused with a character modeller/artist which would normally be the person to create the base asset first. Obviously there's bound to be plenty of overlap between these jobs.

oglu

I agree with thomasp here. Facial artists are experts for blendshapes/FACS.

 https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zAAqdQ