Groom Artist (Fur Specialist)

About Barnstorm

Barnstorm is an Emmy and VES-nominated visual effects studio based in Los Angeles and operations in Vancouver, Montreal, NYC, Atlanta, London, and Hyderabad. We provide photo-realistic visual effects for a variety of episodic and select sequences in feature films. We pride ourselves in our artists’ talent and dedication to producing world-class visual effects

Who You Are

You are a highly skilled Groom Artist with deep experience creating photo-realistic fur, hair, and feather grooms for hero creatures, quadrupeds, and digi-doubles. You have a strong understanding of animal anatomy, fur behavior, and how grooming interacts with deformation, simulation, and rendering. You are detail-oriented, artistic, and technically savvy– able to create grooms that hold up in close-ups while remaining efficient for production. You thrive in a collaborative pipeline, working closely with Creature, Rigging, CFX, Lookdev, and Lighting teams, and enjoy sharing knowledge, refining workflows, and pushing the quality bar for fur and hair assets. You are a problem-solver who can balance realism, aesthetics, and performance constraints, and you bring a proactive, communicative, and team-oriented mindset to every project.

What You’ll Do

Fur Grooming & Look Development (70%)

• Create high-quality, photo-real grooms for hero quadrupeds, creatures, and digi-doubles using Houdini.
• Develop physically accurate fur attributes including density, direction, clumping, frizz, noise, and region-based variation.
• Work with Lookdev to create shader-driven fur materials and ensure believable color, spec, translucency, melanin variations, and root/tip gradations.
• Ensure grooms behave predictably during deformation, simulation, and rendering, providing clean guides and well-organized groom structures.
• Prepare grooms for CFX and simulation workflows, including guide grooming, interpolation, masking, and attribute painting.
• Maintain consistency and fidelity of fur across close-ups, mid-range shots, and full-body hero renders.

Pipeline, Process & Collaboration (25%)

• Collaborate closely with Creature, Rigging, CFX, and Lookdev teams to ensure seamless integration of grooms across the pipeline.
• Provide clear feedback in groom reviews and participate in defining quality standards for fur and hair assets.
• Troubleshoot issues related to guide behavior, shading, simulation, render performance, and pipeline stability.
• Contribute to improvements in grooming workflows, tools, and best practices.
• Work with Lighting and Lookdev to ensure the groom renders consistently under various lighting conditions.
  

People & Cross-Team Support (5%)

• Share grooming techniques and best practices with peers and junior artists.
• Help elevate the studio’s groom quality bar through knowledge sharing and review participation.
• Communicate effectively with Production and Supervisors regarding task progress, risks, and technical requirements.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of professional VFX experience focused on grooming for episodics or features.
• Proven ability to create photo-real, hero-level fur grooms, preferably for quadrupeds.
• Expert proficiency in grooming tools such as Houdini Groom.
• Strong artistic understanding of animal anatomy, fur directionality, region-based variation, and sculptural detail.
• Experience collaborating with Lookdev on fur shaders and PBR-based hair/fur materials.
• Comfort working with CFX and Rigging teams, understanding how grooms interact with skinning and simulation workflows.
• Ability to debug and optimize grooms for performance without sacrificing realism.
• Strong communication and collaborative skills suitable for a fast-paced, multi-show environment.
• Scripting familiarity (Python, VEX, MEL) is a plus but not required.
• Groom lookdev and simulation experience is a plus. 

About This Role

This role is open to North America and UK locations. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in their country of residence and be willing to work on-site/hybrid as required by production and studio location. As this is a contract position, benefits may vary by employment status. Eligible contract artists may have access to certain benefits based on project length and local plan offerings.

Barnstorm VFX is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment. We aim to recruit, support, and retain talented individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. We strongly encourage applications from Indigenous peoples, people of color, people of all genders or non-genders, and people with disabilities.

We thank all applicants for their interest. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.