The Look Development Artist, shortened to Look Devs, has an interesting role that comprises knowledge from the fields of lighting, texture and creature design. Unsurprisingly this role also works alongside these artists. After a concept artist creates a design for a creature it is a Look Dev’s role to take that work and think about how it would exist in 3D space. What are the texture of its skin? What does it look like when light bounces off it? Do different parts of the body reflect light differently? Like in the case of fur vs claw as those are composed of different materials they would then reflect differently. How about weather conditions? What does it look like when its wet, when its windy. All these considerations are the Look Dev’s field. I have retrieved this information from the initial introduction from ScreenSkills.
As the role is not an entry level position the skills and knowledge needed are much higher. They will work with a wide array of programs and require substantial knowledge on all of them. Just from ScreenSkills these programs include Arnold, Blender, Maya, Metal Ray, Photoshop, RenderMan, Substance Painter, V-Ray and Zbrush. Of course these are all listing external generic tools that are available in the market. Companies may have their own internal tools that these artists would need knowledge of. One such example is from Walt Disney Animation Studios, according to their website, Tonic. An in-house developed tool specialized in the generation of hair.
Though one responsibility that is highlighted on conceptartempire.com is that a Look Dev will work to maintain that the product, weather a game or movie, maintains a consistent appearance. As such they need an intimate understanding of the visual language that the product is utilizing as to keep all items as consistent with one another as possible and allow the vision of the clients to come forth.
They are also responsible for developing a material authoring pipeline, IE choosing what software needs to be used for what as various programs will have their strengths and weaknesses and it’s the Look Devs vast industry experience that will help in establishing this pipeline.
This is a kind of role I may find myself in the future depending on what I ultimately decide to pursue in my VFX career. It represents a culmination of years of work, study and experimentation requiring vast amounts of knowledge of not only a variety of programs but spheres of knowledge.