VF Corporation
Principal Designer, 3D Modeling & Innovation Concepts
USA - Denver, CO
A day in the life of a Principal Innovation Designer — 3D Modeling & Footwear at VF looks a little like this.
This role sits within our Innovation and Advanced Concepts teams, supporting future product creation with a focus on 3D modeling and visionary footwear concept development. You’ll collaborate closely with Design, Materials, Engineering, Athlete Insights, and cross functional innovation partners. At its core, this position shapes the creative direction of next generation product experiences and brings bold future concepts to life through master level 3D modeling and storytelling. This role reports to the VP of Innovation.
Let’s break down that day-in-the-life a bit more.
Lead the creation of breakthrough footwear concepts—from early provocations to highly polished visionary models.
Develop future design languages, form strategies, and storytelling frameworks that inspire teams and senior leaders.
Drive exploration around advanced materials, cushioning systems, digital aesthetics, and upper construction.
Create high‑fidelity, museum‑quality 3D models that communicate bold future product direction.
Produce renderings, digital assets, and visual narratives used in executive storytelling and design sprints.
Champion emerging modeling techniques such as parametric, generative, computational, and sculptural workflows.
Partner closely with Design, Innovation, Materials, Engineering, and Athlete Insights to guide long‑range product vision.
Lead design reviews, offering clear creative direction and a strong aesthetic point of view.
Mentor designers and modelers—elevating craft, conceptual thinking, and creative exploration across the team.
Work with prototyping labs to translate digital concepts into expressive physical prototypes and refine designs through testing.
Honda
Senior Digital Modeler
USA - Ohio
Honda has a clear vision for the future, and it’s a joyful one. We are looking for individuals with the skills, courage, persistence, and dreams that will help us reach our future-focused goals. At our core is innovation. Honda is constantly innovating and developing solutions to drive our business with record success. We strive to be a company that serves as a source of “power” that supports people around the world who are trying to do things based on their own initiative and that helps people expand their own potential. To this end, Honda strives to realize “the joy and freedom of mobility” by developing new technologies and an innovative approach to achieve a “zero environmental footprint.
We are looking for qualified individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, continuous improvement values, and a strong work ethic to join our team.
If your goals and values align with Honda’s, we want you to join our team to Bring the Future!
Key Accountabilities:
Utilizes excellent knowledge/understanding of design/styling concepts and modeling skills/techniques to interpret design sketches, drawings and layouts to confirm engineering requirements/styling intent and creatively visualizes design concepts into three dimensional scale, full-size forms and digital models, incorporating accurate visual proportions, line character, weight, directional quality and total harmony of the design.
Mazda - North America
Designer III, Visualization
USA - Irvine, CA
The Visualization Designer III creates high-quality visualizations and animations for innovative automotive and brand concepts in support of defined project objectives. This role requires a high level of attention to detail to produce compelling imagery and animations that align with Mazda’s brand standards. This position contributes to key design decisions by collaborating closely with designers to develop accurate and expressive 3D renderings, visuals, and animations.
Major Responsibilities
(70%) Design Visualization & Animation
Collaborates closely with automotive and brand designers to develop and execute high fidelity images and animations that support storytelling and presentations for senior design management.
Works directly with design teams to establish project-specific art direction, ranging from quick turn imagery to feature-level animations.
Translate defined art direction into visuals that accurately convey design intent and adhere to agreed-upon “Tone and Manner” standards.
Utilizes a variety of rendering tools and software to deliver professional-grade imagery for both automotive and brand design solutions.
Imports, compiles, and manages multiple 3D file formats (including STL, IGES, STEP, 3DS, DXF and Wire) to create workable rendering files.
(15%) Digital Surface Development
Utilizes a variety of software tools (including, but not limited to, Alias, Blender, and Sub-D) to work directly with designers to translate 2D concepts into accurate 3D digital surfaces.
Partners with fabrication team, as needed, to translate 3D digital files into physical outputs, including hand-offs for milling, 3D printing, and coordination with external vendors.
(15%) Concept Design Development
Develops innovative design solutions using sketches, models, and mockups to support Mazda’s automotive and brand concepts.
Works closely with designers to explore, refine, and communicate design ideas throughout the concept development process.
Supports effective communication of design intent through clear visual assets, including renderings, animations, sketches, and presentation-ready materials.
Perform other duties as assigned
Comply with all policies and standards
The preceding functions have been provided as examples of the types of work performed by employees assigned to this job classification. Management reserves the right to add, modify, change or rescind the work assignments of different positions and to make reasonable accommodations so that qualified employees can perform the essential functions of the job
Pinch
3D Experiential Designer
USA - New York, NY
As an immersive design studio, Pinch activates big ideas, bold thinking, and beautiful design for culture-driven brands. Emphasizing tactility, materiality, and the five senses, Pinch creates experiences and environments that engage on multi-sensory and emotional levels. Co-founded by friends and industry veterans, Pinch acts as the creative counterpart to LA-based production
house Salt.
From the outside, we’re a creative powerhouse, pairing strategic design with production expertise to flawlessly execute next level experiences. Inside, we’re a radically compassionate company, burning down traditional agency norms by centering people and giving creativity the space and support
to thrive.
We spark curiosity, foster community, and inspire action with the potency of a Pinch.
Position Overview
The 3D Experiential Designer is central to conceptualizing, visualizing, and executing immersive brand experiences that live in the physical world. The ideal candidate is both a visionary thinker and a hands-on designer, able to translate strategy and brand identity into innovative environments, installations, and spatial storytelling.
You will collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams—graphic designers, art directors, producers, creative technologists, and fabricators—to develop concepts that not only inspire but also align with real-world production and budgetary considerations. Our workflow is 3D-centric, so the ability to quickly model, design, detail and visualize at a high quality level is key.
This is an opportunity to help shape the way people interact with brands, through unforgettable, immersive experiences.
Worldscape
Lead Technical Artist
USA - Redmond, WA
Worldscape is a cutting-edge platform designed to unify distributed data, sensors, and intelligent agents across cloud, on-prem, and edge environments. By combining geospatial intelligence, physics-based 3D simulation, and reward-driven AI, Worldscape enables organizations to build immersive digital twins for predictive modeling, scenario planning, and adaptive decision-making. With a zero-trust security framework, seamless integration with legacy systems, and robust developer tools, Worldscape empowers rapid deployment of agentic applications that drive resilience and efficiency in sectors like logistics, telecom, defense, and infrastructure.
Worldscape is seeking a Lead Technical Artist to serve as the critical bridge between art and engineering, driving the technical direction of content creation and ensuring visual quality, efficiency, and performance across the project. You will be reporting into the Studio Head and responsible for defining workflows, optimizing pipelines, delivering innovative tools and visual solutions, as well as working with partner teams in outsourced art and VFX assets. The ideal candidate combines deep artistic understanding with strong technical expertise to support world-class content creation and elevate the visual bar of the product.
This is an onsite role located in Redmond, WA.
Responsibilities
Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Technical Artists, fostering both artistic and technical excellence.
Define, maintain, and optimize art content pipelines, workflows, and toolchains across multiple projects.
Collaborate closely with Art, Design, Engineering, and Production to ensure seamless integration of assets and features.
Drive performance profiling, debugging, and optimization on target platforms.
Develop tools, scripts, and automation solutions that increase team efficiency and reduce production bottlenecks.
Partner with graphics engineering team to ensure the highest fidelity and quality of our rendering engine and ensure technical feasibility.
Identify and solve complex visual, performance, and workflow challenges throughout production.
Establish best practices, documentation, and guidelines for art creation and technical standards.
Evaluate new technologies, tools, techniques, and processes to improve the project’s overall quality and efficiency.
Translate deep technical art topics into actionable insights for studio and platform teams and leadership.
Airworks
Technical 3D Designer
Netherlands - Weesp
WE’RE HIRING: AIRWORKS TECHNICAL 3D DESIGNER
📍 Weesp, NL | 🏗️ On site
Love turning bold creative ideas into real world show stopping designs?
At Airworks (part of TAIT), we create iconic large scale inflatables for world class tours, festivals and live experiences.
✨ What you’ll do
• Translate creative concepts into manufacturable soft structure designs
• Work in 3D (Cinema4D) on patterns, engineering & technical prep
• Collaborate with designers, sewing & production teams
Klein Tools
3D Designer
USA - Mansfield, TX
As the 3D Designer at Klein Tools, you will lead the creation of high‑impact product visualizations that elevate brand storytelling and strengthen customer engagement. This role blends technical mastery with creative vision, producing photoreal product and environmental renders, optimizing production workflows, and pushing the boundaries of digital visualization. You will drive innovation, establish 3D visual standards and guidelines, ensure brand consistency, and collaborate cross‑functionally to enhance execution across the organization. In addition to consumer‑facing visualizations, you bring strong executional expertise in 3D animation, visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing.
You have a sharp eye for the details that achieve photorealism in both still and motion formats. Highly organized and intentional in your approach, you build the systems, procedures, and libraries that ensure visual consistency and production efficiency—enabling Klein Tools’ expanding asset production pipeline to operate with speed, reliability, and exceptional quality.
Specific Responsibilities
Lead all lighting, rendering, and compositing for e‑Commerce product-on-white assets, packaging visuals, and photoreal environmental renderings that tell compelling product stories. Oversee end‑ to ‑end animation production — from storyboarding to final edit — including design, lighting, rendering, shot building, compositing, and title design.
Manage multiple concurrent asset productions, guiding the full creative process from brief through production, post‑production, and final delivery. Collaborate closely with Digital Design, Packaging, and Content Studio teams, as well as cross‑ functional partners in Product Marketing, Product Management, Sales, and Marketing channels to understand goals, audiences, tensions, and timelines.
Build and maintain a comprehensive CGI material, texture, and lighting library to ensure consistency, quality, and production efficiency across internal teams and external partners. Work directly with Industrial Design, prototypes, and physical samples to ensure photoreal accuracy.
Communicate visual development direction to other creative teams throughout project workflows, ensuring alignment with the overarching creative vision and strategic objectives.
Contribute to a collaborative, proactive, and excellence‑driven creative environment, helping elevate the team’s creative output and problem‑ solving mindset.
Stay current on industry trends and emerging 3D/CG technologies, providing recommendations and driving innovation across traditional, digital, and immersive/mixed ‑reality applications.
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Who Am I?
3D Merch is here!
Hello! Michael Tanzillo here. I am the Head of Technical Artists with the Substance 3D Growth team at Adobe. Previously, I was a Senior Artist on animated films at Blue Sky Studios/Disney with credits including three Ice Age movies, two Rios, Peanuts, Ferdinand, Spies in Disguise, and Epic.
In addition to his work as an artist, I am the Co-Author of the book Lighting for Animation: The Visual Art of Storytelling and the Co-Founder of The Academy of Animated Art, an online school that has helped hundreds of artists around the world begin careers in Animation, Visual Effects, and Digital Imaging. I also created The 3D Artist Community and this newsletter.
www.michaeltanzillo.com
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