Lead Artist – Console Games – Croatia – Europe

Lead Artist – Console Games

 Location: Croatia

Salary: £Neg

Job Type: Permanent

Projects: AAA Console Games

As a passionate Lead Artist, your role is to look after the overall look of a game. They are looking for a driven and creative person to lead the art team in delivering on budget, on-time, on-model, technically compliant and performant assets.

As the Lead Artist, you will participate in creative brainstorming sessions in coordination with Creative Director, Product Manager, Art Director etc. to create the look and feel of their games, work with the development leads and teams to manage the art creation throughout the production, and work with their outsourcing vendors to ensure they create content consistent to our requirements and their schedules are accurate.

Responsibilities:

• Be able to inspire and motivate a team of creative talent
• Understand all the roles within the art department and also of any outsourced contractors
• Have traditional and computer art and design skills
• Build good working relationships with other departments
• Communicate clearly with senior managers, designers, programmers, testers and other personnel
• Have good communication and people management skills, in order to train and mentor others
• Work with minimum supervision
• Excellent organisational skills
• Have extensive knowledge of art packages ranging from modelling to texturing and special effects
• Show technical proficiency in areas such as modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering, and understanding graphics-related programming languages such as shaders
• Understand of the technology used in game design and development, its capabilities and limitations
• Think creatively to resolve technical challenges and limitations
• Anticipate the needs of the artists so as to streamline their productivity
• Passion for games and a good understanding of what makes a game visually appealing and fun to play

To be successful you:

• The Lead Artist puts together and manages the team of Artists and Animators who produce most of the art assets for the game (including environments, characters, objects and effects) under the Lead Artist’s supervision.
• Acts as main liaison between the Creative Director, Art Director, Art Team, Programming Team and Vendors
• Meets with the Creative Director, Producer, and Product Manager as needed for sprint planning, roadmap planning
• Meets with the Creative Director as needed to review deliverables and check-in
• Provides the Producer art estimation to tasks when required
• Has visibility into asset delivery dates; can speak to this in absence of Producer
• The Lead Artist must ensure that the art and animation team works to schedule and within budget. They also work closely with the programming team to make sure that all art and animation assets produced can be easily imported into the game engine.
• Manage day-to-day guidance/feedback to art team through walk-arounds
• Troubleshoot issues by enlisting aid of appropriate stakeholders (e.g. Technical Artists, Engineers, etc.)
• Supervise the team’s output from a creative and technical point of view, and also ensure that the work gets done according to budget and schedule, alongside the game’s producer, anticipating problems and planning for any contingencies.
• Responsible for overseeing any outsourced art production.
• Oversees and approves final product after integration and on device
• Takes actions necessary to ensure content is green-lit from all stakeholders

Mentorship:

• Responsible for training new hires to the team and ensure best practices and quality standards are met
• Exposes team to new ideas and techniques that reflect the current and future trends in the industry

Highly desirable:

• Experience in game development
• Skills in managing artists and/or vendors
• Mature with demonstrable professionalism in high-pressure environments
• Strong understanding of foundation art principles including drawing, color theory, anatomy, lighting
• Exceptional and demonstrable art creation ability (hands-on)
• Ability to work in a creative, collaborative, and often interrupted work environment
• Must be communicative with all stakeholders
• Self-direction, drive, and leadership

Tagged as: Lead Artist