At Maxis, we thrive on outrageous thinking. It’s the fuel that inspires the best games in the world. We’re creators and great storytellers. Our mission is not just about amazing our peers – it’s about amazing our fans. Taking risks. Working with each other. Daring to dream big. Together, we can improve the way millions play every day.
The Sims 4 has a very unique player base with 60% of our audience being women between the ages of 18-24. We are looking for someone with deep insights on how to create the best experience for our players.
Maxis is looking for a talented individual to be a part of the creative team working on The Sims 4. This particular opening requires that the candidate be motivated, possess excellent communication skills, and have the ability to work well with a cross-disciplinary group.
The External Development Artist is responsible for maintaining the overall visual style of the assigned project as well as coordinating and supervising the efforts of our external partners to achieve that look. The External Development Artist will work directly with their lead, Art Director, and other art leads to help drive the external development content creation of a wide variety of object and environmental assets. This artist will be integral to the success of our external development efforts and will need to work in a fast-paced environment while maintaining a productive relationship with our partners, providing high quality art with consistency and efficiency. This individual will need to collaborate closely with team leads, production, and other art disciplines to get artwork prepared, reviewed, and integrated in-game. The ideal candidate would have experience providing technical and aesthetic feedback and understands that most of their time will be spent reviewing and providing feedback on art assets.
Responsibilities:
- Mentor the external partners on a day-to-day basis by creating highly detailed written and illustrative reviews on daily content deliveries
- Work closely with the art and tech teams to ensure consistency between the concept and final 3d assets
- Work with multiple development disciplines, including non-art specific groups, to assess and improve creative and development pipelines and processes
- Establish and maintain the production requirements to enforce both technical and aesthetical coherence
- Finalize and/or produce assets both for in-game use and for visual target purposes
- Create documentation and communicate requirements to external partners
- Monitor the quality and consistency of external development production
- Revise, change, or fix “finished” assets as needed
- Deliver to quality while maintaining desired schedules
Qualifications:
- 5+ years professional games development experience.
- At least 1 shipped title in the role of Environmental/Object Artist on PC or major console platform.
- Strong sense of design and an ability to identify styles and trends relating to interior design and architecture.
- A solid knowledge base in art and design history.
- Experience creating documentation for art pipelines and workflow with external partners.
- Extensive knowledge and proficiency in Maya, Zbrush, and Photoshop
- Expertise with up to date art production techniques.
- Excellent artistic skills and experience sharing that knowledge through mentoring, critiques, and tutorials.
- Proactively seeks art direction and cooperation with other team members.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills, solid organization and efficient time management. Takes direction and seeks clarification when necessary.
- Self-motivated, able to collaborate with other game team leads in a deadline-driven environment.
About EA
At Electronic Arts, we exist to Inspire the World to Play. We create extraordinary new game experiences for our millions of players everywhere by bringing together talented people that combine creativity, innovation, and passion. We know that our strength lies in the diversity of our people. We immerse our employees into an inclusive culture, and provide opportunities for learning and leading that allow them to do the most impactful and rewarding work of their careers. We put our people first. We provide comprehensive benefit packages with a focus on health and wellbeing to support your needs and help you balance your career and personal life. We provide access to dynamic and collaborative work environments, opportunities to connect and contribute through our Employee Resource Groups, and support for a balanced life with paid time off and maternity and paternity leave, plus free video games and so much more! Electronic Arts is an equal opportunity employer. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, religion, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Electronic Arts also makes workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law.